Chaotic Childhood

Someone for the looks had a somewhat chaotic childhood. This week we went to the library to pick out memoirs, I chose The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls. The truth is, I had no idea of what this book was about until I got home and started reading it. My sincere opinion: I like it. In the first eighteen pages, the author was able to grab my attention.

                      

The book started with transition of times. One minute Walls is narrating her adulthood separated from her family and the next she is telling us her childhood. One thing I can say for sure, her life changed through the years. As a little girl she lived in different and worst conditions, "we were living in a trailer park in a southern Arizona town whose name I never knew"(9). Not to judge, but once someone says she lived in a trailer you can imply that the person lived under bad circumstances. But when talking about adulthood her lifestyle changed, not that she ever talked about her economic conditions but she did tell a taxi driver, "take me home to Park Avenue"(3). In my personal perspective Park is a total upgrade from a trailer park in Arizona. The way the writer transitions from this to eras of her life got me intrigued into keep on reading.

Main event in her childhood (for now) = Chaotic

Fire accident.

Yes, it happend. Once again a character in my book was in an accident involving fire, at least this time there was not as much time spent in the hospital just "about six weeks"(14). The accident was extremely tragic lol jk she was just cooking a hot dog. If only I consider it odd, because well she was three years old and cooking. The burn was extremely serious, she had skin grafts, just like Brent Runyon in The Burn Journals. In her stay in the hospital she and Brent went through similar procedures. One could consider this two accident extremely similar, and here are some reasons why: burned at home, NOT a natural disaster, and both were burnt at relatively young age. But wait there is one difference. Brent's accident was a suicidal attempt, nevertheless they are very similar.

For some reason she enjoyed the stay at the hospital, she even found the food they offered her there "delicious," which in my opinion means she probably didn't exactly eat gourmet back in her trailer park. Makes me believe that Walls had a rough childhood. She obviously lived in bad conditions if, "smell of Vitalis, whiskey, and cigarette smoke" reminds her of home (14). Other factors the makes me believe this, is how all her family was prone to accidents or at least her siblings. I have read a small amount of the book and there has already been three accidents mentioned counting her burn. While she was in the hospital her brother Brian falled of the couch and cracked his head but according to her dad "one kid in the hospital...is enough"(13). Her dad also seemed to have a strong point of view. When telling the anecdote of how her sister was stung by a poisonous scorpion. Her dad recalls how she was cured by a brown paste a Navajo gave her. He blames his wife and says that instead of taking Jeanette to the doctors but in his words, "heads-up-their-asses-med-school-quacks" she should have taken her to a Navajo doctor to cure her.

Her family = unstable

Her childhood = chaotic
First impressions of the book = great

Citatio

Ok. I will start by letting all my readers know (AKA: none) that I do not feel like writing this blog. Why? one may ask. Well here is why. I wrote the whole blog entry and it did not safe. Nevertheless I will write it again.

Lets start with Nicholson Baker's essay Survival of the Fittest. That tittle sounds extremely familiar, give me a moment to locate it. Oh yes The Selfish Gene, and Charles Darwin. Takes me back to all those hours reading an extremely... scientific book. Now it all makes sense, I get why Barker said the following in his essay, "... commas have been around for at least as long as electrons." That comparison finally makes sense. So moving on into every students nightmare, the nine basic marks of punctuations: comma, dash, hyphen, period, parenthesis, semi - colon, colon, space, and capital letter. The funny thing about these is the fact that while some of us are killing ourselves trying to write a 10,000 word essay (using these marks correctly), others are doing "vaguely irritating attempts to supply a sideways facil expression." Translating what you are writing into a familiar register. Punctuations can also completely change the meaning of a sentence. This shows how powerful they are. I believe that a writer   that can control these nine punctuation marks I mention, has the power over the reader and his understanding of the text. In the picture below shows how much a a colon a comma can affect the significance of a sentence.

I never thought one could write as much of quotations until I read Q as in Quotation by Durs Grubein. Now that is what I call, bizarre. They treat the "" as if it where an art, and one might even consider it so. The writer starts this essay as if using such one must not name (quotations) was leap of faith, the reader might even get the feeling as if you were reading a novel, a dramatic one. I'm not going to deny it this essay does make you understand "Why?" Why quotate is a question answered, and I do agree with the author. When quoting it enriches the writers point of view, and it does give the reader the sense that what they are reading is legitimate. But I have to admit that I found 9gag expressions much more exciting for learning. ;)

Familiar or Informal?

