pg. 1- 51 Summary
The story starts out of Jack talking about a picture on the first page of when he first got into jail and he describes himself and his appearance. On the next page, the setting is changed to him moving to Puerto Rico with his parents because they were going to start a company there. He starts to live in a hotel and goes out and drinks a lot of Alcohol, he takes advantage that hes not exactly living with his parents. Then his parents decide to move to the Virgin Islands, but Jack decides he doesn't want to live there and rents a room in a families house called the Bacon's. He starts to get home late and misbehave, and comes home drunk. Jack then gets kicked out of that house for throwing up on there living room carpet. Jack then moves to a motel were he spends his whole year, he introduces the reader to his love for writing and books. Jack Starts to smoke Marijuana and decides that he does not want to go to college because he doesn't have enough money so decides to move back with his parents to work for a while. But before that, a friend named Tim, Tim stayed over his house for some days then tricked him into going to Tallahassee to get Medical Marijuana to sell, Tim took Jacks money and ran off with it.
" My school had been a former prison...at the end of each day wold announce on the intercom that we were "free to go." And we fled. The school cleared out in minutes just as any prison would have if the warden opened the gate" (Gantos 23)
The author is very down to earth and has the ability to describe characters personalities very well and portray his own internal conflicts. He does this by speaking of his dreams and his loves for books but speaks of his temptations of doing drugs and drinking. This is a important a important quote because it portrays the type of environment that Jack lives in, he lives in a small room like a Jail, with walls built everywhere, its hard to escape from. He uses a lot of symbolism with everything he does and his experiences but definitely demonstrates that is a person that does not fallow the Bandwagon.
