“You can’t. It’s one or the other. Nobody ever gets both,” (Gaiman 88). Anaesthesia, a rat-speaker from Neil Gaiman’s novel Neverwhere may have been talking about London above and London Below but this also goes with hope and despair. Everyone has hope in some sense however almost everyone knows what despair is. Hope and despair play a major role in T.C. Boyle’s novel The Tortilla Curtain, especially the ending of the novel. The way hope and despair go hand in hand in novels always leaves the readers with interesting imagery and feelings. Oddly enough even after despair and disaster happens, some novels leave you with a sense of hope. Going back to Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere, hope is the last thing you would expect Anaesthesia would leave upworlder