A Rhetorical Analysis: The Passive Non-Identity Anonymous 11th Grade

In Tobias Wolff's memoir This Boy’s Life, Wolff recounts a life of secretive rebellion under the rule of his abusive stepfather and submissive, peace-making mother. Tobias lives, from the beginning, in two worlds. The world of passivity and submissiveness around authoritative adults and the world of activity within himself and around his peers. Though they exist in balance in the beginning of Tobias’s life, his infantilizing, disempowering relationship with dwight drives him to external passivity and, eventually, a similar lack of control within his own mind. Tobias comes to believe that his own inaction is inescapable and creates an identity, or rather lack of identity, around what he is not or cannot be. Ultimately, leaving him without a self at all. Wolff’s use of increasingly vague, passive language to describe his external interactions, and later internal thoughts, demonstrates the fated nature of his choices and, therefore, his inability to cultivate his own identity.

Tobias uses passive voice and other linguistic elements to convey inaction whilst around domineering adults. So, as his contact with Dwight intensifies, so too does his passivity until he eventually internalizes this voice and creates a non-identity. Early...