TOW #4 - IRB Analysis

For this marking period I have been reading The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls. This book is a memoir so it is Walls own story told by herself. The story addresses the unusual life she had growing up and how it shaped her into the person she is now. The beginning half of the book revolves around her and her families travels from desert town to desert town never living in one place for very long. She describes the different things she encounters in each place for example all of the bugs, lizards and cats that would come and go from her "home" in Battle Mountain. Also the people she met and what her experiences were like with them. This personal retellings in a way make the story harder to believe. What I mean by this is that some of the situations that Walls has been in, especially in the early sections of the book where she was under the age of 10, are hard for one to wrap their mind around. The backwards way in which her parents raise her and her siblings and the way that they are educated is very against what is accepted in this current day which is why it comes off as a piece of fiction although it is known that it is indeed true. Considering that this story is a retelling of all of the events that happened throughout her life, mostly in terms of her family life, I think that this book was written for herself. I think that after all of the hardships she's faced and the chaotic lifestyle in which she has lived she needed a sense of closure and writing her story for the world to be able to read may have been therapeutic for her. She also may have written it for her siblings and perhaps even her parents. Throughout the story she is very respectful towards her parents although they aren't, the best adult figures in history, so i don't think she wrote the book to shove her anger in their faces but I think she wanted to make them aware of how far she has come and how that is partially from their doings. Another part of this story that makes it almost hard to fathom is the fact of how blunt it is. Walls doesn't try to sugar coat the stories of her encounters. Yes she is very descriptive and really lays out the scene for the reader through her use of imagery, but none of this description is to distract the reader from the truth of her stories. She is very open and upfront about all that happened to her and it makes the reader feel as if they could be there themselves but the emotions that are portrayed make the reader glad that they aren't. The first half of the book really captured me because it started with the retelling of a more recent event in her life. Where she is well off on her own and happens to see her mother going through the trash. Despite everything else that has happened so far in this book that tale sticks with me the most because her mother remains the same but a clear growth on Walls part is evident. This as a starting point is a very strong hook and creates an endpoint for the rest of the book. The reader must first encounter Walls' struggles to understand why she felt the way she did in the beginning of the book and this was a very effective technique.