79 pages • 2 hours read
Jack GantosHole In My Life
Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 2002A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Part 2, Chapters 1-2Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 2, Chapter 1 Summary: “St. Croix”
Gantos remembers two initial things about St. Croix: the prominent drug culture and the erupting racial tension on the island. First, he secures a job making shipping crates at the place where his father works; this is where he meets a drug smuggler, Rik. Rik commissions Gantos to create a large shipping crate with hidden panels. Next, Gantos decides that he might be able to use the racial tension on the island to establish himself as a field reporter. In this endeavor, he walks into the Black Revolutionary Headquarters, requesting an interview. There, the men challenge him to shoot a white man, which Gantos refuses to do. The men mock his commitment, saying “[d]on’t be coming in here as if you can play with the big boys” (64), and a humbled Gantos leaves. These two events lead to Gantos accepting a proposal from Rik: to join a sailor, Hamilton, on a hash-smuggling voyage north, to New York City. Gantos sees this as an opportunity for adventure and to escape the violence on St. Croix, so he takes the job.
Part 2, Chapter 2 Summary: “Bon Voyage”
Just before leaving, Gantos witnesses Hamilton’s nasty nature firsthand as the two practice sailing. Gantos’ relative inexperience as a sailor angers Hamilton, but it does not deter Gantos: he checks out every classic seafaring novel from the library before he and Hamilton depart St. Croix. He states, “I wanted to write while sailing, and I was more than willing to come under the spell of books” (77). Much of the initial trip is an adventure straight from Gantos’ novels: the two men first find the hidden stash, unearthing the hash like a buried treasure. Then, as more days pass, Gantos uncovers more about his captain: drinking, unstable behavior, and a habit of being habitually naked on board. In addition, Gantos finds another treasure: “the wrinkled and stained” (81) ship’s log, full of blank pages for Gantos to fill.
Part 2, Chapters 1-2 Analysis
Gantos’ passive nature leads him closer to a life of crime. He takes a job making shipping crates with his father, claiming that other work is not available. In addition, the drug culture in St. Croix sweeps him up, and from the first day Gantos is already looking for an easy way off the island. This chance appears in the way of drug smuggling, to which Gantos readily agrees. It is as if he’s allowing himself to be swept from one adventure to the next, out of desperation; like a barnacle, he tries to attach himself to a faster moving, more interesting entity: first the black men at the Black Revolutionary Headquarters, and then Rik and Hamilton’s hash-smuggling venture. As he has no active purpose in his own life, he attempts to ride the wave of others’ causes, for which he is mocked by the black revolutionaries and by Hamilton. The event with the revolutionaries, in particular, and the shame he feels after they mock him, directly causes Gantos to accept Rik’s proposal.
This passivity is evident, too, in the books he brings on the smuggling trip. He continues taking cues from others, selecting all the books about sea adventure the St. Croix library contains. It is as if Gantos feels, by sailing and reading about sailing, he will become a great writer, like Herman Melville or Robert Louis Stevenson. He says, “I was armed with books the way the navy goes to sea armed to the teeth” (77). Naively, Gantos thinks of this as a grand adventure; while the revolutionaries and Hamilton arm themselves with actual weapons, Gantos shows his disconnect with the reality of what he’s doing by immersing himself in a fictional world once again. These books also represent Gantos’ capricious nature; it is as if he allows the situation to dictate what kind of writer he will be: first, he will chronicle living in Florida, then the hopes and hazards of road travel, then he will be a great field reporter, documenting the civil unrest in St. Croix. Now, he will write the next Moby Dick because he happens to be on a boat and finds an empty ship’s log.
Related Titles
By Jack Gantos
