Roland Flaubert was a gifted teacher who inspired his students. "In poetry is found the true power of the language," he would tell them. "We see this especially in writers like Shakespeare where words are ripped from their moorings and made to soar..." He wanted so much for them to understand that the ideas in Siddhartha, for a different example, were profound and noble. He said, "You could listen to the river, and if you listened with all your heart and soul, you could hear every sound and know the heart of every creature, great and small, and see that they are all the same... "This is an idea of literature and it is an idea of religion. We are all equal in the eyes of God." But perhaps he inspired them too much. Perhaps he was a man careless in his affections. He was a teacher who loved his students; otherwise how could he be a teacher of other people's children? But again, perhaps he loved them too much. People who know me will see elements of memoir in "High School from Hell," and they would be correct since I too was for a time in my life a teacher in the public schools. There are in the novel events that are similar to events that I experienced or observed; and there are people in the novel similar to, or composites of people I have known or heard about. However all the events in the novel are fictions as are all the people. To paraphrase Picasso, fiction is a lie that makes us realize the truth.