Themes I Fell in Love With Hope Lancali

How Hope and Despair Embrace in I Fell in Love With Hope

The Central Thematic Claim

In I Fell in Love With Hope, hope and despair are not opposites but interdependent forces. The novel argues that hope is not a passive wish for a better outcome—it is an active, often painful choice to embrace life as it is, born from the very depths of despair. The narrator, who is hope itself, and the character Sam represent two sides of this coin: despair that longs for release and hope that persists despite suffering. Through the lens of terminally ill teens, the story shows that despair gives hope its meaning, and hope gives despair a reason to keep breathing.

Tracing the Theme Across the Plot

1. The Bridge of Beginnings and Endings: Despair’s First Embrace

The novel opens with Sam standing on a bridge in the snow, confessing that his body feels stolen. His beloved—the same person who will later be revealed as Hikari in a past life—admits she can no longer pretend to want to live. After a final kiss and a request to be remembered, she walks into the darkness, and Sam collapses, weeping as the stars fall. This scene establishes despair as an inescapable presence. The beloved’s suicide attempt is an act of despair, but Sam’s grief and his inability to follow her signal that despair alone is not the end—it is a catalyst.

Later, in Chapter 31, Sam stands on the same bridge, this time pulling Hikari back from the edge. He pins her down and reminds her that pain ends, that she has survived to love Sony, Coeur, and Neo. The narrator declares, “Hope chased despair down the street that day. It caught her by the waist, and it saved her.” This parallel scene directly contrasts the earlier one: what began as a surrender to despair becomes an active rescue. The bridge itself transforms from a site of loss to a site of intervention, illustrating that hope must physically and emotionally chase despair, not wait for it to fade.

2. The Hospital Rebellion: Despair as the Fuel for Community

In the hospital, Sam, Sony, Coeur, and Neo rebel against their diagnoses by sneaking out to steal cigarettes, beer, and candy. Their ruse—a fabricated story about Coeur needing a walk—is a small act of defiance against the shadow of illness. Sony asks whether people will remember them; Sam replies, “Our endings do not belong to us.” This conversation reveals that the group’s despair (their impending deaths) does not define their lives. Instead, they choose to steal back their endings—to claim agency. The arrival of Hikari, with her yellow-flared eyes, introduces a figure who embodies both despair and hope. She is suicidal yet fiercely alive, teaching the others that “hope isn’t meant to save people”—it is meant to accompany them.

The group’s escape in C’s truck and the tattoo parlor scene in Chapter 17 deepen this theme. Sony gets Neo’s phrase “time will cease, disease will fester, death will die” inked on her sternum, turning a despair-filled diagnosis into a permanent vow. Hikari reveals her self-harm scars and admits she used to pretend to be different people to survive. Sam calls himself her mirror, and they kiss, naming their relationship “the moment despair fell in love with hope.” This is the novel’s explicit declaration: despair and hope are lovers, not enemies.

3. The Narrator’s Origin and the Failure of Passive Hope

Chapter 33 reveals that the narrator is the soul of the hospital—hope itself, born from the dreams of its builders. For centuries, it loved patients and watched them die until it numbed itself. Then it met Sam, an eternal boy, and created a body to be with him. But Sam chose death, leaving hope heartbroken. The narrator confesses, “Hope is not a wish, it is an appreciation, a grateful desire for life as it is.” This redefinition is crucial: passive hope—waiting for a cure or a miracle—fails. The narrator could not save Sam because Sam’s despair was not something hope could erase. Instead, the narrator learns to love again, falling for Resilience (Erik), Kindness (Coley), Passion (Ryu), and finally, itself. The endword connects this to the author’s own life: the boy who died taught her that love and hope must be chosen fiercely, even when grief seems final.

