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The book is an autobiographical about a young man who is raised in a privileged family, but still faces many challenges in his life. In one of the chapters is titled “Hope and Hopelessness” it deals with hope from new possibilities, and then being letdown after the new possibilities and changes fail or don’t make a difference. The author decides to go to a community college in LA after graduating high school months early and having time to reflect and create hope. He convinced himself that college will be a new beginning and that his life will become better when he enrolls. Unfortunately, college life slowly lets him down and he ends up dropping out at 22. Throughout the book, he goes through cycles of hope and hopelessness. Hope because he decides to try something new or do something, thinking it will make his life better, and hopelessness, because it always fails to do so. His life slowly spirals, despite his efforts to change it. Shortly after he published the book he took his own life and made some other bad choices that hurt the world. I don’t condone what he did, but in a lot of ways I relate to him and have had similar life experiences. I am a little younger than him when he published his autobiography, so I hope I can change my life so it doesn’t go down the same road as his. I still, like him, have experienced many cycles of hope and hopelessness. His book is still very relevant as it was published just shy of only twelve years ago. I think it’s important that we remember his life, not his regrettable death.
