Hope only lives in the soul if you allow it. The summer before Travis Morrison's senior year of High School, he doesn't need any hope, because he already has everything he needs. When you're the best diver in the state, it's hard not to be cocky and proclaim you have it all. Besides, what could ever go wrong? When one diving stunt sends him to the hospital, Travis loses all the hope he never knew he had. Throughout the novel Breathless, by Lurlene McDaniel, the universal theme of losing hope is threaded between the pages; the theme in Breathless is similar to many other novels like: Virtuosity and The Secret Life Of Bees.
Travis, the main character in this novel, was on cloud nine. He had the girl, the athleticism, and confidence was shown in the way he walked. Diving was his life, he simply couldn't live without it. For, one day his confidence level peaked and had the courage to dive off a towering cliff into a lake. As soon as Travis jumped he heard a snap in his leg and knew that his jump was a careless decision. What he did not know was that from this jump he was going to find bone cancer in his leg. Discovering this was an eye-opener, but he was extremely determined he would beat cancer, and there was no doubt in his mind that he wouldn't dive back into the water again. As he was thinking about his cancer, Travis tells himself, "I'm determined to do it a whole lot quicker." Travis thought he would never give up.
After some time with that determination and hope on board, Travis was informed that his leg needed to be removed in order to clear the cancer from his body. Although he fought the doctors not to do so, he knew that his chances of diving again were one in a million now, even chances of the cancer spreading were quite high at this point. More hope was lost and Travis was now taken away from the one thing that he has only known in his life, diving. "My throat clogs up when I think about not looking down on pool water again with judges and teammates watching." Travis is mournfully convinced that he will never return to his regular life. The pain in his body is not only physical now, it's emotional as well; all the more reason to just give up.
With the power of losing hope overtaking his body already, there was another diagnosis revealed on Travis's case that lead to even deeper misery. Doctors found in his body that the cancer spread to his lungs. In addition to the pain before, it's now agonizing to move a muscle. However, Travis doesn't want to be hooked up to a thousand different machines, he wants to die naturally without a robot force feeding him and breathing for him. Until he had a seizure and was unable to control where he was taken to. Finding himself exactly where he did not want to be, Travis had a stroke from the seizure and can't say a word in his defense. His friend feels frustration while thinking, "He's alive- a machine breathes for him, another monitors his heart; another cleans his kidneys." Practically dead, Travis' friends know what he wants, and so does his sister. When one early morning, before the sun rose, Travis closed his eyes and escaped from his limp body.
While understanding the suffering and lost hope that Travis was dealing with, don't forget the numerous other novels that incorporate the power of losing hope theme as well. Similar to Breathless, the novels Virtuosity by Jessica Martinez, and The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd both had a theme of losing hope throughout the book, though in a more particular perspective. Within the covers of Virtuosity, the main character, Carmen, lives with a strict mother. Over time, Carmen learns to give up hope in pleasing her mother and moves out of the house. Linked to the theme in Breathless, Travis lost hope in his life. Lastly, in the book The Secret Life of Bees, one of the characters, May, gives up hope on looking for the good in the world. She was struggling to survive without her twin sister who was practically her backbone, therefore all hope was lost and she committed suicide to see her twin once again. Even though this isn't the main concern throughout the novel, the author does show the theme of giving up hope in this addition to the story. Mirrored to Travis' life, he simply wanted to reunite with his longing for diving.
Recognizing the similar novels, remember that losing hope is a universal theme that's found in numerous books, like Breathless. Travis displays how effortless it is to surrender to the cancer he has. All he ever had disappeared, and Travis couldn't find the hope to replace the pain. Hope only lives in the soul if you allow it; Travis didn't allow hope, but gave up.
