Is self reliance beneficial to children's survival? Self reliance is beneficial to survival for many children around the world. In the memoir The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls the parenting style of Rex and Rosemary Walls taught the children to have self reliance which is beneficial to the children's survival. During the childhood of Jeannette Walls her and her siblings all had to be self reliant to get everyday necessities. Jeannette and her siblings have to do many things such as scavenging for food in any place they could think of. Jeannette would “slip back into the classroom [during recess] and find something in some other kids lunch bag that wouldn’t be missed”(68). Or if she was at a friends house she would ask to use the bathroom and if no one was in the kitchen she would “grab …show more content…
something out of the refrigerator or cupboard and take it into the bathroom to eat it there.”(68) It wasn't only Jeannette who was scavenging since their was no food in their house Brian was scavenging to.
Brian had “broken into a neighbor's house and [tried to] steal a gallon jar of pickles”(68) but the neighbor had caught him and made him eat the whole jar as a punishment. To get an everyday necessity like food the children had to be self reliant otherwise there would be no way they would have survived. In the novel The Glass Castle the children also have to rely on themselves and each other because their parents have a abusive and neglectful parenting style. As they have that abusive and neglectful parenting style there were instances in which the children thought their parents weren't going to come back for them. One such instance was when Jeannette fell out of the car and she wondered whether “they might not notice [she] was missing”(30) and that they would just leave her there like they did to the cat. A child shouldn't be wondering if their parents will come back for them. Jeannette wondering whether her parents are going to come
back and get her shows that her parents neglect her and her siblings. With the type of parenting style that the parents had the children have to be self reliant. They have had to be self reliant because their mom is very free spirited and doesn’t follow through with her responsibilities as a parent. In many instances Rosemary Walls would refuse to go to work and they would have to convince her to go to work so that they could have money and were not struggling as much to get everyday necessities. Even though their mom was working and making some money most if not all of the money did not go towards getting the everyday necessities for the family. The money that their mom made when she was working their dad Rex Walls would take and spend it on his addiction to alcohol. Since their dad is an alcoholic his addiction causes the family to self destruct. Since he is taking all the money the children have to be self reliant because if they are not self reliant then they would not be able to survive. Having parents like they do that have an abusive and neglectful parenting style makes them be self reliant because they could never rely on their parents. With their parents being unreliable they always have had to rely on themselves for their everyday necessities and have had to be self reliant to survive. With the parenting style of Rosemary and Rex Walls self reliance is beneficial to the children's survival in the memoir The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls. They have to be self reliant because of their parents addictions making self reliance beneficial to their survival. The memoir the Glass Castle portrays that self reliance in beneficial to many children's survival.
Wall’s memoir The Glass Castle accurately portrays her horrifying life of growing up in extreme poverty. The memoir unravels a true story about Jeannette Walls’ brutal childhood as she grew up homeless and often lacked even basic necessities such as food, clothing, and shelter. Walls’ father Rex raised his children irresponsibly, leaving them with many mental and physical scars while compromising their safety. Similar to the way Walls was raised, human cruelty remains evident in the Mac Davis song “In The Ghetto,” where the lyrics describe an endless cycle of poverty and crime. However, the movie Les Miserables depicts the
There are several different social issues presented in Jeannette Wall’s memoir “The Glass Castle.” These issues include neglect – medical and education. unsanitary living conditions, homelessness, unemployment, alcohol abuse, domestic violence. violence, discrimination, mental health issues, physical and sexual abuse, hunger and poverty. Poverty was one of the major key issues addressed in this memoir.
In John Connolly’s novel, The Book of Lost Things, he writes, “for in every adult there dwells the child that was, and in every child there lies the adult that will be”. Does one’s childhood truly have an effect on the person one someday becomes? In Jeannette Walls’ memoir The Glass Castle and Khaled Hosseini’s novel The Kite Runner, this question is tackled through the recounting of Jeannette and Amir’s childhoods from the perspectives of their older, more developed selves. In the novels, an emphasis is placed on the dynamics of the relationships Jeannette and Amir have with their fathers while growing up, and the effects that these relations have on the people they each become. The environment to which they are both exposed as children is also described, and proves to have an influence on the characteristics of Jeannette and Amir’s adult personalities. Finally, through the journeys of other people in Jeannette and Amir’s lives, it is demonstrated that the sustainment of traumatic experiences as a child also has a large influence on the development of one’s character while become an adult. Therefore, through the analysis of the effects of these factors on various characters’ development, it is proven that the experiences and realities that one endures as a child ultimately shape one’s identity in the future.
On December 10, 1950, in Stockholm, Sweden, one of the greatest literary minds of the twentieth century, William Faulkner, presented his acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize. If one reads in between the lines of this acceptance speech, they can detect a certain message – more of a cry or plead – aimed directly to adolescent authors and writers, and that message is to be the voice of your own generation; write about things with true importance. This also means that authors should include heart, soul, spirit, and raw, truthful emotion into their writing. “Love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice” (Faulkner) should all be frequently embraced – it is the duty of authors to do so. If these young and adolescent authors ignore this message and duty, the already endangered state of literature will continue to diminish until its unfortunate extinction.
