Many people make mistakes in their lives, and whether or not they deserve forgiveness can be a controversial topic. The narrator in the novel Old School by Tobias Wolff does not deserve forgiveness. Although the narrator may have loved the school he was at and was successful while he was there, the narrator does not deserve forgiveness because he was fully aware that what he was doing was wrong but he did it anyway and he did not feel remorse afterwards. Because he obviously did not care about his place at the school, he does not deserve forgiveness as do many people who do bad things while knowing that they are bad. Some say that the narrator did feel remorse after his actions, thus he does deserve forgiveness but this is clearly wrong. Although …show more content…
Right after he hears that he is to leave the school immediately, he thinks about “pack[ing] [his] first edition of In Our Time” a book that was given to him because of his plagiarized story (Wolff 146). It is clear that he feels no remorse over his actions because if he did then he would have wanted to return the book and felt bad about having it when he did not deserve it. When the narrator is first told that he is being expelled, he had no emotional reaction to it. After the headmaster tells him that he is to leave the school immediately and will not be attending Columbia like he was supposed to all the narrator says is, “oh” (Wolff 145). Some may that the he was just in shock and did not know what to say but in reality he just did not care that he was being expelled. When he is being driven to the train station, never to return to the school, he has a calm conversation with Mr. Ramsey about Ernest Hemingway saying, “why did you censor what he said to you” (Wolff 148). If the narrator was truly devastated with his expulsion he would not have been able to converse with Mr. Ramsey in the relaxed way that he did. Because the narrator felt no remorse for plagiarizing the story and he did not care that he was being expelled from his school, he does not deserve forgiveness. People who do not mind in the slightest something that happened to them should be felt sorry for over …show more content…
The entire narrative is set around him and when he is expelled from the school we are supposed to feel bad for him and root for him to go back to the school or be successful without the school, but this examination of the text makes it seem like he should not be rooted for because he does not deserve forgiveness. Because he does not deserve forgiveness, subsequent readings of the book would lead to less sympathy being felt for the narrator and more annoyance with him and his stupidity throughout. Whether or not someone deserves forgiveness is often subjective, but in this case it is extremely clear that the narrator does not deserve forgiveness. If the narrator had an emotional response when he was expelled from the school he had spent a large part of his life at, or if he had not known that what he was doing was wrong then he might have been worthy of forgiveness. But because he did not seem to care that he was being sent home and he knew that it was wrong of him to copy the story, the narrator is unquestionably not deserving of