Jeannette Walls’ memoir, The Glass Castle, encapsulates her childhood in poverty and trails her nomadic lifestyle with her irresponsible and arguably negligent parents. Although formidable and destructive when intoxicated, Walls’ father Rex was an intelligent, inventive man when sober. During the times when he was unemployed, Rex would design inventions to acquire wealth, such as “The Prospector”, a machine that would separate gold nuggets from other rocks based on weight. Moreover, he had formulated blueprints for an architecturally advanced and complex house, which had been named the Glass Castle. According to Walls’, “Once [Dad] finished the Prospector and we struck it rich, he’d start work on our Glass Castle” (Walls 25). This idea of
Being more engaged in his drinking, and less engaged in his word was one thing Rex Walls was good at. After neglecting this promise Jeannette, his favorite daughter, who always believed in him, eventually sees how awful alcohol makes him. Leading her to draw a end with believing in her father's word saying, “you will never build the glass castle” (238). Which then causes Rex to go into an even bigger depression.
The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls is a memoir told from 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. One of the ways Jeannette survived her tough childhood was her ability to stay positive. Throughout The Glass Castle, Jeannette was put in deplorable houses, and at each one she tries to improve it. “A layer of yellow paint, I realized would completely transform, our dingy gray house,” (Walls 180).
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.
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.
Many people have been questioning on whether maturity depends on one’s age. I believe that maturity isn’t dependant on someone’s age because one matures based on things they’ve undergo, and how their environment can be.
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
Fame, flashing lights, screaming fans. Poverty, neglectful parents, no real feeling of having a home. Even though these words paint two very different pictures, they both have one thing in common, a story of resilience. In the autobiography Facing the Music and Living to Talk About It by Nick Carter and Jeannette Walls’ memoir The Glass Castle, Carter and Walls both have internal and external factors that are the basis of their struggles, but their mental and emotional resilience helps them to overcome their hardships in an unfavorable environment.
1.Though The Glass Castle is brimming with unforgettable stories, Which scenes were the most memorable for you? Which were the most shocking, the most inspiring, the funniest?
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.
In the memoir, The Glass Castle the main character Jeanette has a very strange family. Jeanette’s parents are delirious of the dangers that they put their children through. They are squatters who go from state to state, skedaddling from the police. The children are forced to forage for scrap metals in the desert to sell for money. The Walls live in a less than mediocre house with no food to spare. When Rex Walls worked in the barite mine, he had access to a commissary where the mine owner deducted his bill. The family had a small but steady flow of food until Mr. Walls was fired from the mine. He believes that with his tactical idea of the Prospector he will be able to make his family rich. The Prospector is an invention that Mr. Walls came
Maturity does not depends with the person’s age, it's when a person becomes to emergence of personal and behavior characteristics through the growth processes.
...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.
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.
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.
I currently have 90 sixth grade students. By communicating with them on a daily basis, I have gotten to know them on a personal level and learned more about their backgrounds. After reading the book, Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, I could see parallels between my own childhood and Jeanette’s. I too grew up in a lower income family, as did my parents before me. Ruby Payne points out throughout her book, A Framework for Understanding Poverty, that the cycle of poverty often repeats itself, however my parents worked hard to break the cycle. For those students who live in poverty I can show compassion and try to make things a little better for them at school. One way I do that is to have extra supplies for those students whose family is unable