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 3, Chapters 5-6Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 3, Chapter 5 Summary: “Drug Lust”
“Drug Lust” discusses Gantos’ encounters with drug use in prison. Given that he is in jail on a drug-smuggling charge, this strikes Gantos as ironic. He introduces the theme of this chapter: “[t]he effort to become invisible, or to appear nonthreatening yet dangerous, was exhausting” (164). Gantos blames drug use on this exhaustion, this need for men to forget, rather than record, what they go through in prison. He meets a man that nearly kills himself with a makeshift needle and a man who swallows hash and needs an enema to remove the drugs. He notes the smell of marijuana when he’s in the prison courtyard. Gantos faces his first review board and finds out he won’t have the opportunity for parole for two more years. After he picks at his face, Gantos recalls a Halloween when he was young; the children had to remain indoors because prisoners had escaped from the local jail. The memory of this comforts Gantos amid the disappointment of his parole meeting and the violence he sees as a hospital volunteer.
Part 3, Chapter 6 Summary: “Marking Time”
Gantos gains illegal access to his prison report; there, he finds others’ comments on him, noting that he may be a sociopath, showing no remorse and lying to tell people what they want to hear. This triggers an anxiety attack. Next, Gantos receives a visit from his father and uncle, who arrive drunk and during off-visiting times. Gantos meets his father briefly but worries about how his father’s actions might affect the length of his prison sentence. To improve his case, he visits the prison psychiatrist because he knows a positive review from him could perhaps shorten his sentence. To answer the psychiatrist’s questions, Gantos remains neutral and is often only partially honest, to which the psychiatrist says, “[w]hen you really want to be honest with me, come back” (183). Gantos never returns to the psychiatrist. The final major event of the chapter sparks a memory that haunts Gantos. During rounds with the physician’s assistant, Mr. Bow, they encounter a prisoner in solitary who was assaulted in the rectum with a light bulb, the broken pieces of which remain lodged in his rectum. After this experience, Gantos starts to write feverishly, committing himself fully to the practice of writing down everything he thinks and sees.
Part 3, Chapters 5-6 Analysis
These chapters explore the tail end of Gantos’ time in prison. Gantos reflects on the irony of being surrounded by drugs, as drug use and drug smuggling are what lead to his arrest. Gantos notes how pervasive drug use is and this reflection stands out because Gantos uses the sad, dangerous stories of prisoners’ drug use as cautionary tales. Where once drug culture existed, for Gantos, as a gateway to adventure, he now observes that men use drugs to forget their pain. Gantos, by contrast, now wishes to record everything, unlike many other prisoners, who “wanted drugs to smoke, drugs to snort, drugs to swallow, and drugs to shoot directly into their veins by any means possible. If you took enough you could forget which side of the fence you were on” (164).
Another major shift in the chapter relates to Gantos’ emotional recovery. This begins in earnest when he gets negative reviews from the parole board and the prison psychiatrist. Much of Gantos’ life prior to prison idles because he lacks follow through; when the file and the psychiatrist validate this problem, Gantos finally begins fixing it. Gantos has stated at the start of the memoir he will attempt to find out where he lost his moral footing, and this chapter succeeds in acknowledging a root problem he faces throughout his life—Gantos seeks to escape: into sleazy detective shows, into drug use, into fantasies of becoming a great adventurer, only to find himself ensnared in these daydreams. He admits this problem when he dismisses the idea of running from prison, even after the most violent of images presents itself. Instead of running, as a younger version of himself might, this time he sits down and writes.
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