Diction: style of speaking or writing as dependent upon choice of words.

This is the definition of diction in which I am going to focus on. Not to be mean I am going to include its other definition, which is: the accent, inflection, intonation, and speech-sound quality manifested by an individual speaker ; enunciation.

I would say that when talking about this, it will go back to register. When reading The Burn Journals by Brent Runyon, I wasn't sure if I thought of his choice of words as familiar or informal. But as I came down to the conclusion it is informal. It might vary, and in some parts of the book it might be familiar, but overall informal. 

"Fuck it , it's fucking useless." (114)

What is quoted above one might think is familiar, and in my opinion it is. This types of thing that appear in the book make me doubt my analysis into. The author of this book, wrote it with such words and sayings that make it more relatable. When I read Jae's blog entry, it got even more confused, and did make me ask myself: If it was meant to be a "journal"why would it be informal, and not just familiar? Well because it is not a journal or a diary, but a book published and sold in bookstores (by this I do not mean the place were I buy the most delicious cookies ever) that everyone has access to. 

If it were to be more familiar, in my opinion it could be a little bit less relatable. Why? 

Well that's a good question, and here I have a good answer. If it was familiar, it would have a lot of slang and other types of words or saying that not all people can understand. That did not make sense, let me rephrase it. It might be relatable, but for the small amount of people that would be able to understand it, if it is informal it is still relatable and appeals to all the people.

The Burn Journals  by Brent Runyon is written in informal register.

Family Flashback

"It shocked me and burned up my whole arm and that's why they had to amputate it" (88).

"She says they'll cut the skin off my scalp in a big rectangular chunk, about as big as an envelope, and put it on a meshing machine" (70).

"They are going to put the special skin on me, the skin that they took off me a couple of weeks ago... now there are fifty postage-stamp-size pieces of skin and they're going to spread them on my right leg and my right should and anywhere else that needs it" (76).

All these things Brent mentions in his memoir, makes you realize all the pain that his actions brought. Not only pain, because he doesn't really sound as he was suffering, he just seems as he was mentioning it. In this type of situations I don't know why I feel as is the family was suffering much more. Just the fact of knowing that your kind tried to committee suicide most be horrible. All of the things one might think: Was it because of something that I did? Is he being bullied at school? Well that's about as much questions I was able to come up with, but it really must be horrible. 

"Why the title?" You might ask yourself well I'm going to tell you why, but here is a little summary: http://www.noticias24.com/actualidad/noticia/19686/un-venezolano-gravemente-herido-en-el-accidente-aereo-del-martes-en-mexico/

If you read the link I posted above you will understand. That is my cousin. That tragic accident burned 70% of his body. I know he suffered, and I know he still is suffering. But I also know how much suffering comes to the family. My aunt was a wreck, and that I can say for sure. Why wouldn't she be? A plane falled on her son, and more than a fifty percent of his body is burned. I know it is a totally different kind of accident, but it ends up in the same thing. A boy (actually a grown up) and his family in a hospital room. My cousin's accident was much worse, but at the end of the day it was not how much he got burned, but the fact that he did and so did Brent. All those procedures he is telling us he went through, just sound familiar. I wasn't in the hospital with my cousin, and we are not that close either, but I do know it affected my family, and it sure did affect Brent's.

Spending Time in the Hospital

One of the things they wanted us to focus our blogs on was vocabulary words. I do not find that as easy in this book. Why? This book is really written with words neither confusing or peculiar, well after all when all these happen he was a middle-schooler not an A level writer. All though he was a middle-schooler, he still used some words I did not understand. Most of the ones I had trouble with, were the ones involving medicine. After all he was spending a lot of time in the hospital, so here are some medical terms:

1. Graft: To transplant or implant (living tissue, for example) surgically into a bodily part to replace a damaged part or compensate for a defect. 

*These medical procedure was used in the book, when Brent was having surgery in his hands. They took skin from his stomach to transplant it to his hands.

