600 (revised)

In any book you read you will find out that it is filled with imagery. Some images are more visible than others. In the Liars Club I feel as though Mary Karr didn't want her imagery to be as visible and blatant as other authors make it. She likes to make her images small but very strong by using repetition. The way she uses her images make you feel a certain way, either happy or sad. Even though most of Mary’s memories were somewhat sad and twisted she had hints of happy ones in there. Most of these happy memories involved her father. This is why I feel that Mary’s father was a image of sanity/happy to Karr but as she grows older and times change her fathers image to her changes drastically. It wasn’t so much the big things that her father did for her but the small things. It would be the little things that would stick out in Karr’s head. Like when he would invite her to go to the liar clubs meetings, which would soon change do to his unhappiness himself.

The things Mary does with her father sticks with her forever, things that may not be such a big deal to her father but a huge deal to Mary: "My father comes into focus for me on a Liar's Club afternoon. He sits at a wobbly card table weighed down by a bottle. Even now the scene seems so real to me that I can't but write about it in the present tense." (15) This shows just how much of an impact the Liars Club has on her life and how much she remembers from it. Most all the stories that she tells about the liars club are happy in her mind. When Mary is there she feels safe and can just let go and relax. It is here that her dad really shows his love for her too, and this is why Mary loves it so much, because she can make that connection with her father. You can tell that she loves being there because the details that she remembers are down to a tee. Like a turn of the head or the smell of the air, she knows almost every word that is said by everyone.

It is from her father that Marry got to be the person that she was, rough and tough. “Daddy had instructed me in the virtue of what he called equalizers, which meant not only sticks, boards, and rocks, but having on hell of a long memory for mistreatment. So I wouldn’t hesitate to sneak up blindside and bit a bigger kid who’d gotten the better of me a week before.” (63) Without him her life would be completely different.

Her dad loved her a lot and maybe didn’t blatantly show it. Sometimes it wouldn’t be things that she didn’t even realize till she was older and writing this book. “My daddy watched Hurricane Carla come up the Intercostal canal from the Gulf. He claimed to be high in a sort of crow’s nest at the time, behind a thick glass wall that let him look out over half the county.” ( 23) He was up in this tower because he was picking up extra hours at the refinery because he knew what had to be done to help out his family and this was it. Even though there was a huge hurricane coming that could cost him his life, he stuck it out because he really loves Marry and the family, even though he may not have showed it like some dads do. This eventually all adds up and weakens her fathers image to Mary and make the relationship between the two grow smaller. After her parents decide to split up things go downhill from there between them, things weren’t like they use to be. Karr has many images crammed in this book, some we may never even notice, but it was the little images that made a big impact and shaped her life.