TOW #8- IRB #1 Second Half

          In the second half of the memoir, Hole in my Life, written by Jack Gantos, his true passion for writing and a desire to turn his life around is finally revealed. Peering through the bars of his prison cell, Gantos witnesses countless acts of violence that alter his life forever. These experiences, recorded between the lines of a book found in the jail library, cause him to severely miss the way his life once was. Prior to his drug incident and admittance behind bars, Gantos constantly struggled to find inspiration for his writing. Sadly, it was not until he began living face to face with hardcore criminals that he realized he had been surrounded by positive influences his entire childhood, if only he had taken the time to recognize sooner. After the end of his sentence, Gantos is free to leave and explore ways to improve himself, but disastrously discovers that the journal he has written in for the past several years is unable to come along with him. Despite this setback he still manages to attend college, and never again does he face the temptations of returning back to dealing illegal marijuana. He now fully understands his importance and role in life, and from that moment forward focuses all of his heart and energy into writing stories of his past for young teens. Primarily in hopes that they will follow the right path in their lives, and if not, be able to recognize and recover from their mistakes.

         Present throughout this story is the inclusion of irony, in which Gantos compares two different versions of himself- pre-jail and post-jail. During transition into his new life, he is hired as a Christmas tree delivery guy. “The last job I had in New York was pushing a shopping cart full of drugs down the streets to people’s apartments. Now I was pushing a shopping cart with a Christmas tree on it” (Gantos 198). This ironic situation represents how contrasting Gantos’ new life is to his old one, and satisfies the audience by allowing them to see his improvement. Also, Gantos utilizes short and direct sentence structure in order to add emphasis to each individual word. For example he writes, “The receptionist shrugged. He couldn’t care less. I looked into the lobby. There were two agents. It was sentencing day, and they didn’t want to lose me” (Gantos 140). This causes the audience to add immediate pauses between sentences and pay closer attention to the events at hand, ultimately adding more support to his overall message. Gantos wants to make it clear to all young members of society that critical decision-making is a crucial part of leading a successful, prison-free life.