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Glass Castle By Jeanette Walls Sparknotes

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Memoirs and Childhood Amnesia In Jeanette Walls memoir Glass Castle about her childhood experiences, along with any other memoir is based almost entirely off of one persons memory, and as we learn more about human memory, particularly childhood memory, the question we have to ask ourselves is how accurate are the memoirs. A large portion of Jeannette’s memoir takes place during her childhood, which is a difficult area for memory recollection. This is due to childhood amnesia, influence of parents, and false memories. The earliest memory in the book takes places when Jeannette was three (Walls 9), which is a time period most people strain to remember in their life. To illustrate this point Waldfogel a renowned psychologist (1948) asked people …show more content…

I smelled the burning and heard a horrible crackling as the fire singed my hair and eyelashes. Juju was barking. I screamed again” (Walls 9). One can see how this is far different than what an adult would have recorded, particularly what they would have been thinking while the event was happening, that is something that would be difficult or maybe even impossible for Jeannette to recall as an adult. Notice in her account never once did she say “I thought, man this pain is terrible”, or “where is my mom?”. I can relate to this as when I was 4 I busted my head open on an exercise machine while I was playing with my cousin. I remember the events that happened after the event but I remember almost none of the emotions or thoughts I had at that point. This too illustrates that childhood memories are …show more content…

This is not a problem with the Walls story because most of it takes place after the age of 3 and the fog of childhood amnesia is beginning to fade away by then. Also the Walls’ parents never really tried to distort their kids reality, so much as maybe sugar coat things, like for example when Rex says the move because the FBI is after them, it is really because he doesn’t want to pay bills. Jeannette was keen enough to see through this thin layer of sugar coating, so false memories were not a

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