Naive goody-two-shoes Charlotte Simmons arrives for her freshman year at the prestigious Dupont University expecting to interact with the cream of the crop of America’s youth, but the beautiful prodigy is in for a surprise. Tom Wolfe’s I Am Charlotte Simmons explores the dark side of college life through sports, frats, keggers, and co-eds, telling a story of how America’s universities do more to corrupt students rather than educate them. Wolfe’s strengths lie in his “dazzling prose theatrics” which brilliantly reproduce the words of a student athlete during a basketball game or even dialogue between two drunken students in the middle of sex. Charlotte enters Dupont as a brilliant, sheltered girl from North Carolina, but what will she leave as?
