He is a well liked and dynamic literature teacher wh William Silver is a young teacher at the ISF, a high school for international students, in Paris. He is a well liked and dynamic literature teacher whose senior seminar is one of the highlights of many students careers at the school. The school year in which the story takes place, Silver is teaching literature, that while not exclusively existentialist, leans in that direction and is exposing most of his students to this philosophy for the first time.