Walls, Jeannette. The Glass Castle: A Memoir. New York, NY: Scribner, 2005. Print. This book was chosen to show that coming from a dysfunctional family does not have to hinder the success of a person’s future. Jeannette Walls is a journalist, writer, and former gossip columnist contributor to MSNBC.com. Despite living her childhood in the hands of neglectful parents, Jeannette Walls and her siblings have developed strength and achieved admirable success through their unconventional life of poverty. The Walls family has four children, Lori; the eldest daughter, Jeannette; the second oldest daughter, Brian; the younger son, and Maureen; the youngest daughter. Lori has always been the smartest and most artistic child in her family; at age seven she was already proofreading her mother’s manuscripts (Walls 38). Jeannette was the only child who still had faith in her father (Walls 79). Brian was the brave child who never whined or cried (Walls 28). Maureen was the lost child who never seemed to spend any time at home, and developed a powerful religious streak because of the Pentecostal family she frequently went to (Walls 206). Their father, Rex Walls was an alcoholic who “could talk a blue streak, spinning tales of jobs he’d never had and college degrees he’d never earned” (Walls 19). Their mother, Rose Mary Walls, had a teaching degree but hated her job and would rather live in excitement as well as pursue her passion for art at the expense of her family’s welfare (Walls 74). These children were raised in various different and impoverished environments. The phrase the family had adopted for their frequent travels was “doing the skedaddle” (Walls 19). The children were on their own since they were toddlers. Jeannette’s earlie... ... middle of paper ... ...iving education. Conclusively, instead of having a story that delves into a mournful prose about how horrid the author’s life was, this book was surprisingly light-hearted. Although there were some saddening parts in the memoir, Jeannette has achieved a balance of pity, warmth, and light humor that can make you both admire yet cringe in anger at the way the Walls parents raised their children. The way Jeannette had approached and described her difficult childhood was a unique one for she did not make the readers feel pity for only her and her siblings, but sometimes for their parents as well. Overall, I highly recommend this book to read because it does give the reader a very descriptive look into the childhood of the author, but in such a unique way that the ending will show you that in some cases, no matter what happens in a family, they will always be together.
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.
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
In “The Glass Castle”, the author Jeanette Walls describes her childhood and what motivated her to chase her education and move out to New York City with her siblings and leave their parents behind in West Virginia. The main struggle Jeanette and her siblings had was the conflicting point of view that they had with their mother on parenting. Despite their father Rex Walls being an alcoholic, constantly facing unemployment, and being a source of hope for his children, Rose Mary Walls had her list of attributes that shaped her children’s life. Rose Mary had a very interesting view on parenting in Jeanette Wall’s memoir and this perspective of parenting influenced her children both positively and negatively.
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.
Jeannette started to lose faith in her parents after they could no longer provide for her, and swore that she would make a better life for herself. “I swore to myself that it (her life) would never be like Mom’s…” (Walls 208) Jeannette has the idea to move to New York to escape her parents, and pursue her dream of being a journalist. She decides that her older sister, Lori, will have to escape with her, because Jeannette would never leave Lori alone with her parents. The next day, Jeannette buys a piggy bank to start an “escape fund”. To make money, Lori would draw and paint posters for kids at school and sell them for a dollar fifty. Jeannette would babysit and do other kids homework. She made a dollar per assignment and and babysat for a dollar an hour.
Walls grew up having a close relationship with her father. As a child Jeannette's father was her hero, a strong, intelligent man, her best friend, and a great father who kept his children happy with his adventurous, optimistic
The novel The Glass Castle, written by Jeannette Walls, brings to the surface many of the the struggles and darker aspects of American life through the perspective of a growing girl who is raised in a family with difficulties financially and otherwise. This book is written as a memoir. Jeannette begins as what she remembers as her first memory and fills in important details of her life up to around the present time. She tells stories about her family life that at times can seem to be exaggerated but seemed normal enough to her at the time. Her parents are portrayed to have raised Jeannette and her three siblings in an unconventional manner. She touches on aspects of poverty, family dynamics, alcoholism, mental illness, and sexual abuse from
There is no such thing as being ‘the perfect family’. Every family is unique and different in their own ways. They have their troubles, struggles, and weaknesses in their lives. The novel, The Glass Castle: a memoir by Jeannette Walls share the theme of a dysfunctional family. Firstly, the parent of the main character, Rose Walls is not an ideal motherly figure to her children. Secondly, the Walls children are not being treated the way they should be for their age. Finally, the parent of the lead character, Rex Walls is not a role model of a fatherly figure to his kids. When the family acts in a dysfunctional way it affects each individual and the family negatively.
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.
My family isn 't like the Walls family because my parents would never treat my sister and I like their parents treated them, my family and I have a decent living situation, and we would never hurt any animal. From the beginning, Rex and Rose Mary treated their kids wrong and didn 't take responsibility as parents. Every child deserves a loving home and should never have to worry if they are going to eat that night. West Virginia also seemed a lot different then because the laws are more strict now. The way the Walls are, they would get in trouble for the way they treated their kids, animals, and even their living space. "Mom always said people worry too much about their children. Suffering when you 're young is good for you, she said. It immunized
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.
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...
...life living with yet loving parents and siblings just to stay alive. Rosemary and Rex Walls had great intelligence, but did not use it very wisely. 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. Showing that it does not matter what life throws at us we can take it. Rosemary and Rex Walls may not have been the number one parents in the world however they were capable in turning their children into well-educated adults.
...victims, the Walls siblings may not have chosen to overcome their painful history to become such strong and successful individuals. The abdication of what one could consider appropriate parental responsibility by moving to Welch isolated the children in a very hard environment. In their time there, the remarkable survival skills and character that the children developed served as a source of strength in their escape from their environment. Their determination in forging a better future for themselves is realized by utilizing the skills they formed while trapped in Welch. The courage to embrace change; putting aside such a deplorable childhood speaks volumes about the remarkable ability of these siblings to overcome hardship and achieve their own powerful and unique lives.
...ndurance of poverty, as we witness how Walls has turned her life around and told her inspiring story with the use of pathos, imagery, and narrative coherence to inspire others around her (that if she can do it, so can others). Jeannette made a huge impact to her life once she took matters into her own hands and left her parents to find out what life has in store for her and to prove to herself that she is a better individual and that anything is possible. Despite the harsh words and wrongful actions of Walls’ appalling parents who engage her through arduous experiences, she remained optimistic and made it through the most roughest and traumatic obstacles of her life at the age of three. Walls had always kept her head held high and survived the hardships God put upon her to get to where she is today; an author with a best selling novel to tell her bittersweet story.