2. Hypertrophy: A nontumorous enlargement of an organ or a tissue as a result of an increase in the size rather than the number of constituent cells.

*Hypertrophy is a noun, but in the book it is used a Hypertrophic as an adjective.

3. Blanch: (of a person) grow pale from shock, fear, or a similar emotion.

*In the book it is used as blanched (adj.)

4. Code Blue: is generally used to indicate a patient requiring resucitation or otherwise in need of immediate medical attention.

Really this is about it, I guess for some reason I thought I had a bunch of words to use in this entry. Maybe I did not use enough post-its while reading. Woopsie.

"I hurt. I need something"

Aw.. Reading this book takes me back to those nine months of Pre-AP English. We have rhetoric all over this book, especially pathos. In the book The Burn Journals, the author is mostly trying to appeal to audiences by showing how tragic his accident was. "I hurt. I need something." page 32. This is an example of how Brent Runyon is using pathos, most people when reading this would go like "Aww, poor guy" and I don't know why that's not the way I react towards it. Most people would say I don't have a heart I think I just don't take pity for self-injuries. With the book Half a Life I did feel sorry for Darin Strauss, as well as in Maus I, I did feel sorry for his family that survived through Holocaust. But I guess my heart doesn't feel sorry for Brent.

The way Brent narrates the accident makes it seem painful, but it really does not have a lot of detail. I think this is one of the things that differ him from when Darin Strauss was writing his memoir. He was writing it to find closure and for this guy I feel as if he was just writing for the fun of it. He doesn't make you feel as if you were part of the accident, almost feeling it. "More tearing." This is almost as descriptive as he gets. But I do think as the book goes on he is going to change the way he is writing and expressing himself. 

As the book goes I think his memoir's tone is going to be changing and be more like Alice Walker's memoir. At the beginning of a tragedy I guess everyone has problems facing it, and can always consider it a bad thing. In Walker's short memoir the tone in which she writes it starts from being positive into negative. Obviously the moment you burn you burn yourself, you won't be all happy and  like YOLO (You Only Live Once), but as time passes by I guess you realize such accidents are what shaped you as the person you are. Not only with Walker's memoir, but I know mine ends up doing the same thing.

Contradicting..

As much as I can criticize this guys actions, I can't deny that Brent Runyon does great writing. Even if he is not a descriptive, we can realize what is in his mind and what he is going through.

Someone has clearly not change after all he's been through. "I'll be handsome. And when I get better and I can walk again, we'll go out on the town together and get some ice cream..." page 13. Someone has not change I say again. This chain of self-love keeps going through the book, and I'm starting to like it. I am contradicting myself because I use to think it might be a bad thing that he hadn't change, but now I think the opposite. If I'd ever do something like that (not a chance) and was burned all over I would want to think as good of myself as I can, of how beautiful I am. This happens a lot through the book another example: "Barbara the nurse who calls me Gorgeous is here." page 38. I love it I don't know why. But it is still confusing.

Once again I contradict myself with what I said in my previous blog regarding Maggie. He use to say he was "winning" because he could get surgery and she couldn't. But when she was in trouble (code blue) he got all scared, he even said "I've got to close my eyes for a little while." page 36. I said he was selfish but I am not sure anymore. I might have misinterpreted, but it wasn't only my fault, Brent's writing is extremely contradicting as well.

PS: Sorry for such a peculiar blog entry.

Slefishness

I am extremely confused as each day this book keeps unraveling its plot. I have not yet decided if I'm liking the book or not, but I do know one thing Brent is a d%$#&* b!#. This might sound extremely cliche or whatever but it was so selfish from his part doing that. He did not have a good reason to do what he did.

When they were able to have hand surgery, he said something extremely selfish. He has a "friend" called Maggie, she was hurt on the same day and is not able to have any type of surgery "That's good. I'm winning" was what he said. First of all in what world is that winning. Commiting suicide, almost dying and having to reconstruct your hands? Now that's selfish thinking of someone defficiency to have surgery as an upside for yourself. This acts makes us see that even after the "accident" he is still the same old person, with the same old personality. He still looks out only for himself, I guess he thinks that this girl Maggie isn't a really big deal, why would he care about if she gets surgery or not.