Everyday Struggles: "The Glass Tower" By Reinaldo Arenas

The Glass Tower is an incredible short story that describes the challenge of entering a world of writer’s block. Following Alfredo as the lead character, the reader is in his perspective throughout the story as we see his struggle of writer's block, after previously creating 5 really well perceived novels. After such success with his recent novels, Alfredo has little freetime to write a new story about his creative characters that he has been developing for years; Berta, Nicolas, Delfin, Daniel, and Olga.

Each of these characters have a personality that deserves to be shown and a story just waiting to thrive once being read, but with Alfredo going to parties, award shows, and meetings, Alfredo has next to no time to create a world for these people. Each day that passes Alfredo is constantly taunted by these characters he has created, seeing what is almost a hallucination of these characters, he is being pressured by them to actually start the novel. Pushing these messages off day after day, the characters start to appear more and more frequently: soon affecting Alfredo’s real life.

Alfredo would constantly try to ignore all the brilliant characters that he has created, thus the characters, after so long of being ignored at parties, started to ignore him. By the end of the book it is revealed that the characters are talking to other authors at this party to see if they can bring their story onto shelves to be read, with Alfredo’s imagination bleeding into the reality of his current state at the party; Alfredo has what seems to be a wake up call. This glass tower that held a huge party for so many successful people, faded into black and upon that black it faded into a cardboard box.

What this ending represents is that Alfredo is next to nothing but an ordinary man in an ordinary world without his creative freedom and glorious characters, but at the same time the characters are nothing without Alfredo. This was represented in the way that Alfredo was ignoring the characters as if they were not real, and then the characters were ignoring him and now in the spotlight of reality while he was just their imagination. The roles were reversed in such a unique way that drives the audience into a state of question on what is really happening. The glass tower has many lessons to learn from and also shows the hardships for a writer when it comes to creativity and creative freedom depending on the location.

Reinaldo, who spent a good majority of his life in Cuba before fleeing to the United States, was raised in under a dictatorship by Fidel Castro. Reinaldo was a Cuban Poet and Novelist, he was known for his darker tone writings and especially his autobiography; Before Night Falls. Before Night Falls follows Reinaldos life up until the day he commited suicide, this story was made into a film in the year 2000. After Rebellion against the Cuban government, Reinaldo was thrown into prison after being convicted of ideological deviation. In Arenas later life, he felt genuinely free for the first time ever. “​in his final decade he finally felt free from the oppression of the Cuban government and encouraged others to continue in their struggle for freedom​.”​ (New World Encyclopedia Writers, 1).

Three of the main literary devices used in the story are characterization, mood, and imagery. Reinaldo used characterization to describe and introduce the voices inside of Alfredo’s head.

This helped give us a better understanding of the personalities of each of the voices. Reinaldo also used mood to help create emotion throughout the novel. The voices in his head were continuously talking to Alfredo to try to get themselves made into a novel, but Alfredo was always conflicted with time and never had the chance to write about them. Lastly he used imagery to try to help create a visual understanding of events in the story. He used imagery when talking about speaking at parties and shows and helped create a visual representation of the glass tower in the novel. These three literary devices helped tie the novel together and made it enjoyable for the reader to read.

The story about ​The Glass Tower ​was an interesting novel about the everyday struggles of popular and well known authors. It helps readers understand what authors go through when trying to write novels but are busy with other things in life. Overall this novel is a really interesting and informative novel that helps readers see things from the eye of authors and gives us a better understanding of what is going on in some authors heads.