Everyone has their own hardships in life. It’s one’s choice whether or not they want to recover from it. They may choose to overcome their adversities or continue to live with them. In The Glass Castle, Secret Life of Bees, and Homeless to Harvard: The Liz Murray Story, the main characters share their stories to prove to others that you can overcome and achieve anything you set your mind to. Their goal was to encourage those, who have lost all hope in themselves, to never give up. Jeannette, Lily, and Liz all came from different backgrounds, but in the end, they were able to break free from their past and achieve goals that never seemed possible. They battled with drug addict, alcoholic, and abusive parents and were left to fend for themselves. With a lot of perseverance, self-determination, and strive, they were able to make choices that helped them recover from their past.
Education is a big factor in life and for someone who is trying to recover from a rough past, it’s a need. In Homeless to Harvard: The Liz Murray Story, Liz had the chance to go to school as a child but as she grew up, she rarely went. She stayed home with her parents and went only to take her final test to pass the grade. As she realized that school was her only way to get anywhere in the future, she began to take things more seriously. Liz asserts, “I'm smart. I know I can succeed. I just need a chance. A chance to climb out of this place I've born in. Everyone I know are angry and tired. They're trying to survive. But I know that there is a world out there that is better, that's better developed. And I want to live in it,” (Homeless to Harvard: The Liz Murray Story). She worked hard trying to get back into school and she took extra classes to make up for t...
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...n Homeless to Harvard: The Liz Murray Story, Liz was able to open up to her teacher. She went to him with any problems she had at home and at school. He helped her accomplish four years of high school in two years and get a full-ride scholarship to Harvard. Without Liz’s teacher, she wouldn’t have been able to fulfill her accomplishments.
Breaking free from a difficult family upbringing can be hard to overcome, but it isn’t impossible. With the resources that are available around the world, anyone can get help with issues that may occur in their lifetime. In The Glass Castle, Secret Life of Bees, and Homeless to Harvard: The Liz Murray Story, all of the characters were able to overcome their hardships with help and motivation from people who truly cared. All you need are supporting people around you and the right mindset, and you can achieve anything you want to.
Pashtana said she would rather die than not go to school and acted on her words. Her education is limited and she doesn’t have all the recourses to make school easier, yet she still loves and wants all the knowledge she can get. While I sit in my three story private school, a clean uniform free of holes or loose seams, my macbook air in my lap, the smell of cookies rising up from the cafeteria, wishing to be anywhere else but there. No one has beat me because I want to go to school, no one has forced me into a marriage, I’ve never put my life in jeopardy for the sake of education. Pashtana’s life and choices made me take a moment to stop and reflect on my own life and how fortunate I am to have what I have.
In Linda Lee’s case, her son was one who was smart but never really applied himself and then when it came time to go to college he was ill-prepared and had no clue about what to do with himself; however, with how “America is obsessed with college” (Lee 3) it isn’t really his fault that he wasn’t prepared but more of a lack on the educational systems part. During high school, you are pushed to take what classes best
After reading Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt and The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, I observed that both these texts share a few similarities in the way the authors portray the difficulties their characters have to face, in order to get to where they are now. After researching a few rags to riches stories and using Slumdog Millionaire and The Pursuit of Happyness as my primary sources, I found out that successful individuals from harsh backgrounds shared similar complications, yet they had the will and perseverance to get to where they are now. They faced difficulties such as dealing with poverty and hardships of everyday life, struggling to overcome the effects of addiction and abuse. They found ways to overcome these difficulties through things like having some form of education, and utilizing their knowledge, to manipulate opportunities to their advantage in order to bring about success.
Jeannette Wall’s memoir, The Glass Castle, talks about the hardships and challenges that she and her family had to suffer from, as they were constantly running out of the food and cash, leading them to move from places to places such as Battle mountain in Nevada, Phoenix in Arizona, Welch in West Virginia, New York City and so on in the search of survival. Some places provided a better quality of live , while some worsen it. Thus, the author and her family were living under the condition of the poverty, where they had to struggle for the basic needs such as food, clothing, and shelter by not getting adequate resources to support the minimum level of their physical health.
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
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.
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.
...family that she grew up in was such a negative environment. It is very possible that she will grow up to be an art teacher. One might think this because she looked up to her art teacher so much and admired her; Ellen’s mind is full of creativity and ideas. When Ellen’s school found out that her dad was abusive to her they put her up at her art teacher’s house. Ellen says “I came a long way to get here but when you think about it really hard you will see that old Starletta came even farther… And all this time I thought I had the hardest row to hoe” Like Ellen did, it is important for everyone to look back into their life and see what they have learned. Doing so cannot change ones past but only add to their future. Ellen will always carry the horrors of her childhood with her but by using all of her assets that she gained throughout the book her future can be enriched.
When she returned to Boston, she asked her grandmother if she could start another school in her grandmother’s dining room. After a bit of opposition, her grandmother agreed (Compton’s,...
The lack of education can lead to poverty and poverty can lead to a lack of education, this is a cycle that is hard to get out of. Author Wes mother was able to go to college and get her degree. She wasn 't the first to go or the first two finished. She was able to overcome the situation poverty and found a way to go to college. This desire for college was something she gave to author Wes. She knew the public school was a bad place to be for her son so she did what she had to have the money to send Wes to Riverdale Country School. Author Wes got the schooling that had more of a focus on attending college as an end goal by attending Riverdale Country School. Since he went to Riverdale Country School he got the desire to get a degree that he probably would have never got in the public school in his neighborhood. The other Wes mother 's life was different and she didn 't put that need to get a degree into her
Going to college has become an American dream. The desire to gain an education, in order to live a fulfilled life, leads to working a dream job and having the house on the corner with the white picket fence. However, achieving the American dream of obtaining a college degree is not as easy as one may think. To live the American dream students need to have a deep desire to learn and educate themselves to become more thoroughly educated and knowledgeable. Both Russel Baker’s essay “School vs. Education” and Mary Sherry’s’ essay “In Praise of the F Word” have agreed with points in the fact that education begins earlier in life. But when does education begin? The first easy lessons in life begin from learning how to roll, crawl, walk, and talk. I remember when I was about three years old and learned how to ride my first bike with training wheels. Although I didn’t learn overnight, after much practice, I became a pro. We are born to learn. However, active parenting, a supportive community, a robust economy, and prepared teachers impact the process of education and the importance
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.
Author Jeannette Walls, just like so many other Americans in the United States was deeply impacted by poverty. Poverty in the United States is not an uncommon occurrence and thousands of people in the United States are currently being raised well below the poverty line. Jeannette Walls in her memoir The Glass Castle was one child who was greatly impacted in a positive way due to the lessons and hope her parents were able to give her. This gave her perseverance, persistence and power to become the successful person she has become today.