Old School Themes

Old School centers on an unnamed narrator who begins his final year at an elite New England prep school in 1960. During this school year, the narrator tries to enhance his social standing among his classmates, often by lying about himself and his home life. The narrator even plagiarizes another student’s story in order to win a school literary competition, violating the school’s Honor Code. When these deceptions are revealed, the narrator is immediately expelled…

Throughout the book, the unnamed narrator hints that he’s different from his classmates at his New England prep school. Unlike most, he comes from a middle-class background and attends the school on scholarship; he was also raised Catholic but has Jewish heritage. And while most of his classmates come from traditional, two-parent households, the narrator is distant from his father, and his mother is dead. Though the narrator claims that the school isn’t “snobbish”…

In Old School, the students at an elite, all-boys New England prep school face off in several different kinds of competition. The school holds literary contest in which students contend to meet a visiting writer; students compete to be published in the school’s literary review, Troubadour; and the students battle over girls at a nearby sister school. The competition over these various prizes becomes extremely heated as boys try to assert their dominance…

Although Old School takes place at an elite prep school, the narrator rarely describes his lessons in the classroom. Instead, the story focuses on the importance of practical life experience and failure as a means of education. In particular, Wolff demonstrates how practical experiences make great lessons for the narrator and for the dean of the school, Dean Makepeace—both of whom leave the school prematurely due to personal failures. Yet this leads to great…