Our perspective on life can have a significant impact on our life. Depending on how you were raised it can impact your perspective on life very differently than others. For example if you were raised in a home of poverty or drug abuse you are use too that lifestyle when you're young. It wouldn't be till your older you would realize it is not a normal way of life. It shapes our life. In the novel the Glass Castle Jeanette is a perfect example of how your perspective changes throughout life as you experience life in addition to maturing. Her change in life had an unbelievable impact on her life that made her a well round mature adult despite her upbringing in poverty. Jeannette as well as her siblings, goes through a series of neglect from her …show more content…
"Years from now, when all the junk they got is broken and long forgotten," Dad said, "you'll still have your stars (39-41). I believe that Jeannette survived emotionally by her parents since she believed that her upbringing was a normal upbringing. It made her proud of her parents and family despite the neglect. I believe if she did not survive emotionally she would have become just like her parents when she gets older. 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
It shows that people’s opinions of her matter to her more than her opinion of herself. Also, it is shown that her mother is the one who gave Jeannette the confidence to tell the story of her past, which later provoked her to write this memoir.
Jeannette is a major character and protagonist. She is a round, dynamic character, and the memoir focuses on her development and maturity. Due to her forgiving nature, she is Rex Wall's favorite daughter. Despite her father's destructive nature, she chooses to be optimistic and positive. Through her early childhood she chooses to ignore her father's drunken episodes, and thinks of him as a loving father and an excellent teacher of the wild. By the time she reaches her junior year of high school, she realizes the indisputable flaws that her father has. She uses her intelligence to eventually move away from her parents and Welch. She is a natural forgiver and it shows even when she moves away from her parents.
Ever since she was a young girl. Jeannette had set high goals for herself. Since she was so advanced in school and genuinely enjoyed learning, it made sense that she would want to do big things with her life. Whether it was being a veterinarian or a geologist, her dreams extended far beyond her homes in little desert towns or Welch, West Virginia. However, because of her poverty-stricken home life, many people believed it didn’t seem likely that she would be so successful. One day, while living in Welch, Jeannette goes to the bar to drag her drunk father back home. A neighborhood man offers them a ride back to their house, and on the ride up he and Jeannette start a conversation about school. When Jeannette tells the man that she works so hard in school because of her dream careers, the man laughs saying, “for the daughter of the town drunk, you sure got big plans” (Walls 183). Immediately, Jeannette tells the man to stop the car and gets out, taking her father with her. This seems to be a defining moment in which Jeannette is first exposed to the idea that she is inferior to others. Although this man said what he did not mean to offend her, Jeannette is clearly very hurt by his comment. To the reader, it seems as if she had never thought that her family’s situation made her subordinate to those
The Glass Castle is a book about the childhood and adolescence of Jeannette Wells, the daughter of Rex and Rose Mary Walls. Throughout her childhood, she moved all over the country with her family, moving from one town to the next, often lacking food and good clothes, and living in a state of perpetual poverty. Once the children have grown up, they go to New York, where they live out their dreams while their parents live on the streets. There has been much debate whether Mary and Rex are bad parents are not. Even though their childhood was less than ideal, the fact that they survived and are now productive citizens means that they were better off living with their parents than in a foster home.
Most of her life Jeannette spent living among poverty. Whenever her family moved, they always moved to areas of high poverty and low economic standing. In these communities a lot of trauma, similar to events she had experienced, happened. It was hard for her to get away from all the bad things that happened, since she was constantly submerged in communities with it. Thus being said, this ultimately contributed to her become resilient to a lot of the traumatic events she encountered later on. Since she had witnessed some already, she was prepared to handle others traumatic events that might arise in her future. For instance, one day the neighbor decided to shoot his BB gun at Jeannette’s house. “I yanked the pistol out of Lori’s hand, aimed low, and pulled the trigger” (88). After witnessing her father handle his gun, she knew what a plausible solution to the problem would be—using the gun to defend herself and siblings against the boy. This set her up for recovering faster when encountering these traumatic events because had already been exposed to so many. Additionally, her parents were constantly on the move. Being constantly on the move never really gave her a sense of having a community to identify with, so when traumatic events occurred, she never had anyone to talk to about it other than her family. This contributed to why she was so distraught when her
Towards the middle of the memoir, the theme is shown through the irony of Jeannette’s mother’s situation as well as Jeannette’s feelings towards
After reading the story by Jeannette Walls, there are many reasons her life was impacted due to her poverty. One of the most prominent reasons for Jeannette Walls success after being brought up extremely poor was due to the perseverance her father gave her. For example in part two chapter sixteen there is a scene where Jeanette's father teachers her a strong lesson about perseverance. “Dad kept telling me that he loved me, that he never would have let me drown, but you can’t cling to the side your whole life, that one lesson every parent needs to teach a child is “If you don’t want to sink, you better figure out how to swim”(Walls 66). In this scene Jeannette
Through retelling her stories, many times Jeannette she closes by pointing out how unique her father makes her feel. This is not by what he does, but it is by what he does not do. He allows her to become weak in the moment and then she has to find a way to overcome the weakness at hand. It cannot be denied Rex Walls did some awful things that harmed his children, mostly Jeannette. In the harm that she was put in he built a relationship like no other with her that made her feel so special.
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.
The book The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls showed a lot of themes having to do with adversity. I used to fit in pretty well in the world. Something changed though that made me an outcast. The Glass Castle was a good example of how Jeannette didn’t fit in, but through her adversity, she became a strong person.
Have you ever thought about the reason behind the way a person acts. Quotes in this paper are from William Shakespeare’s The Tempest, and Virgil Suarez’s “En El Jardin De Los Espejos Quebrados”. This paper will contain a comparison between Caliban’s character in The Tempest, and “En El Jardin De Los Espejos Quebrados”. The poem “En El Jardin De Los Espejos Quebrados”, and The Tempest, shine different lights on Caliban’s character, by going in depth about his appearance, thoughts, feelings, and actions.
The book starts off with Jeannette, a successful adult, taking a taxi to a nice party. When she looked out the window, she saw a woman digging through the garbage. The woman was her mother. Rather than calling out to her or saying hi, Jeannette slid down into the seat in fear that her mother would see her. When asking her mother what she should say when people ask about her family, Rose Mary Walls only told her, “Ju...
Even though it’s hard to mend broken pieces, it is possible for parents to build strong children despite the problems they face. Jeannette becomes an independent girl inspire of her parents lack of attention which makes her fend for herself.
The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls is an incredibly powerful memoir. Jeannette recalls her life and childhood and tells her story exactly how she remembers it. Her family was a little messed up, her father was an alcoholic and her mother was a little “loopy”. Neither of them could hold a job, so the family was always on the run from the police and other people who wanted the money the family owed them. Jeannette and her siblings knew that their environment was toxic, and they were able to get out as soon as they could. The children moved to New York City and began to live a better life. Eventually, the parents joined the kids in New York, but they remained homeless and living on the streets. The children thrived in New York, finding new jobs
In the memoir “The Glass Castle” some characters seek complete freedom from society’s rules, while others seek the comforts and security that come from a “normal” life. However, what is more important to children: freedom or