Smokers

Analysis of Smokers written by Tobias Wolff

The narrator is an unnamed boy who is probably in his teens going to a boarding school for the first time. He is one of the main characters in the story Smokers. He becomes friends with Talbot Nevins but he doesn’t like Eugene too much. As the story unfolds, the narrator is learning more about both boys’ personalities but he likes Talbot because he perceives that Talbot is much cooler than Eugene is. Talbot apparently is from a rich family who had donated a lot of money to foundations and his father is a famous race car driver. Eugene and Talbot are roommates but have clashing personalities. Eugene wants to hang out with the narrator but the narrator thinks Eugene is uncool; he would rather to be seen with Talbot than with Eugene. Talbot and Eugene smoke, but the narrator doesn’t, but he decides to go along with them because he wants to be cool and he knows it is risky because he doesn’t want to be caught by Big John. Talbot likes to hunt, and he is a better tennis player than the narrator. They both aren’t very good basketball players, but Talbot is a terrible writer, but the narrator is really good. Talbot tricks the narrator into doing his essay homework for him. The narrator has written for the school paper, which I think that is why Talbot decided to manipulate the narrator into doing the homework for him. Eugene has a completely different sense of style than the other boys, because they were wearing the school uniform but Eugene wore clothes that weren’t allowed at school. He liked to wear belted jackets, white buck shoes, and tab collars, and he disregarded the school rules like not following the dress codes, smoking where he shouldn’t be smoking. When he got caught by Big John, he realized that being kicked out of a prep school was a big deal and he would be picked on by the other kids. Envy is a big theme in the story, because the narrator wants to pretend to be well off like Talbot is, and he wants to pretend that he didn’t grow up with the poor or middle class background that he was raised in. I think he is somewhat envious of Eugene too, because he was willing to take a risk of getting in trouble with the school.