Glass Blog Post

Lucie Pascarosa        806

A man once said “There is creative reading as well as creative writing.” Ellen Hopkins has managed to do both in her book Glass. Glass is about an eighteen-year-old girl named Kristina who throws her entire life away for crystal methamphetamine. Glass is the sequel to Crank, which is the start of the protagonist’s battle with meth. The protagonist is actually a fictionalized version of Hopkins' daughter, as Glass is loosely based on a true story. An artistic detail I noticed in Glass, is that the author shapes the text in different forms that vary from page to page.

   

In each chapter, or section (chapters typically consist of one or two pages) of Glass, the text is shaped differently, warped into different shapes and forms such as letters, numbers, dollar signs, disarrays, and many more. I think the author uses this to add an extra element to the plot, and to emphasize a certain detail in that chapter. For example, about a fourth into the book the protagonist, Kristina is lying to her mother about stealing money, so the text is shaped into a big capital “L”. In another part of the book, Kristina is kicked out of her mother’s home; the text is shaped into six, short diagonal, downward lines.  Besides Crank and Glass, Ellen Hopkins uses this in many of her young adult books such as Identical, Fallout, and Impulse. I think that Ellen Hopkins writes in this way in a lot of her books because she really wants to show the reader the emotions the character is feeling on that page, or the hard decision the protagonist has to make, such as in Glass, when Kristina has to chose between meth and her child, which she gave life to in Crank. I also believe that Hopkins shapes the text into these forms because she wants to emphasize a theme and an issue that the protagonist is facing, such as when she shaped the text into a spiral when Kristina’s life was slowly going downhill after trying meth for the first time.

   

Overall, I think Ellen Hopkins includes this aspect of forming the text into different shapes and styles because she wants to send a message to he reader. And not just any message, she wants to take the reader for a walk in that character’s shoes, to get the reader to feel what they’re feeling, and if not that, to at least sympathize with that character, I think this feature really gives Glass a special element that makes it different from most other books, and really draws you in, and makes you want to know more about these characters.