Kat Pierce

Honors 391A
Charlotte Simmons and Stoner
TheRoleoftheUniversity

I am Charlotte Simmons by Tom Wolfe and Stoner by John

Williams focus on the college experiences of Charlotte Simmons, a
contemporary undergraduate student, and William Stoner, a professor
who teaches in the early and middle years of the twentieth century.
Initially, both characters care deeply about academics and higher
education, but as the novels unfold, both Charlotte and Stoner start to
drift from their values, only to be brought low by doing so. Each then
returns to focusing fully on academics, but with their lives forever
changed.
Charlotte Simmons and William Stoner both came from poor,
underprivileged, rural backgrounds. Their parents never went to
college and made a living through farm work and underpaid jobs.
Neither set of parents encouraged their child to attend college, yet
Charlotte and Stoner made the leap into a world of the unknown in
order to escape from the rural and small towns they grew up in and get
a new start in life.
Charlotte had graduated high school as valedictorian and was
the only student in her small graduating class to attend a prestigious,
Ivy League university. Stoner, on the other hand, attended college to

study agriculture in the hopes of returning home to help his family on

the farm. Academics quickly became the center of their lives. They
were happiest when they excelled in studying and learning and loved
that the university offered them that intellectual stimulation. The role
of the university to them, initially, was that it seemed to offer a place
where they could learn, gain knowledge for their own joy, and go on to
a good future in graduate school and later a job.
However, their experiences at the university caused their values
to change, but in different ways. Both Charlotte and Stoner started to
question the purpose of the university when they discover that not all
of university life is based on academics. They strayed from the primary
aims of school, exploring the social aspects of university life in the
hopes of developing long-term relationships, only to be disappointed
and nearly destroyed, retreating to academics but with a less pure and
romantic view of it.
Charlottes life in high school had been based solely on
academics. She hadnt had many friends but was the valedictorian of
her class and had been given a full scholarship to an Ivy League
university. Her experience in her first year of college was challenging
socially. She came from an economically poor, socially inexperienced,
rural background to a wealthy university full of athletes, fraternity and
sorority members, and other elites. It was hard for her to adjust to such
a different lifestyle than the one in which she grew up. However, it was

only normal that her values and perceptions of a university would

change as she and the people around her grew and changed. As the
novel progresses, Charlottes priorities changed from making good
grades and valuing academic learning to boys and partying. In high
school, her self-worth had been determined by the opinions and
judgments of those around her, like her family and teachers who
praised her for her intellect. In college, Charlotte discovered that life
isnt all about school and that if too much attention is put on school,
isolation and loneliness can follow.
Throughout the novel, she silently repeated the mantra, I am
Charlotte Simmons, in order to remind herself who she was. However,
the contexts in which she repeated this mantra changed. At first, she
placed herself above the other students by believing that she was
better than the other students. As time went on, she realized that the
people she was surrounded by had different values than she did, such
as partying, boys, and drinking. Charlotte felt lonely and isolated from
the other students. She wanted to belong to the in-crowd as much as
she still wanted to be better than them in classes. As she started to
experiment with partying, boys, and other aspects of school with which
she had not yet become familiar, her mantra, I am Charlotte
Simmons, became a reassurance that she could be social like the
other kids. Sometimes when she felt especially left out even while
spending time with her new fraternity and sorority friends, she

continued to reassure herself that she was better than them. Charlotte
probably used this reassurance as a defense mechanism in order not to
become discouraged or sad when the other kids treated her differently.
As the story went on, Charlottes ability to keep reassuring
herself of her identity slowly started to decrease. She did not repeat
her mantra, which gave the impression that she no longer knew who
she was or what her values were. In the end, she realized that
popularity isnt everything (though she still prided herself on being
Jojos girlfriend) and that there is a balance between social life and
academics. It was a very good thing that Charlottes outlook on
university life changed. The university would not only give her
knowledge but friends and relationships as well.
In Stoner, Stoner left his parents farm life in order to study
agriculture at the University of Missouri. Very early on in his college
life, he found that literature was his passion, and he was happiest
when learning and studying. However, he had no friends and for the
first time in his life he became aware of his loneliness (Williams, 16).
When Sloane, one of Stoners English literature instructors, told Stoner
that he would be a teacher, Stoner accepted without complaint or
question that teaching would be his future.
In fact, Stoner seemed to take everything without complaint. He
got married and was treated terribly by his demanding wife who

wanted a bigger house and basically forbade him from seeing his
daughter. When Lomax, an fellow instructor in the English department,
gave Stoner a horribly-timed schedule, teaching low-level English
courses despite Stoners years of experience, he simply accepted it.
His whole life was sad and dull, and he never made decisions for
himself. His only joys seemed to come from studying literature and his
passion for knowledge and teaching others. For Stoner, the university
provided the only happiness in his life given he had few friends and a
distant relationship with his family.
Early in the novel, one of Stoners only friends, Dave Masters,
believed he knew what Stoner believed was the true nature of the
university. He said that Stoner sees it as a great repository, like a
library or a whorehouse, where men come of their free will and select
that which will complete them, where all work together like little bees
in a common hivetheyre in the next book, the one you havent read,
or in the next stack, the one you havent got to. But youll get to it
someday (Williams, 29). Stoner admitted that that is indeed what he
believes, but Masters claimed that he was wrong. He said that Stoner,
Finch, and himself are the university. They are what make the
university what it is, implying that they bring prestige.
Later in the book, Stoner was attracted to a fellow English
instructor, Katherine Driscoll. He believed that she was the only one

who truly loved him, and he began to find much of his happiness in her.
In the time of their affair, it seemed like his whole world revolved
around her, and he did not spend as much time at the university
teaching, studying, or grading papers. It was probably one of the only
parts of the book where you could see he was actually enjoying his life
that didnt have to do with academics.
However, when Katherine was sent away, he found himself back
to his old ways, but with small changes. I believe he thought back to
what Masters had said in the beginning of the novel about how they
are the university. Stoner took a bit more initiative to change what the
university meant to him. As mentioned earlier, Lomax had given Stoner
an absurdly timed schedule to teach his low-level English classes.
Stoner rebelled against this insult by teaching Medieval English, an
upper-level literature course, in a freshman literature class.
In the end, Stoner knew what he wanted from the university. Not
only did he want to teach, he wanted to teach classes he was
passionate about. He wanted students who came to their studies as if
those studies were life itself and not specific means to specific ends
(Williams, 249). He always knew he wanted to be a teacher, and he
had become one; yet he knew, he had always known, that for most of
his life he had been an indifferent one. He had reamed of a kind of
integrity, of a kind of purity that was entire; he had found compromise

and the assaulting diversion of triviality. He had conceived wisdom,

and at the end of the long years he had found ignorance. (Williams,
274). It was highly unfortunate that he finally decided he would not put
up with the people who treated him badly, and he would stand up for
what he loved, though a bit late in his life. He retired shortly after that,
but the important matter is that he came to the university, innocent,
submissive, and eager to learn, and he came out a stronger man who
was passionate about what he wanted and what he taught.
In conclusion, two characters came into a university with the
same hopes and values, mostly centered around academics. When
they strived to find something more the university had to offer in order
to try and expunge their loneliness, they were defeated. They
explored, experienced, and experimented until they were satisfied with
what they had found. The role of the university changed for them, they
found more to life than just academics, and they both became better,
happier people.