I Capture the Essence of the Castle

I step onto the worn and rugged yellow bricks, my ruby red slippers claking the munchkins smile waving banners and lollipops. I am obligated to keep going down the road, must stick to the path, I mutter, to get to emerald city. Another painfully slow step and another the grinding noise of slipper against brick makes my stomach churn toto whines impatiently the munchkins fall silent "I-t-think imma gointo bes-sick" "Keep going dear!" Glinda squeaks. I gasp then throw up all over the crowd soiling my braids and the entire front of my dress. "Eww," "Oh god she puked!" "This wasn't supposed to happen" shouted the munchkins "Well!" Glinda huffed, "You had better make it to Emerald City, hmmph what a mess!" "S-sorry" I whispered turning my back to the bewildered and enraged crowd. "Oh Toto these people are so rude we are definitely not in Kansas anymore!"I whimpered- Pia's strange rendition of the Wizard of Oz.

In I Capture the Castle, Narrator and main character Cassandra lives with her family in an old run down castle converted into a home. Although the castle is an inanimate object it is very much alive to Cassandra, who grew up in it, her mother died in it and loves the house very dearly.

I thought a lot about home while reading this beautiful book by Dodie Smith. Being in a divorced household like me means you have pairs of most things at each house: Textbooks, stuffed animals, a room and toiletries. You learn to deal with switching from house to house and you should feel welcome content and comfortable but some times you get angry, sad or upset and you feel stranded like you don't belong in either home. But this is not a problem for Cassie she has a different problem.

Cassandra's family is very poor her mother is dead, her father is emotionally withdrawn and has put up many walls to get away from people. He used to be wealthy and wrote many books but now he is drowning in all of his problems and emotions. Cassandra's father remarried a year or two after the death of his wife. This new stepmother gave up her modeling career in London and live with three teenage children in poverty while the house is crumbling around them, she keeps her feelings to herself and it is quite difficult to know what she is thinking about anything, let alone her house. Cassandra's sister, Rose is very picky and is very frustrasted that they live in an old caslte sharing a room with her sister in a life where there is no money no dresses and hardly any food, and the family's main source of income is selling all the furniture in the house.

Despite all of these problems Cassandra loves the old crumbling castle despite the hideous fake wood molding tacky wallpaper what jumbled furniture they have left. I really admire two things about the castle in this book, Cassandra's willignness to look past the revolting remodeling done in the Victorian Era and love the castle and embrace it. I think that for a brilliant young writer like Cassandra a castle is a wonderful place to grow up. I really admire how Dodie Smith portrays the castle as an essence or an entity using a whole lot of personification, she makes me very happy. Thanks for listening, Pia