Summary Of I Am Charlotte Simmons By Tom Wolfe
I Am Charlotte Simmons is Tom Wolfe’s novel and also the mantra of its protagonist, Charlotte. It is a 2004 novel, depicting students lives at a fictionalized American university: Dupont. Wolfe is a journalist and an author famous for such works as The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, The Right Stuff, The Bonfire of the Vanities, and more.
The novel centers on a freshman: Charlotte Simmons, a Christian, very smart, but withdrawn and naive girl, of lower-class background, who arrived from North Carolina's Blue Ridge Mountains to Pennsylvania's prestigious and fictional Dupont University, in possession of a full scholarship. The 676 pages novel, covers her first overwhelming six months attending Dupont.
Charlotte Simmons spent her high school years studying with her English teacher Miss Pennington, who she looks up to and wants to please. During those years, she lived with her parents, who are very protective but very loving. Charlotte is a bright student, who doesn't really have a social life nor many friends, during her teenage life she always put her academic success before everything, which allowed her to graduate with a perfect 1600 SAT score and straight-A's, for the disdain of her classmates. Nevertheless, people of her hometown have high expectations for her, when she, Charlotte Simmons, unknown little girl from Sparta, earns a scholarship to attend Dupont University.
Arriving at Dupont, Charlotte realizes the gap between her and the other, rich, prep-school peers who are using 'Fuck Patois' as it is said in the novel. She is stunned and uncomfortable in her surrounding, she promises herself she won't change. Throughout the novel, Charlotte even repeats “I am Charlotte Simmons,” frequently, in an attempt to remember the person she is, to prove to herself she still has self-esteem. Little she knew, it wouldn't really mean the same thing by the end of the story.
She and the other characters are going to be confronted to competition, as Jojo and his fear and struggle of being replaced in his basketball team or Charlotte who is competing with other girls, about appearance and approval, whether they know it or not. And confronted to inequality, for example Adam who has to manage work and school in order to succeed, while is being walked over by people who have everything, like Jojo or Hoyt; people who count on everything but their intelligence to succeed in life. Moreover, boys and girls aren't equal in the sense of opportunities: boys have a future already in place, with their fraternities like the «Saint Rays», which insure them to have jobs when they graduate college, Hoyt Thorpe is a great example, he doesn't even worry about his grade, because he knows that when he's out of the university he'll already have a job, at least that's what he thought. Vance Phipps, his friend, has good grades, but it doesn't really matter either, because he has the name: Phipps, a name which is going to open doors for him. While girls, despite their intelligence which they certainly have for attending Dupont University, are reduced to get out of there, just to marry one of those guys and be a housewife.
Wolfe makes a point of honor to show that Charlotte may be one of the only girls at Dupont, who cares about her grades, to some extent. I Am Charlotte Simmons portrays a lot of female characters: Charlotte herself, her 'friends' Bettina and Mimi, her roommate Beverly, the two girls with whom she goes to the formal with: Crissy and Nicole or even the girls who gives oral sex to the governor at the beginning of the novel, to name some. Neither one of them is being referred to because of their intelligence or their academic journey. Most of them are linked to a man, somehow. We notice that sex, alcohol and parties are a central theme in this novel, men are all about these things, but we can read about their future, their grades, their future jobs and it is just not the case with the women.
