What does it mean to “live for the hope of it all”? What is “it all”? What is “living for hope”?
I’m not just being deliberately obtuse. I think “living for the hope of it all” is a genuinely weird turn of phrase, and when something is weird, it merits at least a little bit of thought. Not a lot of thought, tonight, because I don’t have much time. Plus ça change.
First, I think it’s worth at least acknowledging the drama of saying that you’re living for something, replete with implication that you would die if it were not for that thing. The narrator wouldn’t be the first person to be kept alive by hope, of course. People in really dire situations, prisoners of war, &c. might all live for hope alone, relying on their belief that they will somehow escape. The narrator of august is living for a slightly different hope: the hope that her love affair will blossom, rather than shrivelling.
But is that it? It’s not just “the hope that James will fall in love with me”, it’s “the hope of it all”. I think I’m dangerously close to re-treading territory from earlier posts, but it feels like there’s more than just this specific hope. Rather, it seems that there’s a generalised sense of hope stemming from what feels like a budding romance.
I don’t know that I have much more to say than that, at least for now. But I think it’s an interesting line all the same. And I needed to write something, so here it is. Almost halfway through the month now…