Instant Access To 100,000+ Essays!

High school, a stepping stone, a coming of age, a time of change, a time of growing and planning, a time of living and enjoying, a beginning for some and an end or transition for others. Joyce Carol Oates Life after High School takes us to a time in the late 1950s to South Lebanon High School and shows us the lives of three people at a time of self-discovery. Zachary Graff, Barbara "Sunny" Burhman and Tobias Shank were three friends and classmates who held secrets and truths between them which no one else in the school or town would discover. Zachary Graff (a round character) was, until about the ninth grade, just an unrecognizable nerdy looking person. He was six and a half feet tall, 203 pounds with an IQ of 160. Upon graduation, his parents had wanted him to attend Muhlenberg College, a church-affiliated school, but Zachary, who would have been the valedictorian, wanted to go wherever Sunny would go. His frame was large and he would move clumsily down the halls of the high school with a gaze on the horizon as if not noticing anyone. Zachary had an eye problem, myopia or nearsightedness, which caused him to have to wear corrective glasses. His glasses were "chunky black plastic frames", which he constantly kept pushing up on