Acceptance Speech: Jeannette Walls The Glass Castle

William Faulkner’s Acceptance Speech, performed at the Noble Banquet at the City Hall in Stockholm, Sweden, December 10, 1950. “He is immortal, not because he alone… has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul… the writer’s, duty is to write about these things.” In his speech, Faulkner summarizes the duty of a poet, a writer, of man, not just entertain readers, but remind them of the hardships humanity has endured, and display this to a sense of pride, compassion, and glory. Thus brings us to Jeannette Walls’ and Annie Dillard’s novel The Glass Castle & An American Childhood. Both written work describes a childhood full of wax and wane that presents a variety of emotions throughout the reading but one unlike the other are very distinct

She perfectly depicts the struggles, sufferings, and salvation that William Faulkner wanted writers to compel the readers with. Walls quoted Dylan Thomas, "Dark is a way and light is a place, Heaven that never; Nor will be ever is always true." She includes this quote because it represents the nature of her past, present, and future. The past that Walls went through with her dysfunctional family, that was like a gem in a pile of rocks. Although her past might be hard, she struggled and achieved the satisfying victory she accomplished in the present and future. Landing in New York and working hard unlike her mom or dad ever did in their life. The sense of darkness, that was the way for her, to everybody, but light is the place. A place where all your dreams come through and creates the person Walls is

Dillard gives the insight of a girl that is imprisoned by society as a fix composition to serve her life as just one ordinary woman. This also presents the writer's purpose but it in a subtle way. "I have loved, O Lord, the beauty of thy house and the place where dwelleth thy glory." Unlike The Glass Castle, Dillard's sense of struggles was completely different yet reasonable. She protested that even though she is a girl, she can be as magnificent as the other boy were perhaps even better. Yet during that time, society struggled to find that argument. In the quote lies the whole premises of Dillard's memoir. She had loved, not people but the place she grew up, and she loved the place where her glory was