Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Overcoming obstacles
Essay on overcoming obstacles by perseverance
Essay on overcoming obstacles by perseverance
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: Overcoming obstacles
Hardships are a terrible, but normal part of everybody’s life. No matter the hardship, anybody can recover. After viewing the information, it give an idea of how bad each of them had it.When Jeannette from The Glass Castle escapes the depths of Welch and her parents, her life was smooth sailing afterwards. When you have a life as very upsetting as hers, It is expected for more struggles to happen later in life. Not everybody will be as fortunate as her and continue forward with no regression. When Lily from The Secret Life of Bees ran away from home with no clue where she was headed, other than a town written on a picture. Liz from Homeless to Harvard: The Liz Murray Story had drug addicted parents and no plans on continuing an education. She reached a life changing decision and started going to school again. This lead to her ultimate goal of going to college, and at one of the most profound ones in the United States. If these three girls can overcome the intense situations they endured, anybody can.
With the right mindset, anybody can achieve successfulness. It doesn’t depend on the social ranking, amount of money, or any other factors. If somebody was brought up like Jeannette was, they could follow in her foot steps. With parents who offer out no help, it would require all the effort to come for the child wanting change. They cannot rely on anybody for help because it is rare and temporary. They also shouldn’t count of moving at such a young age, it was miracle even with Jeannette’s parents that they let leave. In a whole, Jeannette’s story can be achieved by anyone if they are up for the challenge. Liz’s story can relate to more children or teens around America. Many children have the struggle of drug addicted parents in tod...
... middle of paper ...
...azing thing to do. She even had an addiction to drugs, but was able to defeat it. All of these girls should be praised for what they have overcome, but Dani had the most success. Liz’s statement “Homeless person or business person, doctor or teacher, whatever your background may be, the same holds true for each of us: life takes on the meaning that you give it.” gives a picture of how everybody should look at life, and sums up the overall idea of each of their stories.
Works Cited
Borders, Crossing. "How One Woman Went from Homeless to Millionaire In Less Than Two Years." Forbes. Forbes Magazine, 13 Feb. 2013. Web. 19 May 2014.
"Captive Thoughts Book Club." : The Glass Castle, by Jeannette Walls. Nov.-Dec. 2009. Web. 19 May 2014
"The Secret Life of Bees Quotes.” Goodreads. Goodreads, Web. 21 May 2014.
“Liz Murray > Quotes.” Goodreads. Goodreads, Web. 22 May 2014
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.
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.
Jeannette Wales, author of The Glass Castle, recalls in her memoir the most important parts of her life growing up as a child that got her where she is now. Her story begins in Arizona in a small house with her parents and three siblings. Her parents worked and didn’t do much as parents so she had to become very independent. Her parents and siblings were the highlights to most of her memory growing up. She is able to recall memories that most small children wouldn’t be able to recall with as much detail.
The girls decided to start a traveling fund before they left for New York. They got little jobs around the town they lived in and were payed little money for doing a lot of work. They put their time and effort into making that money so that they could start a new and enhanced life for themselves. However, as written in the memoir, Walls talk about how one night their piggy bank, Oz, was robbed and all of their hard work in earning money and dedication was a complete waste of time. She writes “One evening in May, when we’d been saving our money for almost nine months, I came home with a couple dollars I’d made babysitting and went into the bedroom to stash them in Oz …I knew it was Dad, but at the same time, I couldn’t believe he’d stoop this low.” (Walls 228) Knowing that their own father had stolen their hard-earned money for something like alcohol, and still being able to talk to and be around him shows a great amount of forgiveness. They forgave him and that allowed them to move on with their lives rather than sulking about what he had done. Walls’ yet again shows another amazing example of a traumatizing experience with having parents who were selfish and were more concerned about themselves and their own petty
She knows she will never truly experience poverty because this is nothing more than a project but she leaves behind her old life and becomes known as a divorced homemaker reentering the workforce after many years. Her main goal is to get enough income to be able to pay for all her expenses and have enough money to pay next months rent.
