Welcome Fellow Traveller - Original Writing

sinister thoughts and wrong doing, but for others it is a place of happiness and

The soft wind raps gently on the window, itching to taunt me. I scowl. The room is stuffy and the air is laced with the scent of bleach, a sterility too clean for a damaged place like this. Four, blindingly white walls trap me in an alabaster prison. These four walls remain, calm, stable when no one else has. When my mother and my friends have abandoned me because they’re scared of me. Everything has seeped away, everything I ever loved. These walls are all I have left. A symbol of what I have become. Empty.

Before me loomed the old observatory which would be our home for the next year. Its walls were an expanse of red brick stacked on red brick, contrasting the two white front doors and the white domed tower. It sat atop Henrick Cliff with large fields sloping down from the front of the house. The tower could be seen rising from the back of the house, with the cliffs edge and sea beyond that. The observatory looked like a forgotten castle, waiting for the next rulers to occupy it.

Early in the memoir, Walls describes the Glass Castle as something so grandiose and unrealistic that it almost seems too perfect to be true. Walls' explains,

It was the year 2008, I had just graduated from St. Michael’s School located in Los Angeles, CA. This year was quite exhilarating for me also scary because I was going to attend an all-girls high school. Los Angeles was my birth place also a place where I called home. One day, I came home to hearing my parents talking about moving to Mississippi. I remained devastated, not only we were moving to the south, I’m moving away from childhood friends. I was worried I wouldn’t see them again and I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to make new friends in Mississippi.

My favorite part of the glass castle is the master bedroom and my master closet so I can store all my clothes in my closet. It can be a closet for 2 people and I like the master bed because it roomy and it can help me sleep better.

The building itself uses an abundance of straight lines that give it a very neat and sleek finish. It is perfectly symmetrical, having a broad staircase with granite steps going right down from the second level to the front of the building. Written on these stairs are the words Invent, Discover, and Remember. Right next to this staircase, placed on each side are some brilliant green plants which wrap around the entire building and make it look very appealing. The building has several tower like sections that have upward sloping roofs that give it a bit of a medieval castle look. Made mostly of red brick and a yellow looking stone, this also gives the building the look of a castle. It also has lots of windows that give a welcoming feeling. There are also six bright lights which hang down from the second and third levels which add to that welcoming

A review of the house itself suggests that an architectural hierarchy of privacy increases level by level. At first, the house seems to foster romantic sensibilities; intrigued by its architectural connotations, the narrator embarks upon its description immediately--it is the house that she wants to "talk about" (Gilman 11). Together with its landscape, the house is a "most beautiful place" that stands "quite alone . . . well back from the road, quite three miles from the village" (Gilman 11). The estate's grounds, moreover, consist of "hedges and walls and gates that lock" (Gilman 11). As such, the house and its grounds are markedly depicted as mechanisms of confinement--ancestral places situated within a legacy of control and

As I stand here upon the wooden pillar, I wonder why I am so picture worthy. Mr. Cameraman, why do you take pictures of us, but yet do nothing? I stand here weak and fragile, far from where I use to stand strong and brute. My brothers and friends lay in the wooden compartments where we are assigned to lay. We are given no beds, but only a wooden board. Oh, how I miss and wish to lay upon my own bed. Where my mattress supported my body, and the crests my and face, and my soft cotton sheets that kept my body warm and safe.

Come, friend, and give me something; for you seem to be no lowly man among the Greeks, but their most noble lord-indeed a chief.  So you should offer more than others can-I’d make you famous then in endless lands.  I, too, was once

2. “This castle hath pleasant seat; the air... unto our gentle senses.” (I, vi, 1-3)

It was the summer of 2017 when I took on what would be my biggest accomplishment of my teenage years. I’m 17 and I was playing on the high school tennis team when I met Lucri Sammito. She was our school’s first Italian foreign exchange student and the first authentic Italian person I had met. We became great friends and hung out all the time, even had a couple of sleepovers. After a while it was getting closer for her to head back home we came up with a plan so I could come visit her.

The buildings had barrel vaults columns and windows and doors with rounded arches. The buildings were solid and heavy with small windows which made the insides very dimly lit. This lack of light is apparent in the film as a way to describe the general mindset and lifestyle of monastic life in the Middle Ages. Romanesque architecture is known for its large internal spaces. Annaud uses these Middle Age details in his construction of the set. As Professor Russell describes in the Medieval Culture lecture the different rooms of the monastery contained the cloister which connected the dormitory, refectory, scriptorium, kitchen, cellar, and herbal garden. The small windows, arched doorways and the non-human void of expressivity capitals and sculptures were all true to the times. Annaud constructed this Romanesque church set built specifically to shoot majority of the film. The attention and detail that he put into making sure that the backdrop provided a true and accurate account for how religious architecture was in the Middle Ages furthered the success of the film.

In rock I’m carved, In sand and dust I’m buried. Hadn’t the Templar Knights came, the Saracen raiders would have, leaving me ruined. I had seen many battles across the millenniums This land hasn’t been kind to me, slow I am turning into ruins

Behind all the fortification, there are tall, ornamented turrets with spikes. White chimneys indicate also that it is a very beautiful place. The reader gets a feeling that it is not just another gloomy medieval castle with stench, a cramped and drafty interior, and a general feel of coldness. It is in fact the best-fortified castle Sir Gawain has ever seen, but it is also very appealing to the eye. This again is a clue that the castle is special.