Life after High School
In the short story "Life after High School" by Joyce Carol Oates, Zachary, one of the main characters, struggles with his love for Barbara Burhman. This struggle ultimately leads to his death. Throughout the story the three characters, Barbara, Zachary, and Tobias mask themselves by hiding behind lies. The author uses this to establish the theme that wearing masks is destructive. Zachary, better known as Zach, hides behind a mask throughout the entire story. From the beginning of the story the author continuously lets the reader know how Zach feels about Barbara. Zach's interest in Barbara seemed a bit strange. The two had been class mates since the first grade, but Zach had not discovered her until the spring of their senior year. He also had never to anyone's recollection asked a girl out before, but there was something about Barbara that captured Zach's interest. At one point in the story, he even says to Barbara, "If you go to Cornell... maybe I'll to there too?" He was around so much to the point where he was a border line stalker. Zach later shows the reader just how much he loves Barbara by asking her to marry him. He even spent over half of his college fund on the engagement ring. When Barbara rejects his proposal, Z
This occurred after twelve weeks of Zach pursuing Barbara. She cries, "No! no! go away! no!" He then turns and runs away. When she went downstairs to see what he wanted he said he had to talk with her. His mask led to his own destruction. Towards the end of the story we find out that Zach was indeed hiding behind a mask. Falling in love, in Tobias's opinion, was not fair because he was forced to keep things bottled up inside. He could not take that rejection on top of the rejection that he was receiving from Sunny. If Sunny would have told him right off that she did not like him, she could have kept him from killing himself. Zach and Tobias also realize that falling in love is not fair. Although Zach's friend Tobias is not mentioned a lot throughout the story, he too uses a "mask" to hide the truth. Zach tried and tried to get Sunny to love him by expressing his feelings to her, but no matter how hard he tried, despite the fact that he spent over half of his college fund on an engagement ring and proposed to her, she still did not love him. Sunny does not find out the truth from Tobias about Zach and himself until years after Zach has killed himself.
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