Character and Symbol Connections

Characters

  • Sam (the narrator/hope itself): Represents the active, eternal aspect of hope. He is not human but a soul bound to the hospital, yet he chooses to love and to intervene.
  • Sam (the eternal boy): The human(ish) boy who first loved the narrator. His despair overwhelms him, but his love for hope leaves a legacy.
  • Hikari (despair): A suicidal girl who becomes the object of hope’s love. Her scars and pretend identities show despair’s need for connection. She and Sam (narrator) define their love as “despair in love with hope.”
  • Sony, Neo, Coeur: Represent different responses to illness. Sony steals endings back, Neo writes to defy time, Coeur clings to music and friendship. They show that hope can be communal.
  • Eric: The nurse who lets them rebel. He embodies the kindness that allows hope to flourish.

Symbols

  • The Bridge: A literal and metaphorical threshold between life and death, despair and hope. It appears in both the opening tragedy and the climactic rescue, showing that hope must cross the bridge toward despair.
  • Stars: “The stars are falling” is a refrain for loss and for love. Sam’s stars fall when his beloved leaves; Hikari sees falling stars on the bridge. Stars symbolize the moments of brightness that hope can produce even in darkness.
  • The Hit List: A list of things the group plans to steal or achieve. It represents active hope—the decision to do something rather than wait.
  • The Broken Watch: Hikari’s broken watch, which she throws away in anger, symbolizes the rejection of time’s tyranny. For the narrator, time is both enemy and companion.

Complexity and Contradiction

The novel does not sugarcoat hope. The narrator confesses in Chapter 12, “Never once has hope saved anyone.” Hikari counters, “Hope isn’t meant to save people.” This tension suggests that hope is not a rescue—it is a companion. In Chapter 30, when Sam (the eternal boy) dies on the bridge despite the narrator’s pleas, the narrator realizes that hope is not enough to stop someone from choosing despair. The narrator himself, despite being hope, is terrified of loving because he knows loss is inevitable. Yet the novel’s resolution—the narrator choosing to fall in love again and again—embraces the contradiction: hope is both fragile and perpetual. It can fail in a single moment, but it can also rebirth itself across centuries.

The endword deepens this by grounding the fiction in the author’s real loss. The boy’s death plunged her into cynicism before she relearned empathy. This mirrors the narrator’s journey from numbness to active love. The novel thus acknowledges that despair is not defeated by hope; it is held by hope.

Study Questions and Answers

1. In what ways does the bridge scene in Chapter 31 redefine the hope established in the opening chapters?
The opening bridge scene shows despair as a surrender. In Chapter 31, Sam refuses to let Hikari surrender. He literally pulls her from the path of a car and argues that she has survived to love others. The narrator declares hope as an active, chasing force, not a passive wish. This redefines hope from a feeling to a deliberate action.

2. How does the tattoo scene in Chapter 17 function as a symbol of active hope?
Sony, Neo, and Coeur get permanent tattoos of Neo’s phrase rejecting time and disease. By marking their bodies with defiance, they transform despair (their diagnoses) into a declaration of hope. Hikari and Sam’s kiss immediately after, where they name themselves “despair in love with hope,” cements that hope is chosen in the face of fragility.

3. Why does the narrator claim “hope isn’t meant to save people” in Chapter 12?
Hikari says this to Sam (narrator) when he confesses that hope has never saved anyone. It reflects the novel’s theme that hope does not prevent death—it allows people to live meaningfully until death. The narrator later learns that hope’s purpose is to accompany, not rescue.

4. How does the symbol of the “hit list” contrast with the “broken watch” in expressing hope and despair?
The hit list represents the group’s active rebellion—stealing experiences and memories. The broken watch, which Hikari throws away, symbolizes rejection of time’s control. Together, they show that hope is not about defeating time but about stealing meaningful moments from it, while despair arises when time feels like a thief.

5. What does the narrator’s final promise—“I will fall in love with you every time”—suggest about the nature of hope?
It suggests that hope is an eternal commitment, not a one-time event. Even after Sam’s death, the narrator practices hope by choosing to love again in each new life. This reinforces that hope is an active choice, renewed despite grief, and that love itself is not optional—it is the very fabric of hope.