Life can be difficult in many of its stages. It seems though, that across the board, in both fiction and non-fiction, it is this time of coming of age that everything seems to take on an increased level of intensity. This is probably because many new things are not only being experienced at once, but they are all being experienced for the first time. Warrant Glen, by William Wallis, is an account of friendship during high school, in a school setting where there is violence happening within one’s surroundings, and also on the national stage. The novel’s plot combine with the plot of the nation, and comes to a front with the assassination of President Kennedy, who was assassinated in Dallas. While this was a major event that happened on November 22, 1963 (JFK Library, 1), the novel Warrant Glen portrays this event differently then a history—while this happened, it also happened in people’s lives, which went on after their president’s death and reacted to it in different ways. Since it is an auto-biographical novel, it gives more than just a window into a fictional account of what it was like to be in high school at the time of Kennedy’s assassination (Stone & Scott, 1).
Wallis’s novel centers around the character Will Falk. He is seventeen and is more idealistic than his classmates, who seem concerned with their limited world of being like by others, or being ridiculed. He sees the forces that are in play around him and decides that he does not want to be influenced by other’s bad example but wants to forge a life for himself. He finds his peace in the beauty of the world around him. Specifically, he finds that peace in poetry and music.
Will is not unpopular, but like many people in high school he has trouble relating to and being understood by his classmates. There are eighty-seven seniors in his senior class, and the novel takes place before they are to graduate and go out into the world to be whatever they make out of themselves. The novel is divided into three parts, with the third part being the climax where the large world enters the student’s smaller world with the news of Kennedy’s assassination. One of Will’s teachers, Mrs Erdes does not take any pride in her job, and is lost in a world of her own. Wallis, on November 22nd, writes that “Mrs. Erdes had retreated, as she sometimes did, into clipping pictures for the annual” (Wallis, 94).
The scene develops with each student seemingly lost in their own world that day. Don was leaning with a pencil is his mouth. Mandy was immersed in her Spanish homework. Sue was reading a novel and Will seems to be taking in and reflecting on his surroundings. Then, “The classroom door opened, and Mrs. Remarque appeared,” which would suddenly cause people in the class to react very differently to the news that Kennedy had been killed (Wallis, 195).
What is shocking to realize, is the reaction that is taught in Warrant Glen, that some people treated the death of Kennedy as good news. Will, he absorbs the news in silence, is unlike his classmates who “exploded in noise celebration” (Wallis, 196). He seems to want to pause the moment, knowing that this will be a day that he will always be looking back on. It is here that he is able to put the lessons he has learned through the course of the novel to a test—to not be shaped by the world around him, but to allow himself to shape that word.
Works Cited:
"November 22, 1963: Death of the President." - John F. Kennedy Presidential Library & Museum. N.p., n.d. Web. 29 Jan. 2014. <http://www.jfklibrary.org/JFK/JFK-in-History/November-22-1963-Death-of-the-President.aspx>.
Stone & Scott. "Warrant Glen by William Wallis." Warrant Glen by William Wallis. N.p., n.d. Web. 29 Jan. 2014. <http://stoneandscott.com/warrant-glen-william-wallis.asp>.
Wallis, William. Warrant Glen. Los Angeles, CA: Lone Wolf Editions, 2008. Print.
