TOW #4 - The Glass Castle

In the memoir, The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, Walls shares her emotional life story to the world. In the section I read in the memoir, Jeannette and her siblings have moved away from their parents to New York City and obtained jobs to become independent and responsible. Due to Walls’s unstable parents, Jeannette, Brian, and Lori Walls maintained financial stability to be able to support their youngest sibling Maureen Walls, without the help of their parents. As Jeannette continues to study at Barnard University, her parents arrive to try to become closer to the rest of the family. After struggling to be accepted in their children’s apartments, they end up living on the streets but after they help Jeannette Walls out with her college tuition, Walls begins to except her parents living situation. Jeannette Walls is a writer for MSNBC and this memoir, The Glass Castle, received the award for the 2005 Elle Readers’ Prize and the 2006 American Library Association Award. Walls’s purpose for writing this memoir was to share her life experiences with her audience and express that even after experiencing a difficult childhood, the person can improve their lifestyle for a better future. Walls’s audience is anyone who overcame a terrible childhood and achieved a better life for themselves. Walls uses imagery and tone to achieve her purpose of writing this memoir.  “Occasionally, on those nights when we were all reading together, a train would thunder by, shaking the house and rattling the windows. The noise was thunderous, but after we’d been there for a while, we didn’t even hear it” (Walls 57). Walls’s use of imagery helps her share her emotion and feelings during her childhood through vivid description like during one of her experiences in a noisy home. In this memoir, Through the use of imagery and clear tone, Walls successfully shares her purpose of writing this memoir to the audience. I believe that Wells effectively shared her purpose because she proves that even with a difficult past, there are many opportunities to overcome the past and achieve a better future.

Walls, Jeannette. The Glass Castle: A Memoir. New York: Scribner, 2005. Print.