"Despair was the enemy."

White Oleander by Janet Fitch just keeps getting more and more tense. While reading, I saw this one quote.

"Despair was the enemy." 

I kind of thought what this could mean. First, I started off by looking up what the exact definition of "despair" is. What I got was: to lose, give up, or be without hope. Now, if you plug in the exact definition into the quote, you'd get, "Losing, giving up, and being without hope was the enemy." So, not losing, giving up, and having hope was clearly the right thing. What Astrid was referring to in this quote was how Claire was feeling at the moment. Claire felt as if despair was a guest. She felt as if you could just find despair as a comfortable chair.

SPOILER ALERT. I think that Claire shouldn't have listened to Astrid's mother while they were at the meeting. All Ingrid (Astrid's mother) did was make Claire too worried about her life. Ingrid told Claire that her husband, Ron, was having an affair. Claire went off thinking that it was true, and she kept thinking that whenever Ron was on a trip for his job, he'd be with another woman. The sad thing is that Claire never got to find out if it was true or not. So Ron just decided to leave her. When Ron left her, she basically went into shock and went suicidal.

One day, Claire was reading letters that Ingrid was writing to Astrid. Of course, these letters meant a lot to Astrid and they were very personal, too. Astrid walked into Claire's room and found her reading the letters. Automatically, Astrid lost her respect and trust for Claire. Claire started to cry, and locked herself in her room by herself. Astrid kept hearing Claire calling her name, but she just wouldn't go to her. Astrid was furious. A while passed, and Astrid walked into Claire's room. She found Claire on her bed, not moving, not snoring, and not breathing. She looked next to the bed on her side, and found pills. For Insomnia. They said to not take them with alcohol. Next to the pills was an empty bottle of Sherry Liquor. Claire had killed herself.

I think Astrid just keeps getting more and more stressed out over the fact that she is in a new foster home practically all the time. She's been with Claire and Ron the longest. Now it would all change. Forever. The one woman that actually loved Astrid for who she truly is was gone. Now she'd have to go through this whole process again.