The Glass Castle is a non-fiction novel that follows the life of Jeanette Walls, a girl born into an impoverished family led by her her occasionally drunk father, Rex Walls, and artistic mother, Rosemary, and her three siblings Lori, Brian, and Maureen. As the story progresses throughout her life, Jeannette learns to fend for herself and her family against the hardships of the impoverished world as they travel from place to place all over the United States looking for a place to call home. Though she faces some sad and painful times in her life she also has had a few good times with her dad, when he is not drunk, and her family always hoping to find a place to build The Glass Castle with them. The story The Glass Castle is a good memoir that pays attention to the smallest details and hardships of Jeannette's life while also being a well made structured novel.
As the story progresses through her life, Jeannette uses the element of carpentry to carefully construct the story and make it into a good memoir. William Zinsser writes that any good memoir needs two elements, one of these is carpentry which is, "...a careful act of construction." which allows all the ideas of the memoir to fall into place after careful planning and," a jumble of half-remembered events." The story The Glass Castle clearly has this element do to its interesting back-stories and intense memories as seen on page 66 when Jeannette is being taught to swim and is constantly betrayed by her father when he pushes her into the water whenever she tries to get out,"He did it again and again, until the realization that he was rescuing me only to throw me back into the water took hold, and so, rather than reaching for Dad's hands, I tried to get away from them." Therefore the memoir The Glass Castle acquired the second element that Zinsser wrote about in his article making it a good memoir and novel.
As the story progresses, Jeannette starts to grow older and starts to understand the world and all that happens in it. She starts to write more realistically talking about how hungry they would get and how hard they would have to fight to stay alive showing more and more realism as more of the story progresses. One scene that shows off this realism and hardships they had to face was on page 174 when the family is in Welch and is starving,"My teeth hurt,' Mom said, but she was getting shifty-eyed...'It's my bad gums. I'm working my jaw to increase circulation.'" After a moment Brian takes her blanket off and all the children see a half eaten family-sized chocolate bar which they take and distribute amongst themselves while their mother watches and cries. This scene shows the gritty realism of how their mother was keeping food from them and how they were forced to take for themselves. Clearly, based on this scene you can see how the realism and hardships they faced as kids made this a good memoir.
In conclusion the book The Glass Castle is a good book because it includes Zinsser's second element of a good memoir and shows the hardships and realism that the Walls family faced.
Very good writing. I agree completely. I like how you included how as she got older, she understood the things that happened to her better. I like how despciptive each paragrapph got and how each paragraph wasn't too broad. I also like the theisis and how it was stated in the conclusion as well. I liked how you used evidence to explain each idea you had and used quotes. Overall it was a very good argumentative essay.
ReplyDeleteYou reference some good details from the memoir, and you organize your point about the carpentry of the memoir well; you're clear about that criteria in your thesis and TS. However, it's not entirely clear what other criteria you're using from Zinsser's piece. He doesn't say that a good memoir is all about hardships, so you need to frame that part of your argument more carefully. Also, give more evidence to prove that the memoir is carefully constructed. How is it organized? What overarching theme do the different episodes help to convey?
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