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This Boy's Life Study Guide

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by Tobias Wolff
About 68 pages (20,534 words)
This Boy's Life Summary

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Chapter 1, Fortune (pgs. 8-22) Summary and Analysis

Toby wants to change his name to Jack like Jack London because a girl in his class in Florida was named Toby. Toby is scared of girls and believes changing his name will also change his identify and his life problems. His mother agrees to let him change his name to Jonathan if he agrees to complete catechism classes. After he is baptized as Jonathan, she says he can shorten his name to Jack.

The name change will also get rid of Toby's ties to his father. Toby's father calls from Connecticut. He lives there with Toby's older brother, Geoffrey, and a millionaire he started seeing while married to Toby's mother. He doesn't give Toby and his mother any money. Toby's dad tells Toby to keep his name as.....

This is a free excerpt of 135 words. This section contains 796 words. This study guide contains 20,534 words (approx. 68 pages at 300 words per page).

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This Boy's Life from BookRags and Gale's For Students Series. ©2005-2006 Thomson Gale, a part of the Thomson Corporation. All rights reserved.

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