Origins #2

The intended audience of "Origins" is , luckily, not one that is well versed in physics and astronomy terminology. While not making it sound like the reader is completely clueless, the authors discuss the laws of physics and how they apply to the creation of the Universe using scientific language, but still managing to keep it understandable. The audience does need some knowledge of science, at least the high school classes. Having not finished high school myself, the book can get a little confusing and I am forced to accept that I can't understand some parts of the science lingo, but overall, I feel very confident in my understanding of the book. The description of the Big Bang is especially understandable; I was finally able to put all those hours of studying AP chemistry to work. The book often makes references to higher levels of science; things that only a person with a PHD in physics would know, like the subtle nuances of quarks in the Quark-Lepton period of the Universe after the Big Bang. But understanding these references are not imperative to understanding the gist of the passage. The authors expertly make the book for both people highly educated in science and those with hardly any education on the subject by including information that interest both. So really, to revise myself, the intended audience of the book is both people with extensive education on the subject and people who may not have as much knowledge on the subject.

Origins #1 By Neil DeGrasse Tyson and Donald Goldsmith (2004)

This book is very scientific, so it is a hard read, but still very interesting. DeGrasse and Tyson wrote this book to explain "fourteen billion years of cosmic evolution." So as you can see, the book is about the creation of the cosmos from the Big Bang and how space has evolved since then. As far as I can tell, the book never discusses the controversial topic of human evolution; it focuses only on the cosmos. So far, although I still haven't passed the explanation of the Big Bang, the authors are doing a very good job of achieving their purpose. Unlike other science books that I have started but have never brought myself to finish, "Origins" does a good job of putting complicated explanations into layman's terms. The authors also do a good job of keeping these terms not so dummed down that readers feel insulted by the book's implications of the reader's stupidity. The writing is not boring either; not at all like a text book. The authors keep the material interesting and humerus, while also very educational.

the Glass Castle #6

At the end of the book, Walls is a grown woman again. Her father has a heart attack and suddenly dies. In a flashback written earlier in the book, Walls and her father are sitting outise at night on Walls' birthday. He asks her which star she wants as a present. She points to the brightest one she can see, which turns out to be Venus. Even though it's not a star, he says that he will give Walls Venus anyway. After her father dies, Walls, as her grown self, is looking out into the night sky. She sees "Venus on the horizon, up over the dark water, glowing steadily". This brings the life of her father to a final close. Although he was a drunk and never provided well for his family, he was still her father and Walls decides to remember the good in him, rather than the bad. The very end of the book describes how Walls lives in a big cumfy house with her husband and leads a life where there is no starvation or lack of heat. She invites her family over for Thanksgiving. Her mother, who is homeless, still has her crazy, capriciuos personality. Her siblings feel malice towards their parents, for seeing how easily their lives became better after they got jobs and started families, they don't understand how their parents could have failed so miserably at raising and providing for them. In all, this was a very satisfying ending. It was very bitter sweet, what with the death of Walls' father but also her good and happy life ahead of her. All the hardships of dealing with homelessness, poverty, and bad parenting lead to Walls forging a life of her own where she is successful and rich. Although a true happy ending would have involved a reconciliation with her parents, this ending fits the book, and Walls' life, better. Walls' book is filled with unhapy and dissapointing episodes on the large scale. But in every chapter, it was the little things that could cheer Walls and her siblings up, like making up games to turn a bad situation into a good one. In the end, it was only these little things that could be looked on with fondeness. All the big things, such as the children's relationships with their parents, were left untouched and unreconciled.

