The Glass Castle: Rhetorical Strategies

Blog #1: Rhetorical Strategies
• Volta (5-9)
• Terse Statement (9)
• Simile: (19) “We moved around like nomads.”
• Metaphor: (38) “’It’s the Joshua tree’s struggle that gives it its beauty.’”
• Repetition: “Mountain Goat”
The Glass Castle is not filled with rhetorical strategies as many other books are, mostly because similes, metaphors and repetition are rhetorical devices used to emphasize a certain hardship or intensity of an action or occurrence. The Glass Castle does not need any extra details to emphasize the hardship and intensity of the story. In order to create life in a story, the author must connect an event with something the readers can relate to; Jeannette Walls, however, uses simple language to describe the events in her life that have been unknown to exist in some of the lives of the readers. Walls does not need to add rhetorical devices to her piece because, more often than not, in order to describe pain and disgust in another piece a connection is drawn to something that has occurred in her life. Therefore even without the attempt to make a connection to pain and suffering, it is done within the true story itself.
However, there are a few subtle, rhetorical devices that contribute to her memoir. The simile made relating the Walls family to nomads describes the uncertainty of when or where to their next move would be. The repetition of the nickname “mountain goat” reiterates the love and respect that Jeannette’s father, Rex, has for his daughter. And Jeannette’s mother, Rose Mary, makes a comment about the beauty of the struggle of a certain Joshua tree; this is a metaphor to their family’s view on life: it is the successful completion of a struggle that defines you.