Positive Thoughts In The Glass Castle

459 Words1 Page
bulb-icon

Recommended: Overcome adversity

Positive thoughts lead to positive things happening, and that was what Rose Mary philosophy to dealing with her misfortune. Throughout the book, The Glass Castle, as trials are steadily placed in Walls’ life, she continuously uses a positive attitude to cope with her life. Mary seems to truly believe that the negative aspects in her life are positive because of the way that she thought about them. (ADD TRANSITION HERE) “Most pianists never get the chance to play in the great out-of-doors,” she said, “And now the whole neighborhood can enjoy it, too,” (53). Mary’s copes by producing a positive attitude. Instead of viewing the situation negatively, Mary thinks that she is lucky to have her piano stuck outside, and she views the problem as a fortunate …show more content…

She chose to view the bright side instead of having a perturbing negative outlook, which let Mary cope with the negative situation, and turn it into a positive thing. Throughout The Glass Castle Mary continuously creates coping devices and mechanisms through her positive attitude. Similarly, When Mary had first moved to Welch and seen the disastrous state of the town, she brightly explained, “‘Gosh, things have gone downhill a little bit since we were here last,’ she said… ‘Suddenly, Mom grinned broadly. “‘I’ll bet there aren’t any other artists living in Welch,’ she said. ‘I won’t have any …show more content…

My career could really take off here’” (134-135). An additional example of Mary’s positive outlook on bad situations; Mary turns the unfortunate state of Welch into yet another coping device. Mary uses her new coping mechanism to fuel more positivity, which in turn makes her see her unsatisfactory life as a new adventure

Show More
Related

  • The Tough Childhood In The Glass Castle By Jeannette Walls

    351 Words  | 1 Pages

    One of the ways Jeannette survived her tough childhood was her ability to stay positive. Throughout The Glass Castle, Jeannette was put in deplorable houses, and at each one she tries to improve it. “A layer of yellow paint, I realized would completely transform, our dingy gray house,” (Walls 180). This quote from the text provides readers with the sense that Jeannette’s “glass” is always half full. Instead of

    Read More

  • Adversity In The Glass Castle

    897 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Struggle Of Building Adversity means difficulties or misfortune. When someone's dealing with things or a situation turns out to go against them, they face adversity. Adversity is something someone comes across in life, it's like being part of a person. Decisions and actions are influenced by a lot of things. Conflicts influence all kinds of actions and decisions, depending on the person.

    Read More

  • The Glass Castle By Jeannette Walls Analysis

    403 Words  | 1 Pages

    Jeannette Walls has lived a life that many of us probably never will, the life of a migrant. The majority of her developmental years were spent moving to new places, sometimes just picking up and skipping town overnight. Frugality was simply a way of life for the Walls. Their homes were not always in perfect condition but they continued with their lives. With a brazen alcoholic and chain-smoker of a father and a mother who is narcissistic and wishes her children were not born so that she could have been a successful artist, Jeannette did a better job of raising herself semi-autonomously than her parents did if they had tried. One thing that did not change through all that time was the love she had for her mother, father, brother and sisters. The message that I received from reading this memoir is that family has a strong bond that will stay strong in the face of adversity.

    Read More

  • The Glass Castle Coping Mechanisms Analysis

    874 Words  | 2 Pages

    Throughout the book The Glass Castle, Jeannette and her family are essentially homeless, which leaves them with dealing with the daily struggles that come along with it. Although there are only a few instances where the Walls did not have a home, the conditions they lived through were horrendous. Jeannette and her siblings cope with their situations in many ways. At the beginning, the children never complained. Their parents Rex and Rose Mary had significantly different coping mechanisms. While Rose Mary was painting or sleeping, Rex was heading to the local bars. Their ways of dealing with their living situations and overall economic and political status did not help the siblings lead a fulfilling childhood. Coping mechanisms

    Read More

  • Emotional Abuse In The Glass Castle

    892 Words  | 2 Pages

    In this world there are many types of abuse or neglect that aren’t always noticed and no one really talks about. We never notice that there are many different types of abuse because we do think that it is so bad that we don’t want to look into it. Social workers specialize in removing the children from the home because they have these things in their lives. Some parents would never dream of abusing their children, and some would never call it abuse. There were several different types of abuse present in the book The Glass Castle, even evidence that the children should be removed from the home.

