The central character of The Blackboard Jungle is returning war veteran Rick Dadier who reluctantly accepts a teaching job at a vocational school because he cannot find a teaching job anywhere else. Like many other returning vets he is trying to re-integrate himself back into civilian life, start a family, and rejoin American society. However, like many others in his situation, he finds that the idealism of his youth, his vision of what America is supposed to be, clashes with the new realities of modern, urban life. The plot of the novel serves as a metaphor for the changed values many veterans discovered after the war. They went off to fight and their lives were put into a time warp. The youth that under normal circumstances would have been passed going to school, getting married, pursuing a conventional American life, was lost while they served the war effort...