I am also reading Jack Gantos’ book, “The Hole in My Life.” We have read pages 1-38. In the first two chapters, we are introduced to the main character, Jack. He starts off by introducing himself as a criminal. He acts as if we have seen his mugshot. He talks about how dirty his prison is, and how much he hates it. How people have been stabbed in the lunch line, and murdered in their cells. The scene switches to when he was a child and it is where the story starts. Eventually he will build up the story to where he ends up in prison. He continues the story as a kid, changing schools every year, and his family moves Costa Rica. He loves it there, he gets to live by himself, work, play cards with his fellow adults, but he realizes that he doesn’t want this life and wants to finish high school. He goes back to Florida and stays with a family that needs money. But, the man always is drunk, throwing up and ruining the house. He gets thrown out and is on the run looking for a school and a life. I am wondering what will happen next.
After the discussion, I learned what the main character’s name was and I learned how the other people in my group thought about the book. My classmates noticed the language in, The Hole in My Life. We talked about how the book hasn’t gone that far in three chapters and the language is choppy and short. For the first three chapters, Jack is giving flash-backs to us and the story hasn’t progressed very far. Some big questions the author is asking me are how I think of the main character and the author really wants us to question what is happening in the book. Jack, the main character is a fun, wild, dangerous man. The author knows this character is insane but he wants us to really know that the Jack is purposely insane. Finally, the series of events happening in the book are very unusual and the author wants us to realize that these events aren’t normal and we should feel uneasy about them.
