People in Distinguished Poverty Poverty has been a widespread problem for many individuals, and societies, depending on where they live and how they live. Some people have adapted to being in a poverty state, and have gotten used to it, while others face many consequences of being in poverty. In the memoir, The Glass Castle, the author, Jeannette Walls, depicts a family undergoing poverty, and being in the conflict of having a place to live in. The memoir highlights the complexities a family faces in poverty, and the difficulties of keeping a proper family bond throughout. Although the complexities are clear, the younger members of the family try to help as best as they can to get the family in a better situation. Throughout the memoir, Walls …show more content…
Walls unveils how a negative mood has a huge impact on the way a family is structured, and how determined the family will continue to be. Additionally, another situation happens when the Oldsmobile is mentioned as having the same failure as a bunch of other cars that the family previously owned. The family continues to blame the Oldsmobile for their continuous struggles in finding a better way to live. In the memoir it states,“We’d owned a couple of cars since we’d been in Welch, but they were true buckets of bolts, with shuddering engines and cracked windshields, and as we drove along, we could see the blur of the asphalt through the rusted-out floor
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
I’ve never heard of any childhood quite like yours. I was shocked by the personality and character of your parents and how they raised you and your sibilings, “The Glass Castle”. I understand why people call your parents monsters. I will admit that the thought crossed my own mind on multiple occasions. However, I have also never read a book or a memoir that required so much thinking . With every page I read I was able to learn about the struggles & hardships you dealt with as a child and I tried to see a deeper meaning. When I did that, I saw your parent’s intentions behind everything they did. I began to understand what you saw and still see in your parents.
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.
Children these days have a variety of needs, often being surrounded by the ideas of freedom and security. While some people seek complete freedom from society’s rules, others seek the comforts of security that a normal life provides. Children’s preferences on freedom and security are reflected from their Mom and Dad’s parenting style. In The Glass Castle, by Jeannette Walls, the characters Brian, Lori, and Jeannette show that while growing they would rather have security over freedom because they repeatedly find themselves in a state of danger due to their parent’s lack of security. For example, if Jeannette’s parents were accountable while Jeanette was in proximity to fire she would not have been traumatized and severely burnt. Another reason the children want security is Rex is an excessive alcoholic who is very dangerous to be around while he is under the influence of hard liquor, they would rather a father that responsibly handled alcohol. Rex’s surplus of expenses on booze led the family into poverty because instead of using the family’s rare profit to pay off bills Rex uses it to buy alcohol and items that were not a necessity to their survival. Therefore, their parents struggled to give even the simplest things for them such as food and clothes.
There are several different social issues presented in Jeannette Wall’s memoir “The Glass Castle.” These issues included neglect – medical and education,
The Glass Castle is a memoir of the writer Jeannette Walls life. Her family consists of her father Rex Walls, her mother Rose Mary Walls, her older sister Lori Walls, her younger brother Brian Walls and her younger sister Maureen Walls. Jeannette Walls grew up with a lot of hardships with her dad being an alcoholic and they never seemed to have any money. Throughout Jeanette’s childhood, there are three things that symbolize something to Jeannette, they are fire, New York City and the Glass Castle, which shows that symbolism gives meanings to writing.
Social class has always been a controversial issue in America. This idea, that individuals are defined by their wealth, is explored by Jeannette Walls in her memoir, The Glass Castle. Walls shows, through a manifold of personal anecdotes, how growing up in a dysfunctional household with financially inept parents affected her and her siblings. Growing up in this environment, Jeannette was exposed to a very different perception of the world around her than those of higher social status. However, despite the constant hardships she faced, Walls makes it clear that a lower social status does not define an individual as inferior to those in a higher class.
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.
This grim situation is depicted in the writings of Jeannette Walls. In the autobiography The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls accurately portrays homelessness by explaining its causes, its impact upon daily life, and its effect on victimized families. Walls’ autobiography establishes that there are several causes of homelessness. More specifically, she discusses how poverty prevents one from affording life necessities. As reported by the National Coalition for Homelessness, “Homelessness and poverty are inextricably linked”.
Author Jeannette Walls, just like so many other Americans in the United States was deeply impacted by poverty. Poverty in the United States is not an uncommon occurrence and thousands of people in the United States are currently being raised well below the poverty line. Jeannette Walls in her memoir The Glass Castle was one child who was greatly impacted in a positive way due to the lessons and hope her parents were able to give her. This gave her perseverance, persistence and power to become the successful person she has become today.
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.
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.
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
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.