"And remember it's also very funny because side by side with grief lies joy" (Drescher). A notable Swiss psychiatrist by the name of Elizabeth Kubler-Ross developed the model for the five stages of grief. She theorized the model in her 1969 book Of Death and Dying. The model begins with denial, and progresses to anger, bargaining, depression, and finally, acceptance. During Jeannette Walls's memoir, The Glass Castle Jeannette exhibits these five stages. Jeannette's relationship with her father parallels the five stages of grief throughout her life.
To begin, Jeannette's denial of her father's flaws is representative of the first stage of grief. After Jeannette burns herself while cooking hotdogs at the age of three, Rex encourages her to play
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with fire. This is apparent when Jeannette describes how "Dad also thought I should face down my enemy and he showed me how to pass my finger through a candle flame" (Walls, 15). Ignorant to the fact that her father encourages Jeannette to put herself in danger, she aimlessly listens to what he tells her. Instead of realizing that Rex is flawed, Jeannette is in denial, the first stage of grief. In addition, further on in the story Jeannette becomes aware of her father's shortcomings and shows anger as a result.
While Rex is teaching her how to swim, Jeannette becomes furious with him. After he threw her into deep water "[Dad] tried to hug me but I wouldn't have anything to do with him" (66). Without knowing how to swim, Rex throws his daughter into deep, contaminated water and she begins to drown. When Jeannette realizes that her dad has little regard for her safety she becomes infuriated with him. Rex's lack of proper parenting becomes evident to Jeannette and as a result she gets angry at him, reflecting the second stage of …show more content…
grief. Furthermore, when her dad makes poor decisions Jeannette resorts to bargaining, the third stage of grief.
The Walls children argue and Jeannette tries to justify Rex's questionable spending on alcohol. While searching the house for food to eat, Lori says "Dad has to start carrying his weight" (78) and in response, Jeannette says "He does ... He brings in money from odd jobs' (78). As Lori and Brian point out how their father wastes all of their money on alcohol Jeannette tries to bargain and rationalize his poor decision making and lack of any income. Her use of bargaining proves that Jeannette's relationship with her father has reached the third stage of grief.
Also, as Jeannette recognizes her father's faults later in her life, their relationship progresses to depression, the fourth stage of grief. After Rex dies Jeannette finds herself lost and distracted without him. For months after he died Jeannette felt uncomfortable, "[she] found [herself] always wanting to be somewhere other than where [she] was" (280). Similar to her father, Jeannette starts showing signs of erratic behaviour in an attempt to cope with the sadness she experiences because of his death. Jeannette's feeling of depression after her father passes away is the progression to the fourth stage of
grief. Finally, at the conclusion of the memoir, Jeannette is able to come to terms with her father which is representative of the final stage of grief, acceptance. When the Walls family reunites for Thanksgiving five years after Rex has died, they reminisce about the good times they shared with him. After laughing and remembering their reckless father, Jeannette's mom gives a toast to him: "Life with your father was never boring" (288) and the entire family raises their glasses cheerfully. Recalling the fond memories she shared with her father allows Jeannette to move forward from pain and toward acceptance. Therefore, as Jeannette comes to terms with her father's mistakes, she experiences the five stages of grief. Coping with poor parenting is both mentally and physically exhausting and Jeannette has spent the majority of her life learning to deal with this anguish. Throughout the entirety of The Glass Castle, Jeanette's feelings regarding Rex naturally progress from denial to anger, bargaining, depression, and lastly, acceptance. During the course of her life, Jeannette clearly expresses each of these emotions through her actions. Everyone has had to deal with pain in some form during their life. The strongest people are the ones capable of overcoming their pain and hardship in order to succeed.
In the book, The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls is trying to tell us that her parents are taking her happiness away. In this section, young Jeannette is witnessing how her parents get into argument about money and disrespect people who are trying to help their condition. Walls says, “I thought Grandma Smith was great. But after a few weeks, she and Dad would always get into some nasty hollering match. It might start with Mom mentioning how short we were on cash” (Walls 20).
However as Jeanette and her siblings quickly lose their innocence and are pulled into the reality of life, her idolization of her parents, (especially her father) gradually lessens and she comes to terms with their flawed lifestyle. As she begins to lose hope in her parents, she begins describing them in a more negative light. For example, she exposes the intensification of her father's drinking problem. “He staggered off to the bathroom, came back, ordered one for the road, slammed the shot glass down on the bar, and walked to the door. He lost his footing trying to open it and sprawled on the floor. I tried to help him up, but he kept falling over”(page?) This repugnant and embarrassing description of Rex, contrasts how Jeanette tried to showcase his admirable qualities earlier in the story. In the sentence she also no longe...
Grief is a various response to loss, particularly to the loss of someone that has died. People have a bond or affection formed over time making it hard to lose someone. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, a Swiss-born psychiatrist, presented a theory of the five stages of grief that is recognized by society. In the book, Drums, Girls and Dangerous Pie by Jordan Sonnenblick, the main character Steven Alper lives a normal life. He plays drums and hates his little brother, Jeffrey. Steven is constantly being annoyed by him which, bugs Steven. When Jeffrey is diagnosed with Leukemia, Steven’s life is flipped right upside down. He is hit hard with the five stages of grief. The five stages of grief are denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. Throughout the story, Sonnenblick explains the five stages of grief very well with Steven Alper.
In conclusion, the Wall’s family has many struggles throughout the book, but they still find ways to build the situation so it becomes better. Conflicts influence someone’s actions and decisions because they can control whether to make it bigger or make it better. In this case, Rex made some decisions to make things have a good turnout instead of bad. Jeannette uses many literary devices to tell this book, and to introduce adversity. There were many other conflicts in the book that turned out bad, because of the decisions that were made.
