A Place To Stand Analysis

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Isaiah Guevara English 10 December 2013 A Place to Stand over The Glass Castle Books have an amazing way of grabbing the attention of a reader with an engaging story, while at the same time utilizing their imagination through the composition of beautiful descriptions. A Place to Stand by Jimmy Santiago Baca chronicles the life of a troubled, broken boy as he becomes a hardened prisoner in a maximum security prison, to a free, educated poet. The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls tells the story of a girl as she's raised in a white-trash family, and grows up to become a successful writer and editor. These two books have managed to succeed in capturing these essences, but one stands out from the duo. Baca's A Place to Stand surpasses Walls'…show more content…
He really breathes life through all of the objects that he talks about and makes the reader feel like they're actually there with him. Through the simplest of activities he can make it seem like it's the hardest task he's ever had to go through as he describes, “I would set my dictionary next to me, prop my paper on my knees, sharpen my pencil with my teeth…I would try to write the thoughts going through my mind, but they didn’t come out right. They lacked reality. A stream of ideas flowed through me, but they lost their strength as soon as I put them down”. Taking an idea as abstract as thinking, it's animated as he describes them like a flowing river that has lost the strength of its current. A reviewer states, “his love affair with language breathes life into the people, places, and events he describes, making them true and essential” (Moniz). At times Baca can really exaggerate his descriptions, but it works for what he wants to convey and that's what makes his book such a mastery of imagery. The Glass Castle does have descriptions of objects and characters, but not as visceral as A Place to Stand. Descriptions were used to just describe, but in Baca's story the descriptions and imagery had an emotion that the reader felt even though it wasn't stated clearly. The story was able to move through his words and at some points, elevate the suspense and
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