The phases of his life show the destruction of hope and innocence and his descent into cynicism, alcoholism and hopelessness. Idealizing romantic love with a beautiful girl in his childhood, he is bitterly disappointed when the real world does not match the idealized images of love in his own imaginings. He then discovers as a teenager his peers consider him an outcast due to his chronic and physically disfiguring cystic acne, which covers his face, chest, shoulders and back in weeping pus-filled sores and repulses all who see him. He turns to alcohol to kill the pain and disappointment, losing all hope of finding true love, only to end up destitute, as an alcoholic in later adulthood. Only through a freak chance encounter late in his life is he transported back to his innocent memories of childhood and the idealized love of a beautiful girl that he craved in his youth. Finally fulfilled, he dies by wading out into the open ocean after finding his only "true" love - a "crazy love". The irony of the "hollowness" of this lost, idealized, love, and the tragic significance Harry places on this single event, sums up his lost life and finally makes him the hero of his own story.