    Read More

  • Childhood Memories In The Glass Castle

    1069 Words  | 3 Pages

    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?

    Read More

  • Coping Mechanisms In The Glass Castle By Jeannette Walls

    956 Words  | 2 Pages

    Everyone has to deal with struggles during their everyday life. Some people’s problems are more serious than others, and the way that people deal with their problems varies. Everybody has a coping mechanism, something they can use to make the struggle that they’re going through easier, but they’re usually different. Some people drink, some people smoke, some people pretend there is no problem. There are healthy and unhealthy coping mechanisms, and people will vary the one they use depending on the problem they’re facing. In The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, the author and her family deal with their struggles in multiple different ways as time goes on. However, the severity of her situation means that the methods she uses to deal with it are very important. That’s why it’s bad that Jeanette’s and her family have such unhealthy coping mechanisms, such

    Read More

  • Glass Castle

    897 Words  | 2 Pages

    As I read the Glass Castle, the way Rose Mary behaves, thinks and feels vary greatly and differently throughout the memoir. The immediate question that pops up in my mind is to ask whether Rose Mary carries some sort of mental illness. Fortunately, given the hints and traits that are relevant to why Rose Mary lives like that in the memoir, we, the readers, are able to make some diagnosis and assumptions on the kind of mental illness she may carry. To illustrate, one distinctive example is when Rose Mary blames Jeannette for having the idea to accept welfare. “Once you go on welfare, it changes you. Even if you get off welfare, you never escape the stigma that you were a charity case.” (188). In my opinion, Rose Mary is being nonsense and contractive in her criticism, because of Rose Mary’s resistances to work and to accept welfare, it often causes a severe food shortage within the family that all four little children have to find food from trash cans or move on with hunger, which could lead to a state of insufficient diet. More importantly, having welfare as a way to solve food shortage, it can certainly improve those young Walls children’s poor nutrition and maintain their healthy diet, but Rose Mary turns it down because she thinks it is a shame to accept welfare despite their children are suffering from starvation. Another example will be when Rose Mary abandons all of her school work for no reason. “One morning toward the end of the school year, Mom had a complete meltdown. She was supposed to write up evaluations of her students’ progress, but she’d spent every free minute painting, and now the deadline was on her and the evaluations were unwritten” (207). This is one of the moments when Rose Mary shifts all of her attentio...

    Read More

  • Kirstin Valdez Quade's Jubilee

    1541 Words  | 4 Pages

    For so long she has been around what she saw as the destination for her life, which was success and happiness, in the lifelong family friends the Lowells. She assumed they were just given this life without ever thinking they had to work as hard as she did to get there, consequently envy and resentment ensued. The resentment started with the whole family and then got more intense and personal when it came to the daughter of the Lowells, Parker, someone Andrea could identify with on a personal level. This story illustrated for us the unseen factors and repercussions that too much ambition to be accepted by anyone can have one's long lasting development into their own person. This journey to prove who you are to others can lead to intense emotions and motives that aren’t normal yours and can cause you to lose sight of the very person you’re trying to prove that you

    Read More

  • The Importance Of Education In The Glass Castle

    1031 Words  | 3 Pages

    Education plays a big role in our daily lives. Education is commonly defined as a process of learning and obtaining knowledge. The story takes place beginning in the late 1950s to the early 2000s. Jeannette Walls is the main character of the story and the narrator. She tells the events of her life living with careless and yet loving parents. This family of six lived in many cities and towns and went through tough states to stay alive. Her mother and father never kept a good steady job, but they had great intelligence. Jeannette and her siblings barely went to school to get the proper education they needed. In the book The Glass Castle, author Jeanette Walls discovers the idea that a conservative education may possibly not always be the best education due to the fact that the Walls children were taught more from the experiences their parents gave them than any regular school or textbook could give them. In this novel readers are able to get an indication of how the parents Rex and Rosemary Walls, choose to educate and give life lessons to their children to see the better side of their daily struggles.

