Reflections on Truth-Telling in The Glass Castle

From the Reflections on truth-telling prompt


    I think that many writers have a hard time telling the truth about the past. Most authors that include tales of their past will embellish stories that weren't as impressive as they wrote, or a fill-in-the-blank when their memories fail them. This will usually lead to the author/protagonist looking like the smartest and kindest character in their life of hardship, no matter what they do.

In Jeannette Wall's book 'The Glass Castle' she tells a story of how she had a harder childhood than most with her two parents. Her alcoholic father had a great mind, but squandered it on evading tax collectors and lawsuits. Her mother was an artist who was also quite smart, but she was unhappy with her life after marrying her husband. According to the book, Jeannette's younger years had her learning to survive at an early age. Even though it is entirely feasible that her rough start gave her a heads-up about the harsh world, sometimes the things she does seem

     Parts of Jeannette's book reference her doing tasks like offering support to her mother about her abusive father below the age of 9. Maybe after everything she had been through and how blatantly obvious it was her father was hurting her mother made her feel bad, but she was offering psychological support after the father almost pushed her mother out of a window. Not only that, but the book states that her sister, Lori, was proof-reading her mother's short stories at the age of 7. Not only are seven-year old's much too young to grasp every word in a detailed story, but the mother had a teaching degree, which is revealed on page 73. I truly do not believe that a seven-year-old who has never gone through formal teaching would be able to correct their mother, assuming that the mother taught her, on things that the sister learned from the mother. This may have been just a small mistake or maybe a need to make the story more interesting. Of course, biographies about childhood usually aren't interesting in the slightest unless there is more drama added, even though with a life like hers, Jeannette could've pulled off an entirely truthful story that was still good.

    Advantages and disadvantages of not telling the truth to readers are simple: If you lie about the story to make yourself look good or make your life look tough, people may have respect or empathize you, and may also make the story more appealing so readers will finish the book all about you. A disadvantage of lying is the gullibility of the person in proportion to the transparency of a lie. If you have a gullible reader and spew any lie about yourself that makes you the perfect, do-no-wrong Mary Sue of your story, they will believe it. Though, if a story seems a bit off or a lie seems a tad dramatic, those who are a bit more suspicious will interpret that as a lie, and will no longer like the writer as an author, or  a person. There is always a chance that the story is just a one-in-a-billion chance that happened to the author and the theorist is just jumping to conclusions. Hence the one-in-a-billion chance, that is usually not the case.