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
She would mostly be alone and sit by herself being buried in books or watching cartoons. In high school she attended a program for troubled adolescents and from there she received a wide range of support from helping her get braces to helping her get information to attend community college. (59) Even with this she was already too emotionally unstable due to her family issues and felt like she couldn’t go through with her dreams to travel and even go into the art of culinary. She suffers from psychological problems such as depression and worries constantly about almost every aspect in her life from work to family to her boyfriend and just hopes that her life won’t go downhill. (60) Overall Kayla’s family structure shows how different is it now from it was in the 1950’s as divorce rates have risen and while before Kayla’s type of family structure was rare now it is becoming more common. This story helps illustrate the contributions of stress that children possess growing up in difficult homes in which they can’t put their own futures first they must, in some cases, take care of their guardian’s futures first or others around them. Again, this adds into the inequality that many face when it comes to being able to climb up the ladder and become successful regardless of where one
Family, education and a person’s opportunities are significant elements that collectively define an individual, as demonstrated by both Wes Moore’s. Depending on the opportunities offered to you and whether you decide to take advantage of them through hard work and persistence will result in your success or failure in the end. Wes Moore explains “The chilling truth is that his story could have been mine. The tragedy is that my story could have been his” goes to show that certain factors affect how you will be as an adult regardless of similar or differentiating backgrounds. (Moore xi).
Everyone has to deal with struggles during their everyday life. Some people’s problems are more serious than others, and the way that people deal with their problems varies. Everybody has a coping mechanism, something they can use to make the struggle that they’re going through easier, but they’re usually different. Some people drink, some people smoke, some people pretend there is no problem. There are healthy and unhealthy coping mechanisms, and people will vary the one they use depending on the problem they’re facing. In The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, the author and her family deal with their struggles in multiple different ways as time goes on. However, the severity of her situation means that the methods she uses to deal with it are very important. That’s why it’s bad that Jeanette’s and her family have such unhealthy coping mechanisms, such
The Glass Castle written by Jeannette Walls is a true story memoir, which introducing family which consists of four children, a neglectful mother and an alcoholic father. This family is constantly confined by poverty and foolish decision making on the part of the parents (reword this it sounds awkward). Despite these obstacles, Jeannette Walls is able to progress forward and to be successful, thus proving that she indeed is the “fittest of all”. She proves that she is the fittest of all because of her ability to survive life and death situations, her ability to adapt without her parent’s, and her ability to remain determined in trying to achieve her goals.
Education plays a big role in our daily lives. Education is commonly defined as a process of learning and obtaining knowledge. The story takes place beginning in the late 1950s to the early 2000s. Jeannette Walls is the main character of the story and the narrator. She tells the events of her life living with careless and yet loving parents. This family of six lived in many cities and towns and went through tough states to stay alive. Her mother and father never kept a good steady job, but they had great intelligence. Jeannette and her siblings barely went to school to get the proper education they needed. 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.
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
There are several different social issues presented in Jeannette Wall’s memoir “The Glass Castle.” These issues include neglect – medical and education. unsanitary living conditions, homelessness, unemployment, alcohol abuse, domestic violence. violence, discrimination, mental health issues, physical and sexual abuse, hunger and poverty. Poverty was one of the major key issues addressed in this memoir.
Jeannette Walls was born into a poor family who often had to live homeless and without food. The environment in which she grew up in is what gave her the characteristics she possesses. One trait that describes Jeannette is that she is very adventurous. Since she was constantly exposed to new surroundings, she became curious of them. While she was homeless in the desert, she would play a game with her father called Monster Hunting. She grew to not be afraid of anything, since she could fight off these so called “monsters.” Also, Jeannette is very decisive. To get away from Welch, a poor town in West Virginia, she made sure that she would get enough money to move to New York. She did this by getting a job to save up money for a bus ticket and for college. Along with this, Jeannette is very ambitious. She worked very hard to get accepted into college by working for the school newspaper, since she wanted to become a journalist. On the other hand, Melba Patillo was born into a middle class family who lived in Lit...
In the essay “Suitcase Lady” by Christie McLaren, she proves that even people you least expect to be successful can be. Although the main character may not be successful in the business aspect, she is successful! She may be in an uncomfortable situation but as she states here: “I...always try to do the best to help people- the elderly, and kids, and my country, and my city of Toronto, Ontario” (5). Even though she is homeless, she still is relatively happy and she is respectful of other people, making her successful. However, she is unsuccessful when it comes to her family. The suitcase lady seemed to have struggled with money for quite sometime making it hard for her to start a family, “We never got along well because I didn’t bring him up. I was too poor. He never called me mama” (4). She seems quite upset about the fact that her own son and her do not get along. She clearly does love her child but she had a hard time making sure he had a high quality of life so she had to give him away. Therefore, she is unsuccessful with her family, making her lack the happiness she