    Read More

  • The Glass Castle

    1712 Words  | 4 Pages

    Could the dysfunction of the Walls family have fostered the extraordinary resilience and strength of the three older siblings through a collaborative set of rites of passage? One could argue that the unusual and destructive behavior of the parents forced the children into a unique collection of rites of passage that resulted in surprisingly resilient and successful adults. In moving back to Welch, Virginia, the children lost what minimal sense of security they may have enjoyed while living in their grandmother’s home in Arizona. The culture and climate (both socially and environmentally) along with an increased awareness of their poverty resulted in a significant loss of identity. As they learned new social and survival skills in this desperate environment, there is a powerful sense of camaraderie between the older children. Their awareness, drive and cunning survival skills while living in Welch result in a developing sense of confidence in their ability to survive anything. This transition, while wretched, sets the stage for their ability to leave their environment behind with little concern for a lack of success. As the children leave, one by one, to New York, they continue to support one another, and emerge as capable, resourceful young adults.

    Read More

  • Anne Frank: Are People Really Good At Heart?

    1109 Words  | 3 Pages

    Anne's optimistic personality created the hope that she had for her future. Each day she could do nothing but just hope that one day everything will turn around and be better. In The Diary Of Anne Frank play, she expressed, "It'll pass, maybe not for hundreds of years, but someday..." Deep down inside, she had the hope that all of the disgusting things that Hitler alongside his army performed, would all vanish one day. She knew for the most part that the hatred may never go away, but imagining that it might, made things at least a bit better. Anne's situation was pure negativity, with almost nothing good about it. The only good thing that may have come out of it for her were the relationships that she created with everyone in hiding with her. From the Van Daans, to Miep, she bonded amazing friendships with each person involved. Aside from that, Anne's personality stuck out more than anyone's because of the hope that she had, in such a terrible situation.

    Read More

  • The Glass Castle By Jeannette Walls: Literary Analysis

    1095 Words  | 3 Pages

    The Glass Castle written by Jeannette Walls is a true story memoir, which introducing family which consists of four children, a neglectful mother and an alcoholic father. This family is constantly confined by poverty and foolish decision making on the part of the parents (reword this it sounds awkward). Despite these obstacles, Jeannette Walls is able to progress forward and to be successful, thus proving that she indeed is the “fittest of all”. She proves that she is the fittest of all because of her ability to survive life and death situations, her ability to adapt without her parent’s, and her ability to remain determined in trying to achieve her goals.

    Read More

  • The Roles of Parenting Style in The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls

    1211 Words  | 3 Pages

    The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls is a harrowing and heartbreaking yet an inspiring memoir of a young girl named Jeannette who was deprived of her childhood by her dysfunctional and unorthodox parents, Rex and Rose Mary Walls. Forced to grow up, Walls stumbled upon coping with of her impractical “free-spirited” mother and her intellectual but alcoholic father, which became her asylum from the real world, spinning her uncontrollably. Walls uses pathos, imagery, and narrative coherence to illustrate that sometimes one needs to go through the hardships of life in order to find the determination to become a better individual.

    Read More

  • The Rise Above All

    829 Words  | 2 Pages

    Everyone has their own hardships in life. It’s one’s choice whether or not they want to recover from it. They may choose to overcome their adversities or continue to live with them. In The Glass Castle, Secret Life of Bees, and Homeless to Harvard: The Liz Murray Story, the main characters share their stories to prove to others that you can overcome and achieve anything you set your mind to. Their goal was to encourage those, who have lost all hope in themselves, to never give up. Jeannette, Lily, and Liz all came from different backgrounds, but in the end, they were able to break free from their past and achieve goals that never seemed possible. They battled with drug addict, alcoholic, and abusive parents and were left to fend for themselves. With a lot of perseverance, self-determination, and strive, they were able to make choices that helped them recover from their past.

    Read More

More about Positive Thoughts In The Glass Castle

Open Document