The Barack Thief Parallelism Essay

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Louis Cabezas Dr. Crerand ENG 375.01 27 March 2024 The Barracks Thief Close Reading At the end of Tobias Wolff’s novella, The Barrack Thief, Phillip is recalling the lives of his friends Lewis and Hubbard. He is reminiscing on “how it felt to be a reckless man with reckless friends” (101). What at first appears to be a conclusion paragraph to the novella includes subtle commentary on the corruption of man. Wolff's use of parallelism and imagery emphasizes a story highlighting the moral ambiguity and complex nature of humans. Wolff’s use of parallelism in the form of characters and their situations helps to highlight the complex nature of humanity. In Wolff’s last paragraph, Phillip tells the reader that he thinks of, “Lewis before he was a …show more content…

Phillip himself, “didn’t set out to be what I am, either”(101). Despite their intentions, these men became something other than they originally intended to be. Phillip explains that Hubbard may have had good reason to desert, and yet he did anyway. By looking back at these characters before their fatal mistakes, Phillip is idealizing a world in which these men, himself included, were not corrupted by the outside world and factors beyond their control. Wolff through Phillip makes commentary on how the outside world treated soldiers during this era. Phillip defined these characters as, “three men with rifles'' (101). Wolff wants to remind the reader that before everything else, soldiers are just men with rifles. More importantly, they are men with rifles who can make mistakes just like the reader. One of Wolff’s main points in writing this novella was to highlight the moral middle ground that many soldiers have to live in. In the penultimate paragraph, Phillip describes the moral middle ground perfectly, “I’m a conscientious man, a responsible man, maybe even what you’d call a good man – I hope so. I am content with my life most of the time.” However, he knows he has made some

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