Hope, Despair, and Addiction Theme Analysis

Over the course of the novel, Theo’s trajectory is defined by swings between extremes of hope and despair. While everything that happens to Theo might seem remarkably dramatic, the novel emphasizes that the oscillation between hope and despair fundamentally defines the human condition. Theo’s story indicates that hope and despair feed off each other, with each one making the other inevitable. Furthermore, Theo—like many other characters in the novel—experiences addiction, and this escalates the existing back-and-forth between hope and despair that defines his life. The novel suggests that addiction creates an oscillation between hope and despair that is connected to the everyday experience of these emotions, yet becomes so dramatic and extreme that it stops a person from being able to process everyday life in a healthy, normal way. While swinging between hope and despair is an inevitable part of human existence, making these emotions even more extreme through substance use, gambling, or other addictive behaviors can destroy a person’s life.

The novel opens with two separate moments of despair separated by a moment of hope in the middle, thereby establishing the rhythm that will dominate the rest of the narrative. At the very beginning of the book, Theo is an adult in Amsterdam—drunk, high, paranoid, suicidal, and unable to leave his hotel room. At this point, the reader does not know the circumstances leading up to this state; the only thing that is clear is that Theo is in a state of utter despair. When the narrative jumps back to Theo’s life as a 13-year-old going to the Met with Audrey, it comes as a relief; yet the reader is also inescapably aware of the horror that lies in Theo’s future, making this moment of hope tainted by unease. Even in this opening contrast, the novel suggests that hope and despair are essentially inseparable.

The linked nature of these two opposite emotions sets in further after the terrorist attack at the Met and Theo’s realization that Audrey has been killed. Theo’s reaction to Audrey’s death sets the tone for how he will experience despair over the rest of the novel. Feeling numb and isolated from the world, he keeps secrets and has difficulty expressing his feelings, which of course only further cuts him off from others. When his circumstances seem to be improving (for example, at the prospect that the Barbours will “keep” him), he is hesitant about feeling too hopeful, and yet he can’t help but let himself believe that his life might actually get better. Of course, this results in feelings of regret, guilt, and shame when another disaster happens (such as when Larry shows up, taking him away from the Barbours’) and Theo lapses back into despair.

As the above examples show, even before Theo starts drinking and using drugs, he experiences extremes of hope and despair that, as the book will come to illustrate, are hallmarks of addiction. As is the case with Theo, addictions often begin in response to despair, and drinking, drug use, and gambling can be ways of dealing with despair—whether destroying it with (false) feelings of hope and elation, or numbing the feeling altogether. When Theo first starts drinking excessively and using drugs, he experiences a kind of wild, hysterical hope and joy. He describes these as “Wild nights with Boris, an edge of giddiness and hysteria that I associated (in myself, anyway) with having narrowly missed death.” Yet as this sentence shows, this “giddiness and hysteria” come into relief against the death, horror, and despair that Theo has experienced.

Furthermore, Theo’s teenage years in Las Vegas show how hope and despair, while opposites, can come to resemble one another—particularly when they are muddied by the experience of substance abuse and addiction. During the period of the novel set in Vegas, Theo describes his experimentation with drinking and drugs as fun and exciting (if a little scary). Yet years after the fact, once they are adults, Boris tells Theo that when Theo was drinking to the point of losing his memory, he would often confess that he was suicidal—and even try to act on these suicidal feelings. What Theo describes at the time as exciting (and thus in a sense hopeful) actually involved him sinking into the depths of despair.

The blurred line between hope and despair works in the other direction, too. In his many states of despair, Theo experiences a lot of numbness throughout the novel (both drug-induced and otherwise) and paradoxically, this numbness sometimes takes the form of hope. Part of being numb, after all, is disconnecting from the (painful) reality in which you find yourself living. One demonstration of how numbness can be paradoxically hopeful comes when Theo learns that Larry has died. He reflects, “I didn’t cry. Though cold waves of disbelief and panic kept hitting me, it all seemed highly unreal and I kept glancing around for him, struck again and again by the absence of his voice among the others.” Here, Theo explicitly links his inability to cry (numbed emotion) with his “disbelief” and false hope that Larry is somehow still there. This detachment and delusion is exactly the kind of experience that Theo will later seek through numbing himself with opioids.

While Theo and many of the other characters in the novel experience literal addiction, the novel suggests that in in a way, addiction simply amplifies the existing pattern of hope and despair experienced by everyone. This is encapsulated when Theo quotes “another paradoxical gem of my dad’s: sometimes you have to lose to win.” Of course, this “wisdom” is something that Larry has gained from his experience as a professional gambler. The fact that it can be abstracted as a general statement again emphasizes the proximity between the patterns of experience produced by addiction and the hope and despair that characterizes life itself.