The Glass Castle #5

Although I would expect the opposite, Walls seems to have a friendly relationship with the content in her book. She describes events that would terrify or gross any normal person out as exciting adventures. Such as when Walls tells of how her family's house was so infested by cockroaches that the bugs crawled freely on the walls in large clumps. Every night, she and her siblings would go on roach killing tirades, which didn't take much effort because you could put your foot down anywhere and it would land on a roach. Walls reflects on nights like this with a fondness for the fun she had, instead of the expected disgust, for killing roaches is definitely not my idea of fun. Also, Walls describes how her parents kept all the windows and doors of their house open during the night. Although they intended for this to help air circulation, on more than one occasion a homeless or drunk person wandered in. To me, this sounds absolutely ridiculous. Why would you leave all of the entrances to your house open, knowing that any sort of person could get inside and steal all of your stuff or harm your family? But nevertheless, the doors and windows stayed open. If I were sleeping in that house, I would be terrified of burglars or scary people sneaking into my room during the night. But for some reason, the idea of someone ever harming the Walls' family never entered their minds. That is, until the creepy neighborhood pervert deciding to drop in and try to rape Walls while she was sleeping! Even then, after Walls and her brother had chased the pervert into the street, the doors and windows continued to stay open and Walls continued to sleep peacefully for the nights afterwards. Walls never had any tone of resentment or fear as she recounts this episode. To her, it seems, that the situation only brought on a new and exciting hobby, going pervert hunting.

The Glass Castle #4

Why is Walls' mother so helpless?

As the story progresses, it becomes more and more evident that Walls' mom, whose actual name is not revealed, is completely pathetic. She can't seem to do anything by herself; she can't even spell. This is sad. She tries to instill intelligence and independance in her children, when she can't do the same for herself. As the story goes, she gets a job teaching her oldest child's class at school. These kids can't be more than ten years old, but the mother proves to be completely incompetant. She employs the help of her daughter, whose class she is teaching, to help her with lesson plans and to keep the other children obedient. The mother even beat her daughter, who had done nothing wrong, with a spoon in front of the entire class just so she wouldn't have to beat any of the other students. The mother is so easily confused that she spelled Halloween, "Halowene". Her main goal is to be an artist, but she is not able to sell any of her paintings. One would think that she wouold be upet by her obvious lack of capabilities, but she remains ignorantly blissful to this fact, causing other people to pick up the slack for her. I don't know why Walls' mother is so helpless, one would think that years fending for herself and her family would give her some common sense, but apparantley not. It is a feat within itself that Walls turned out the way she did with such bad parenting. She somehow recieved a good education in the end to turn out to be a bestselling author. Seeing her parents' failure at success may have caused Walls to realize their mistakes and make better decisions for herself.

The Glass Castle #3

Why does Walls use repetition?

Many times within the book, Walls repeats the phrase "us kids." She uses this whenever she talks about herself along with her brother and sisters. The book is oozing with Wall's early childhood misconceptions and ignorance. By using just this one phrase, Walls is able to clump all of the children together in one category, while leaving the adults in another. This amplifies the contrast she sees between the parents and children. Her parents are very different from the other members of the family and from one another. They are both very unique, her mother is extroverted and spunky, while her father is more quiet and reserved. Walls spends a lot of time contrasting her two parents, but she does not do the same for describing the children. It seems that from her point of view, all the children are very alike and do not posses very identifiable trait differences. By repeating the phrase "us kids" she is implying that the children act almost as one unit, that identifying them as separate people would be useless. I can only speculate as to why Walls chose to do this. It seems that she would do the opposite and place more description into herself and her siblings, but I think she does this to emphasize the impact that both parents have on her life. She begins the book with a description of her parents when Walls is an adult. So perhaps she is trying to contrast the parents she knows from her childhood and the parents that she knows as an adult.

The Glass Castle #2

The first passage in the book is from the author's adult life. She describes how both of her parents are now homeless, while she is married to a wealthy man in Manhattan. Unfortunately, her parents roam the streets of Manhattan with grime covered clothes and faces. She passes them frequently and promptly attempts to hide out of embarassment of being seen with them. This exerpt from her adult life, with the rest of the book being written about her childhood, gives the reader a glimpse into what the future will hold for the book's characters. Although not even halfway through the book, that first chapter allows the reader to anticiapte what the ending might hold. I anticiapte that Walls will end the book with a similaer situation to how it started. Except now, she will be able to confront both her parents and talk with them freely. Her parents have shaped the person that Walls is today, so I predict that she will agknowlege that fact and come to peace with her parents' homeless existance.