Glass Castle Tone Analysis

Glass Castle Tone Analysis

In The Glass Castle Jeannette's tone has a lot of highs and lows. It goes from optimistic then, almost suddenly, changes and becomes withdrawn, then she come back when she describes her life in New York; where she was able to free herself from her parent's neglect. In the beginning of The Glass Castle Jeanette's tone is optimistic Midway through the memoir in the chapter "Welch" her tone changes and becomes cynical and critical remembering the way her parents constantly let her down.

Jeannettes tone in the beginning of The Glass Castle starts out positive. Jeannette's first memory is when she gets severely burned cooking hot dogs and taken to the hospital. Jeanette tells us that a nurse asked her if she was ok and she tells her "of course" and that she didn't care if I had some silly old scar (Walls 14). A few days later Rex comes in and checks her out "Rex Walls-style" (Walls 14). The way Jeannette tells us the story how he raced her down the hall in his arms and hops into the blue goose and drives off makes this part of her life seem fun and exciting; she also describes it to us in great detail. Jeannette Keeps a positive tone in her writing for the entire beginning of the book, when the family was living in Battle Mountain she tells us "Still, things did improve. Even though Dad had been fired from the barite mine, we were able to continue living in the depot by paying rent to the mining company..." (Walls 76). In this quote Jeanette defends Rex by finding the good in the situation. They were still able to continue living in the depot and things were improving. Although Jeannette starts to change as a character and writer when the family moves to Welch she still defends Rex throughout the story, they share a special connection that she shares with no one else in the story. At one point Jeannette becomes enraged at a boy who makes a joke about his father because the loyalty she has to Rex. Jeannette doesn't have such a strong connection with her mother; Jeannette grows to resent her when they move to Welch.

Jeannette's tone begins to change when the family moves from Phoenix in there piggy bank special Oldsmobile. Jeannette's description of the car isn't like any of her pervious writing in The Glass Castle; she says "it was a clunker from the moment we bought it" (Walls 129). Tone changes; she doesn't find any good in the old car. The first change I saw in her as a character was when she hides under a blanket in the car because she was so embarrassed. I think that was the turning point for Jeannette because she never runs from her fears she takes them head on, but now she is hiding from them. When Jeanette describes the meting she had with her old principle her tone was sarcastic and cold, she doesn't find any good in him like she usually does with bad situations instead she say he just stares at her 'blankly'. The word 'Blankly' shows that Jeannette basically thought of the man as a joke, she didn't have any