Falling Leaves By Jeannette Walls

Without a stable family, life for Jeannette Walls and Adeline Yen Mah was disastrous. Though they both come from different cultural backgrounds, they share similar experiences of a tragic childhood. In Yen Mah’s autobiography, Falling Leaves, she recaps her life in a disunited family under a strict step-mother, Niang. Yen Mah tries desperately to distance herself from Niang by traveling to America, only to discover that Niang did not care enough about Adeline to leave a portion of her money in her will to her. While Adeline came from a wealthy family in China, Jeannette Walls experienced a life with a disunited, poor family. In Walls’s Glass Castle, her father’s drinking problems and her mother’s incapability to provide for her children caused …show more content…
For example, Jeannette mentions the word “skedaddle” in her memoir to describe how the family ran away from their troubles. This use of slang adds a lighter tone by reminding her how adventurous and careless she used to be and how much she respected her father at that time. Gradually, however, Jeannette began to lose trust in her father. In response, Rex uses a rhetorical question, “Goddammit …Have I ever let you down?” to protect his pride as a father (Walls 210). Throughout his life, Rex has broken many promises. By cursing, “Goddammit,” he shows his frustration toward his inability to make his children proud. Rex repeats this phrase throughout the memoir not only to the children, but to himself in a pitiful, angry attempt to deny his failure as a father. Though he angrily asks this question to himself and his children, this rhetorical question adds a sarcastic tone, bringing it to a point that makes it comical because Rex continues to fail at tasks he sets his mind to. On the other hand, the use of colloquialism in Falling Leaves presents a gloomy atmosphere in Adeline’s childhood. Many Chinese aphorisms are present in this memoir because Adeline’s life revolves around them. When Niang felt embarrassed that Adeline friends witnessed Niang’s tyranny, she scolded Adeline, “Family ugliness should never be aired in public” (Yen Mah 70). This aphorism restricted Adeline’s freedom by forcing her to reject help from others and to not share her pitiful family life to other. Thus, Adeline is unable to gain the courage to rebel against Niang’s tyranny until she becomes mature enough to see the exceptions to those rules. By utilizing this aphorism, it adds a pitiful and dark tone to the entire memoir by emphasizing that Adeline had to abide by these strict rules. While Jeannette used colloquialism to