The Glass Castle was published in March 2005 and tells the life story of Jeannette Walls, a story of family, perseverance, adventure, and peril. Her memoir quickly became a best-seller and this prompted the creation of a movie to capitalize on it. However, the movie did not gain as much attention as its parent novel and only made about $21.77 million dollars worldwide, according to Box Office Mojo. The official budget of the movie is unknown, but looking at the performance of past movies by the same producer such as The Blind Side, Water for Elephants, Marley & Me, and My Best Friend’s Wedding, all of which grossed hundreds of millions of dollars, we know that the box office performance The Glass Castle adaptation did not perform as well as …show more content…
As Jenn Doll stated in the article “The Trouble with Making Books We Love into Movies” about the perceived profitability of movie adaptations of books: “Among the challenges of such a mainstream-aimed movie: It must fit into the filmmakers’ assumptions of what will be successful…” (Paragraph 3). Numerous key scenes of the story were cut from the movie and this may have made the plot feel rushed and unexplained. But all of this was done in an attempt to make the movie more accessible to a wider variety of people, not just readers or moviegoers. Though there is no way to get past how some moments of Jeannette’s life are just breezed through, the film uses dialogue and visual storytelling to overcome its limitation of not using expository …show more content…
Towards the beginning of the movie, we see a young Jeannette Walls making hot dogs as she did in the novel. From this scene, we immediately learn about the Walls’ family style of parenting and how dangerous it is to their children. In the book, a lot of time in this chapter of The Glass Castle is spent setting the scene and focusing on the reactions of the outside world. But since the movie is able to provide a visual representation, the majority of the expository process is reduced and more time can be allocated to further tell the story. In the movie, there is an exclusive scene where Rex Walls gets into an argument with a doctor after him questioning him about how Rex takes care of his children. Rex rebutted that in order for their family to be able to get medical attention they would have to use up months worth of money for food. This further explains the financial situation the family is in and Rex Walls’ character and beliefs. What scenes from the novel were cut were only done so to streamline the story and amass a more casual
In the novel, The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls recounts her childhood as a tale of harsh struggle and of conflicting viewpoints. The set of ideals which she developed as an individual along with those instilled within her by her parents seemingly rival those purported by society and the developed world, creating an internal struggle greater than any of her physical conflicts. Examples of such conflicts involve the abstract areas of race, wealth versus poverty, and idealism versus realism.
Jeannette Walls, American writer and journalist, in her memoir, The Glass Castle, shares her vividly stunning childhood growing up with her family. Due to her misguided and dysfunctional parents, Jeannette and her siblings had to suffer through poverty, negligence, and abuse. Jeannette Walls states, “Some people think my parents are absolute monsters and should’ve had their children taken away from them. Some think they were these great free-spirited creatures who had a lot of wisdom that a lot of parents today don’t [have].” Although a handful of individuals believe that the Walls’ parenting style was justified and has led to the sibling’s success, their children should have been taken away to be raised properly because their parents were unfit, and they experienced an immense amount of physical and sexual abuse and neglect throughout the process.
The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls is a memoir told in the perspective of a young girl (the author) who goes through an extremely hard childhood. Jeannette writes about the foodless days and homeless nights, however Jeannette uses determination, positivity, sets goals, and saves money, because of this she overcame her struggles.
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.
She went off to seek the person she was meant to be. She had a purpose now, and this gave her a quest. She never gave up because she wrote the memoir from New York City and even saw her homeless mother as she passed by in a taxi on her way to her city apartment (Walls 9). Jeannette was determined on her quest and persevered through it all to become the person she is today. By utilizing symbolic, character, and situational archetypes such as fire, a hero, and a quest, Walls effectively conveys her theme of perseverance in her memoir, The Glass Castle.
The Glass Castle is a memoir written by Jeannette Walls about her family. In this story she tells about her adventurous and dangerous childhood that shaped her to be the person she is today. Which is a strong, optimistic, responsible woman who knows how to roll with the burns and the punches literally. Brian, who is younger than Jeannette was her partner in crime in all her childhood memories. Maureen was the youngest she was not too close with the family and if I had one way to describe her it would be lost. Lori was oldest sibling and the total opposite. She was more reserved and very into her art. Which she took after their mother, RoseMary. RoseMary was a selfish woman, she would constantly put herself first. She was also, very weak and
In the book, The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls there were many conflicts throughout the book, and the people in the situations made different decisions and actions depending on how they were involved in the conflict. The title of the book itself is a metaphor that signifies false promises and hopes. The author uses Mary literary devices to show adversity. The person that stood out the most in how he dealt with things was Rex Walls, since he’s the one who took different actions and decisions when a problem came their way. Jeannette Walls uses a lot of literary devices to show the adversity of building a family and how people’s actions and decisions depend on the conflict.
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
...d to share their deepest and most private moments with their audience members, and this in turn will create a genuine, quality story. When asked if Jeannette Walls has fulfilled the duty given to her by William Faulkner, one should not even come close to hesitating with their response. In The Glass Castle, Walls shares some of the most personal and emotion-evoking moments of her life, and they clearly include the essential characteristics of writing as defined by Faulkner. With the expert use of Walls rhetorical strategy, she makes the reader see, hear, feel, and sense the emotion as if it is occurring firsthand. So, to conclude, Jeannette Walls has most definitely fulfilled Faulkner’s expectations of a writer by crafting a memoir stuffed with superb rhetorical strategies that thoroughly translates the events in Walls’ life to the readers in a very detailed manner.
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.
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
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 “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.
Jeannette Walls reluctantly wrote Glass Castle in an attempt to show that even those with very different backgrounds and cultures really aren't all that different after all. Walls wrote of ridiculous situations and her experiences while growing up with a family that lacked the regular structural culture of other families, which included qualities such as morality, integrity, and a basic knowledge and feeling of obligation to follow the law of the land. Her parents both held values that were unique to each one of them as they lived their lives strongly expressing, through actions and words, that the normal values of other people simply weren’t right. Jeanette’s parents, though unconventional, were just as loving, if not more loving towards their kids as other parents. I think the reason the family was so strange, was simply because of the parents’ values that they taught their kids. The values your parents raise you with can greatly affect your future, and who you become as a person; this is what I can relate to. I’ve become conscious of how the values I grew up on evolved into more of a belief system, if not a stubborn pride-driven ability to deny handouts or help from people. Add this characteristic of mine to the fact that my parents wouldn’t allow me to drive until I turned eighteen, the fact that I lived on an isolated
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.