Confessions

As we keep reading different memoirs, I start noticing different patterns. The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls is written in an informal register, just as Half a Life and The Burn Journals. Why? I asked myself. Because I answered.

I guess most authors that decide to write a memoir, are writing for confession. To relieve them from whatever pain that this memory causes them, this is the situation in The Glass Castle as well that in Half a Life. When confessing the author does it for him/herself, so why would he/she do such in formal or ceremonial.

I guess I have this picture in my head that formal register applies to things as schools essays, research paper, or even an analytic film essay. However, with informal register I think more of novels, and now of memoirs. "Dad was a dramatic story teller. He always started out slow, with lots of pauses" (24). This can be one of the many examples to share why I believe it is in informal register. If you just read the quote above and think this book is in ceremonial register, well then we have a serious problem.

Ok, enough talking about the register and lets go down to business. As the book keeps unraveling, the more I understand why Jeanette, the main character, is embarrassed of her family as she grows up. Since my first blog I have red about 20-25 pages more, and if you read my previous blog you know how crazy her family can be, and if you did did read it and thought they were crazy, well then now you are in for a crazy drive.

“All this running around and moving was temporary, Dad explained. He had a plan. He was going to found gold” (22). Lets start by why would you go find gold. We are not in Pirates of the Caribbean and you are not Johnny Deep. Since Jeanette’s accident, her family gets what I think are crazy ideas. To start with, they are constantly moving, they are what one can call nomads. “Dad was always inventing things…one…was a complicated contraption he called The Prospector” (23). According to her dad, this was going to help them find gold. Not to get all judge in the old man, but he is not Bob the Builder either. I believe all these crazy thoughts are probably due to his “drinking situation” (23).