(a) Walls uses vernacular and understatement in this quote as a way of characterizing her mother and setting up the situational irony that plays out in the rest of the vignette.

(b) I could imitate this in my own writing by using a short snippet of dialogue, with vernacular specific to a character in my memoir, to establish a character at the start of the memoir and to foreshadow later ideas or events.

(a) Walls uses dashes, situational irony (Rex having money in a brown bag, rather than alcohol as everyone would suspect), and asyndeton in this quote. She uses the dashes to allow her to put a section of descriptive asyndeton in the middle of a sentence. They asyndeton helps convey just how shocked Jeannette was by the money and just how much there was.

(b) I could use dashes and asyndeton in my own writing to emphasize a visual detail. Maybe the visual detail helps to characterize me or another character in the memoir or maybe it helps to develop an object that I want to be a symbol in my memoir.

(a) Walls uses symbolism here: she refers back to a memorable image from the middle of the vignette (the wadded, crumpled bills) that reinforces the irony of her parents paying her tuition while still homeless. The symbol represents the way her father's sincerest efforts to help her are sometimes successful. But even when they're successful (she gets the $), they're still unique and weird, like her dad (she gets the $, but the $ is dirty and wrinkled).

(b) I could create symbolism in my memoir by ending the memoir with a brief reference to a key image established earlier in the memoir.