Hole In My Life  

Jack Gantos began to develop the thematic topics of Reflection 

and choices over the first two chapters of Hole In My Life. He 
wrote, “I always became blind drunk and ferociously ill,spending 
almost every night loudly heaving my guts out in the toilet while 
begging god mercy. I was a mess”(Gantos 13). The specific word 
choice of ¨blind drunk¨ makes the point that he was really 
drunk and shows that he had a bad reflection of himself. This 
begins to develop the thematic topic of reflection by showing 
how drunk he was and reflecting to himself he made a bad 
decision. 
 
Gantos began to develop a second thematic topic of choices 
when he wrote, “being locked up in prison is where I fully 
realized to change for the better”(Gantos 13).The specific word 
choice is when he said “prison is where I fully realized to change 
for the better“ which means he made a choice to change for the 
better. And it shows that he made a better decision to change 
for the better. This begins to develop this second thematic topic 
of choices by showing that he is making a better choice to 
change for the better because he doesn't want to go back to his 
past and repeat the same thing.