Jeanette Walls' Memoir "The Glass Castle"

Although Walls published The Glass Castle in 2005, she actually began writing and

entertaining the thought of recording her past twenty years before only to destroy the

drafts immediately afterwards. “I thought about writing it for close to 20 years” (Jeannette

Walls).Walls confessed her indecision and motivation in a interview with Rachel Kramer

Bussel. Walls relates that discovered that she wanted to record her past after spotting her

mother forging through a dumpster on her to party. In the same interview Walls revealed

that her second husband’s call to a her agent in the year 2000 compelled and even pushed

her publish the novel. However, the memoir was not published until 2005 because Walls

remained unsatisfied with work. In the interview Walls states that the original “was too

distanced” and that it lacked emotion. To me the author’s ration for finally writing the

novel means sense. Jeannette’s embarrassment, inter conflicts regarding her past, and her

ambivalent feelings toward her parents may have hit a climax when she witnessed her

mother digging through the dumpster. In addition the increasing guilt of lying to her those

around her in order to maintain her image and the fear of someone discovering her past

most likely created an incredible amount of stress.

Despite efforts to conceal her secret past, it was almost publicly revealed when a

writer from the village Voice informed her that “he had interviewed a homeless man who

claimed to be her father”(Encyclopedia of World Biography). Walls’s revision,

overcoming of her feared debacle, and 2005 publication of her piece plausibly could have

been an action to prevent a scandal. In fact according to the Encyclopedia of World

Biography, Walls disclosed her past to a female colleague, who later wrote a novel

featuring a female protagonist sharing many obvious similarities with Walls. As a result,

The Glass Castle allowed the author portray her secret in a manner that would otherwise

be devastating towards her image. In the novel Jeannette explains her reasons her lying,

deflecting, and avoiding her past. A perspective the that would be unacknowledged or

explored by another writer. Moreover, any other exposure of her past would have been

written with the intention to cause commotion for the sake of creating an interesting,

dramatic article.

Lastly, Jeannette was finally able to muster the courage to write her story because her life