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.
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.
As Jeannette gets older she realizes that her parents differences are not something to be proud of. She comes to this conclusion at first when she is in the hospital after getting severe burns from her mother letting her cook hot dogs at the age of three. She realizes that it is not right for a parent to let their three year old to be cooking. Another example of when she realized that is when she had to eat food from a garbage can at school while all the others had brought food from home. She decided to hide her shame by eating the food from the garbage can inside the girls washroom. As Jeannette gets older she changes a little bit more by her perspective of things when she meets Billy. Billy is a juvenile delinquent that also has a father for a drunk. When Billy laughs at his own father when he was sleeping from drinking so much the night before, Jeannette argues with him saying that no one should make fun of their own father. Billy
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.
Elizabeth Kubler-Ross developed a theory based on what she perceived to be the stages of acceptance of death. Her theory has been taken further by psychologists and therapists to explain the stages of grief in general. Kubler-Ross identified five stages: denial and isolation, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance, as happening in that order. In William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Hamlet exhibits all five stages of grief, we can assume in relation to the recent death of his father, but not necessarily in this order, and in fact the five seem to overlap in many parts of the play.
Overcoming the grief that is felt after losing a loved one is a physically and mentally agonizing task. According to Dr. Christina Hibbert, a clinical psychologist who graduated from the California School of Professional Psychology, three main stages of grief include anger, depression and acceptance. Each one of these emotions can be seen in William Shakespeare’s Hamlet and The Descendants (2011, Payne) as the artists explore the effects of grief and the different emotional responses that one can have due to the loss of a loved one. Additionally, in Ismail Kadare’s Broken April, the Berisha family feels the sufferance that is associated with unexpected death, as well as the various temperamental reactions that one will have after losing a loved one. Each of these works of art represent a powerful example of the stages that one will go through after feeling the intense sorrow that is connected with death, as well as the unavoidable effects of grief.
Elisabeth Kubler and David Kessler have a hypothesis in which they have discovered the five stages of grief. Many people experiences grief in many different ways, but they usually follow the 5 stages of grief. In the novel Extremely Loud and Incredibly close they discuss the recent events of 9/11. Jonathan Safran Foer talks about grief through a nine year old's point of view about grief and the loss of his father. This novel was very real and personal it shows that type of human emotions you go through when you lose a family member, in this novel many people are able to go through the five stages of grief and it also shows how these characters are able to get through each death individually. Grief is one of the most powerful emotional forces
Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, was a psychiatrist who studied and proposed the concept of the five stages of dying. Which were: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance. Which to me was very fascinating to see how this theory was brought up and how simply being it’s only five stages that come when dying. The fact being that death was broken down into five stage really caught my interest because I want to learn how and why these stages are only five and how they became stages. Simply learning the how’s and why’s would be really interesting. Thus, even just learning the psychological part of it too. For example, learning how to approach someone in a educational and moral way too.
In 1969 Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, a psychiatrist, published the Pioneering book On Death and Dying. The work acquainted the world with the grieving process, called the five stages of grief. Kübler-Ross gathered her research from studying individuals with terminal cancer (Johnson, 2007). The first stage of the grieving process is denial. In this stage the person refuses to believe that their loved one is deceased, a common thought during this period is, “This can’t be happening to me” (Johnson, 2007).The second stage of the grieving process is anger. In this level the person becomes frustrated with their circumstances, a customary complaint is “Why is this happening to me?” (Johnson, 2007). The third stage of the grieving process is bargaining. At this point the individual hopes that they can prevent their grief, this typically involves bartering with a higher power, and an ordinary observance during this time is “I will do anything to have them back” (Johnson, 2007). The fourth and most identifiable stage of grief is depression. This phase is habitually the lengthiest as...
The stages of death are known to be a process of mourning that is experienced by individuals from all phases of life. This mourning ensues from an individual’s own death or the death of a loved one. Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross dedicated much of her career to studying this dying process and in turn created the five stages of death. The five stages are; denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. These stages may not occur in sequence and sometimes may intersect with one another (Axelrod, 2006). The reality of death many times causes a feeling of denial; this is known as the first stage. In this stage, people have many emotions and have a tendency to hide from reality. This reaction is momentary, but should not be rushed. The patient or loved one needs time to adjust to the awaiting death. This adjustment helps bring them through to the next stage; anger. Anger is a common feeling and many times routes from a feeling of not being ready. This emotion may be directed toward God, strangers, friends, family or even healthcare professionals (Purcell, 2006). In some cases, it can be targeted...
In the first stage, the narrator is in touch with reality; she lives and exists in a state of mind known in Freudian psychology as the Ego. The Ego is defined as "the element of being that consciously and continuously enables an individual to think, feel and act." (Barnhardt, 667). The ego is based on a reality principle, in which, a person reacts in "realistic ways that will bring long term pleasure rather than pain or destruction" (Meyers, 414). The narrator's inability to cope with disagreeable thoughts such as her father's possible death is evidenced early in the novel. The narrator states: "nothing is the same, I don't know the way anymore. I slide my tongue around the ice cream, trying to concentrate on it, they put seaweed in it now, but I'm starting to shake, why is the road different, he shouldn't have allowed them to do it, I want to turn around and go back to the city and never find out what happened to him. I'll start crying, that would be horrible, none of them would know what to do and neither would I. I bite down into the cone and I can't feel anything for a minute but the knife-hard pain up the side of my face...