《玻璃城堡》美国文学分析-英文

Using biographical information, determine how Walls is shaping her memoir. Are there things she is leaving out? Is she slanting information in a certain why to achieve a particular effect? Use three or more sources. Attach copies of the sources used.

The Shaping of Walls’ Memoir

1.Introduction

The Glass Castle written by Jeannette Walls is a memoir which recalls the childhood life of Jeannette herself and her siblings. Jeannette uses a unique narrative structure to shape her memoir.Jeannette describes the "woman on the street" as the beginning of the novel, and tells their stories in changeable living places among the "desert", "Welch" and "New York City", thus shows a full picture of the vagabond life of the Walls family. The novel eventually ends in a Thanksgiving Day, which makes the whole story full of sweet atmosphere, letting the readers chew and taste the words repetitively. (Zinesser, 2009)

2. Special narration order

At the beginning, the author describes her mother, who was addicted to painting and writing. Her mother was unable to bear the monotonous life and chose to lead a vagrant life. She was seeking for something around the junk. She saw Jeannette but did not talk to her for the sake of so-called face. Jeannette arranged the structure with a reverse order. (Balzer, 2011) This is such a ridiculous plot that makes readers wonder why could a famous journalist have a beggar mother, and they cannot wait to know the story behind it.The theme of the novel is "the wandering life", so throughout the full text is the memoir of constant stray life. The author narrates that when she was three years old, her family started the vagrant life for some strange reasons. They came to the desert from the bustling city, and left the wilderness to the town... They lived like nomadic people, constantly wandered from one place to another. (Walls, 2009) There were too much uncertainty, mysterious imagination and risk waiting for them. So the readers seem like accompany the author to begin a journey full of

mysteries and adventure. (Conversations with Famous Writers, 2005)

Every part of the memoir are relatively independent and interdependent. (Balzer, 2011) The author uses her father's dream of building a glass castle and constantly looked for gold as a clear glue through the full text, and makes every with legendary life experience in each vagabond place to enrich the context. The author narrated the unique life experience with emotional language, let every story so attractive. (Bryn,2011) For example, the first scene the author recalls is that the three-year-old little girl’s pink skirt caught fire while her mother was keeping painting next door. This scene is so vivid, and it also has both charm of messy and panic. Predictably, although the event of the little girl catching fire is so strange, in this family is very normal. The mobile family is so rich in romantic personality and fantastic dreams, which inevitably have incredible impact on the growth of the children. (Irvin, 2012) The three children had to find food in trash every day, they had no nice clothes and toys, the only gif received was the stars their father pointed to the sky... Every story is so amazing and sad. Readers can find that every "ordinary" story is actually is a kind of adventure. (Walls, 2009)

3.The triple identity of Walls

As the author’s memoir, during the process of narration, the author needs to balance the subjective and objective relationship between her self and the leading character in the book, besides she needs to consider the readability and popularity of the novel. (Balzer, 2011) Under such premises, the memoir undoubtedly shapes the triple identities of the author.(Rogers et al, 2012)

Her first indenty is the author of the objective narration. When Janette tells her own story, she must stand in the author's point of view to think about the structure and content.(Maurin,2011) For example, where and when should the story begin?What about the logical arrangement ? What other experiences should be described? How to express them with language ? As the author’s personal memoir, she must narrate her