In ?Everyday Use?, Alice Walker chooses to develop the idea of poverty by focusing exclusively on the environment in which her protagonists live. Setting attributes, such as the ones used to describe the house in which the protagonists reside, enables us to better understand the theme. In fact, the dwelling does not even have any real windows. Instead, it has holes cut in the sides, like the portholes of a ship, but not round and not square, with rawhide holding the shutters up on the outside. Then, Walker proceeds with inside description of the house as she points out that the protagonists use benches for their table instead of chairs because they cannot financially afford any. Further, the author supports the theme by providing us with some physical description of specific objects. The use of quilts that ?Grandma Dee? sewed from the scraps of her dress and the churn that Uncle Henry whittled from the wood is not derived from the protagonists? intention to preserve ?family values? but rather from a necessity to ?survive?.
When the topic of childhood memory pops up in a conversation the listeners would think the story teller is telling the truth right? Well, what if I said that the people telling the stories might not even know if they aren’t? When these stories are told most don’t realize the little bit of memory actually involved. So how much or it is true and how much it came from another inaccurate place? Where could something like that come from? Were Jennette Walls’ memories real? Does this affect you or is it not a big dilemma? Should these be considered There are several different debates within itself but the main one to focus on is are your memories even your memories?
It is commonly believed that the only way to overcome difficult situations is by taking initiative in making a positive change, although this is not always the case. The theme of the memoir the Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls is that the changes made in children’s lives when living under desperate circumstances do not always yield positive results. In the book, Jeannette desperately tries to improve her life and her family’s life as a child, but she is unable to do so despite her best efforts. This theme is portrayed through three significant literary devices in the book: irony, symbolism and allusion.
Walls and her family also do not have enough money to buy food and clothes. As Walls described, “I had three dresses to my name, all hand-me-downs or from the thrift store” (Walls 140).... ... middle of paper ...
While Jeannette’s father acknowledges that he is harming his family and tries to better himself, her mother never once tries to improve. She ignores all of her and her family’s problems, often times contributing more to the problem to benefit herself, worsening the situation for her children. The mother copes in selfish ways, disregarding her family in order to make her life more enjoyable. A perfect example is when the family is sitting in the living room without any food, trying to keep their minds off of hunger, when Brian, Jeannette’s brother, sees that the mother is discretely eating a chocolate bar. The mother tries to defend herself, saying that she’s a “sugar addict, just like [their] father is an alcoholic.” (Walls 174) The mother has never showed any signs of an addiction to sugar, and she’s clearly trying to get the kids sympathy for being selfish. She has behavior that is completely destructive for her family, and she needs to learn and practice better coping
The tenement was the biggest hindrance to achieving the American myth of rags to riches. It becomes impossible for one to rise up in the social structure when it can be considered a miracle to live passed the age of five. Children under the age of five living in tenements had a death rate of 139.83 compared to the city’s overall death rate of 26.67. Even if one did live past the age of five it was highly probable he’d become a criminal, since virtually all of them originate from the tenements. They are forced to steal and murder, they’ll do anything to survive, Riis appropriately calls it the “survival of the unfittest”. (Pg.
Children living in this type of environment may feel anger, shame, and sadness. They are forced to take on adult roles much earlier because their parents are irresponsible. For instance it shows this in The Glass Castle because the children are forced to make their own meals and fend for themselves because Rex is too busy drinking and Rose Mary is careless (Walls). Alcoholism takes away children’s childhood by forcing them to take on adult roles. Another example of this is when Billy Deel is forced to take care of himself while his father is passed out and constantly drinking, “Billy had a lot of unsupervised time on his hands” (Walls 82). Billy was greatly affected by his father’s alcohol abuse his personality didn’t maturely develop like other children. This is shown when he sexually assaults Jeanette and doesn’t see anything wrong with it, he yells on page 87 “Guess what? I raped you!” (Walls). This statement proves that parents make a huge impact on children, and when children don’t have that, they suffer. Alcohol abuse is not an individual problem, it affects everyone surrounding that person. It isn’t fair for children to be raised in that environment and government should take greater action to protect the children’s safety by removing them from homes like
They face many issues such as economic instability, depression, loneliness, fear of being alone and feeling betrayed. Children feel depressed in cases like this because even at a young age they know that things are not okay. They also suffer from fear and being betrayed, they suffer fear because they 're scared of what is going to happen to their family since they 're so used to having their family together. Many times children who face this situations feel like they’ve been betrayed because they don’t know why their mother or father have gone away and not came back. The psychologist mentions that it’s very normal for children to feel this way and conduct a different behaviour than usual because just like everyone else they don’t seem to understand
When books are very popular most of the time they are made into a movie. The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls is a book that depicts the struggle of poverty and addiction. A movie then was made based on the book. The movie did not follow the book completely, but, that was to be expected. The movie did an excellent job with the cast. No one could have played Rex better than Woody Harrelson. The director did a respectable job of casting people who would have looked like the author described them in the book. Overall the movie did a fantastic job of portraying the major events and showing the overall theme of the book. Watching the movie, you notice a few differences. For example, Lori has glasses on and in the book, she did not get glasses until
What is the source of your success? My own definition of success is about overcoming my obstacles and hardships. If I can’t overcome the obstacles and hardships along the way, then I will try again so that I am more prepared and have the right knowledge. I want to meet obstacles and hardships because I want to feel the pleasure of success when I overcome them. In order for me to overcome and embrace hardships, I need to find the missing link, have the right knowledge, and practice effective time management.
Most often, in most families, children look up to their parents for guidance as children view their parents as role models. However in The Glass Castle, this was not the case but the exact opposite.