This Boy's Life, by Tobias Wolff and The Basketball Diaries by Jim Carroll are both similar coming of age memoirs dealing with rebellious teenage boys. Toby and Jim are both trying to discover who they are. Being introduced to a new environment makes the boys anxious and they start to exhibit destructive and violent behavior. Though the reason for their violence hasn't been verified, the absence of a paternal figure in the lives of both Toby and Jim is certainly a factor.
             In This Boy's Life, Toby was being raised without a paternal figure. The only person close to a paternal figure is Roy, his mother's boyfriend, who is mentally abusive towards Toby. However, Toby is a good kid and only starts to exhibit destructive behavior when he gets to his new home in Utah. "I didn't come to Utah to be the same boy I'd been before." (Page 8) Once in Utah, Toby feels he doesn't get enough attention in general. This is because everyone knows him as an innocent young boy. In the high hopes of getting the attention he needs, Toby resorts to violent and destructive behavior. An example of this is when he is in the bathroom at school one afternoon. Toby is telling his friends an exaggerated story of how he killed a turkey in Chinook. He gets angry when he sees that his friends do not believe him, and starts to scream at them. The fact that he doesn't get the attention from his friends gets him frustrated, and he resorts to scratching obscenities on the wall, just for fun.
             "Still saying this, I went over to the wall, which had just been repainted, and took out my comb. It was a girl's comb. We all carried them, tails sticking out of our back pockets. With the tail of the comb I scratched FUCK YOU into the soft paint and once more told Silver,"Fuck you." (Page 77)
             Toby needs to prove to himself and everyone around him that he is a tough guy, and should not be thought of as an i...