After hearing my sister rave about the memoir The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, I was ecstatic to hear it was on the reading list. I was not disappointed, for not only was it a good book, it was surprising, touching, and enlightening. Walls sincerity through her writing made you feel as if you too were a member of the Walls family, making you laugh and suffer with them at every story. I loved her way of being able to express what she thought at the time of whatever story she was telling, rather than giving a later biased point of view. She went as far as to use language and write with the level of understanding she would have had at the different times of her life, making the realization of her father’s drinking problems and cruelty all the more real to the reader, making them experience close to the same feelings she had. Her telling of her experience sent out the message that no matter what your situation may be, with hard work, you really can get anywhere. Students today will frequently worry when their GPA drops or when paying for college becomes a larger obstacle. By reading her story however, it made me realize that you do not need a 4.0 GPA or a high number of extra- curriculars to reach your dreams. Jeannette Walls was able to do through her high level of determination and strength, and I feel like her story will help inspire many to push harder for what they want and that nothing is impossible.
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
BLOG #4: Symbolism
Although a memoir of an erratic, unplanned life, Jeannette Walls weaves fire as a main symbol throughout her story. From the first sentence of her book, Walls states, “I was on fire,” (page 9). This might seem meaningless to the reader, but by keeping this entire statement in capital lettering and slowly unraveling many other events that were centered around flames, Walls clues the reader in on her clever writing abilities. Another story from her years as a small child was when a hotel she and her family were staying caught fire, due to her obsession with the dangerous element. While considering what she did, Walls eloquently describes her life as, “a world that at any moment could erupt into fire,” (pg 34). This is one of the most palpable examples of fire as a symbol because it relates her entire life to flame in one statement. The fire itself represents the lives of everyone in the story, able to be controlled if tended to frequently, but can easily get out of hand. The Walls family frequently has this problem of maintaining a steady way of life due to the parents’ irresponsible natures, even though the children try to take the responsibilities of finding, food, money, and shelter. Through to the very last statement, “the candle flames suddenly shifted, dancing along the border between turbulence and order,” (pg 288), Walls refers to life with her family and life as a whole as a flame, reflecting on how life is not always steady and easy, but does not have to descend to chaos otherwise. Flame as her main symbol aids in developing Walls inspirational story into a lesson valuable to all who read it.
BLOG #3: Themes
Loyalty plays a large role as a theme in The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, but not in the familiar way a reader would suspect. In the memoir, the Walls children constantly struggle between loyalty to their parents and the need of better lives. Although the other siblings waver once they enter their teenage years, Jeannette stays loyal to her father the longest. During their younger years, Jeannette and her siblings are always told that their father’s unnecessary, outlandish, and usually illegal actions are “adventures”. At one particular point, the Walls children are told that since there would be no room for them in the front of a U-Haul rented to move and since it would be too expensive to get a larger one, they would have to ride in the back with the furniture. Jeannette exclaims, “’Here goes the adventure!” at the beginning of the trip, however this dangerous ride takes a turn for the worse when the latch in the back opens and the kids almost fall from the truck. Jeannette and her sibling first unwavering loyalty to their father and the belief that he would never do anything to harm them turns for the worse throughout the years, and evaporates quickly when Rex Walls makes it obvious he would not always choose what was in their best interests. After telling off her mother when she refuses to go to work to earn the main income for the family, Jeannette assumes her father would be on her side after maintaining her loyalty to him. He turns on her, however, and brutally whips her. Jeannette’s perspective of her father finally establishes itself as untrustworthy when she states, “I had been counting on Mom and Dad to get us out, but I now knew I had to do it on my own,” (pg 221). It is the lack of her siblings’ loyalty and her own to her father that allows the children to be free of their dire situation and let them become their own people in the world.
BLOG #2: Character
Throughout Jeannette Walls’ inspiration memoir of her own hectic life growing up with her family, her own character developed and changed in every aspect from how she viewed her life to her mere tone and language as she wrote. Jeannette, like other children when they are young, looked up to her father as a perfect male figure. She remained one of the only members of the family who believed he could find a home, feed the family, or even build them a glass castle. At one point, she mentions how people always stared at her father, but rather than seeing it because he was drunk, she assumed it was, “because he was so handsome or because he called people ‘pardner’ and ‘goomba’ and threw back his head when he laughed,” (pg 12). As time wears on, however, Jeannette realizes she must become the responsible one in the family, whether it was watching over her siblings, or finding earning money to help send herself and her older sister out into the world. As her dad lay dying in the end, he asked her his familiar question if he had ever let her down before and, “he started chuckling because he knew there was only one way [she] could ever answer that question. [She] just smiled,” because she could not offer the answer he wanted (pg 279). Her lack of response gave away to the reader that she had lost faith in her dad and knew he could never be the kind of supportive father she and her siblings needed all along. Her point of view is depicted through her tone throughout the memoir, therefore creating a sensitive story that can be seen through Jeannette’s eyes.
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
Blog #1: Rhetorical Strategies
· Metonymy- “We were always doing the skedaddle…” (pg 19)
· Diction depending on age at time of the story being told (shorter and simpler)
· Syntax depending on age at time of the story being told (more eloquent; compound and complex sentences)
· Didactic- “’It was like that time I threw you into the sulfur spring to teach you to swim,’ he said. ’You might have been convinced you were going to drown, but I knew you’d do just fine,’” (pg 213).
· Hyperbole- “’This family is falling apart,’”
· Fire- an allegory for life
· Allusion- Lord of the Rings
· Anecdote- The Glass Castle is created off of anecdotes of different memories in her life
· Euphemism- “the skedaddle”- In reality, it is the Dad’s innocent- sounding way of running from bankruptcy and problems.
As always, rhetorical strategies play a large role for a writer when developing a story. The Glass Castle is no exception. Jeannette Walls, although writing about her own life, finds ways to cleverly color her life through the uses of metonymies, hyperboles, and many others to brighten her writing. Walls specifically uses her diction and syntax in order to portray her story as how it was for her as a child. In the beginning of her story, she uses shorter syntax and childish words that help to guide the reader through her life’s timeline. When a child, her short sentences will consist of few words such as, “I screamed,” “Juju was barking,” and, “mom ran into the room,” (pg 9). These portray her simple thinking as a child while using words and descriptions such as, “gibberish,” “flaming ice-cream cake,” and, “gloves that came up past her elbows,” help to tell the story in how she saw it at the time (pgs 27 and 32). As Walls gets older, her language becomes more evolved as her understanding of the real world increases, and her sentences become longer and more complex, portraying her deeper understanding that her life is not as simple and perfect as a glass castle like her father tries to convince the family of.
