Jeanette Walls’ novel, The Glass Castle, demonstrates a relationship between a family enduring poverty and the irresponsibility of the parents experiencing a migratory lifestyle. The impressive factor about Jeanette’s novel is although the family life is negative and the parents act immoral, they manage to diffuse in their children flexibility, love of learning, and make the children strive to be the best they can be. These are incomparable traits that last forever and lead to success and independence. With all the obstacles the Walls children encounter, presents chances to enhance resilience and extensibility. Surprisingly, Jeanette and her siblings learn early to rely on one another for their needs because both parents are egotistical and only care …show more content…
for their own needs. Jeanette’s mother, Rosemary, remains obsessed with her own likes, especially painting, while her father continues to act an alcoholic. Rex Walls endures his addiction and is a big pain for the family. Although the Walls parents constantly overlook their children, they really love them. For instance, the Walls family live very nomadic, so nomadic that the children love it. By making traveling fun, Rex calls moving ‘the skedaddle” and treats it as an adventure. As the Walls parents avoid responsibility, the children learn to advance in life by taking on the role of parents. This is best portrayed when they force their mother to go teach while in Welch. When the principal of the school plans to fire Rosemary because of her irresponsibility, the children step in to help their mother maintain the job. Jeanette claims, “Miss Beatty threatened to fire mom, so Lori, Brian, and I started helping mom with schoolwork.” (74). The children wound up doing everything for Rosemary, including grading papers. This becomes ironic because due to Rosemary’s inefficiency, it provides her children a firsthand struggle of the work life. Although the Walls children experience negativity, this allows them to become successful and prove their best in the future. The Walls parent’s constant view of letting their children slide without having their basic needs and safety proves visible even in Jeanette’s childhood.
Jeanette gets severely burned at the age of three while cooking hotdogs by herself. Rosemary has instilled in her children the attitude of independence and pursuing something they want by themselves, including food. The Walls children learn to be self-sufficient through neglect, making them tenacious and flexible people. Rex teaches Jeanette to swim by letting her struggle until she almost drowns. He views her avid struggle and states, “sink or swim!” (66), to help Jeanette force herself to swim. As Jeanette grows older, Rex continues to take advantage of her. This becomes especially evident when he bribes Jeanette to give him her money meant for food for him to buy alcohol. This makes Jeanette sick and even wants to move to New York with Lori, yet she waits until the right time. This teaches Jeanette to be self-manageable and not fall to bribes. The Walls’ careless manner of parenting teaches their children to be self-reliant because there is no other way to thrive. Because of their careless parenting and negative inputs, the children find their best and also
success. Despite Rex and Rosemary’s lack of responsibility and failure to maintain jobs, they strive to teach their children the value of learning. Essentially, the Walls bond through learning. Rex and Rosemary love learning, the Walls children also love learning. The euphoria of education is one of the strongest unifying forces in the Walls family. After supper, they would read together and bond as they further their intellects. Sharing knowledge is how Rex and Rosemary best reveal their compassion towards their children. Rex teaches the children science, math, and philosophy, and Rosemary teaches them literature and religion. Rex is complex; Rosemary is literal. The Walls children are always awarded for the intellectual advantage, especially in literature. For the Walls, the will to learn has no limits; it remains an important factor throughout their lifetimes. Rex and Rosemary truly love their children, especially through the art of learning. Through this, the Walls children were paved a path to success and lead them to be their utmost best in life. The Glass Castle portrays the importance of family values, especially in difficult times. Despite the many defects Rex and Rosemary own up to, the Walls children are raised to be flexible, tenacious, educated, and independent. The love and compassion of Rex and Rosemary along with their neglect allow for the children to grow up to become successful. The hardships and negatives they experience allow them to find their inner best and strive for success. The Walls children, together, dig themselves out of a hole created by their parents, and pave themselves a way to succeed.
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).
Neglect is the failure or refusal of a parent or care giver to provide the basic needs: food, safety, hygiene, and clothing. With famished children, Jeannette’s mother remarks: “Why spend the afternoon making a meal that will be gone in an hour…when in the same amount of time, I can do a painting that will last forever” (56). What we perceive here, the characteristic conduct of Mrs. Walls, is an unwillingness to set aside her own interests in order to care for others (specifically, her own children). Rudely, her mother along with many other deteriorated parents are pre-occupied ...
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.
I’ve never heard of any childhood quite like yours. I was shocked by the personality and character of your parents and how they raised you and your sibilings, “The Glass Castle”. I understand why people call your parents monsters. I will admit that the thought crossed my own mind on multiple occasions. However, I have also never read a book or a memoir that required so much thinking . With every page I read I was able to learn about the struggles & hardships you dealt with as a child and I tried to see a deeper meaning. When I did that, I saw your parent’s intentions behind everything they did. I began to understand what you saw and still see in your parents.
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.
Throughout the book The Glass Castle, Jeannette and her family are essentially homeless, which leaves them with dealing with the daily struggles that come along with it. Although there are only a few instances where the Walls did not have a home, the conditions they lived through were horrendous. Jeannette and her siblings cope with their situations in many ways. At the beginning, the children never complained. Their parents Rex and Rose Mary had significantly different coping mechanisms. While Rose Mary was painting or sleeping, Rex was heading to the local bars. Their ways of dealing with their living situations and overall economic and political status did not help the siblings lead a fulfilling childhood. Coping mechanisms
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
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.
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.
Social class has always been a controversial issue in America. This idea, that individuals are defined by their wealth, is explored by Jeannette Walls in her memoir, The Glass Castle. Walls shows, through a manifold of personal anecdotes, how growing up in a dysfunctional household with financially inept parents affected her and her siblings. Growing up in this environment, Jeannette was exposed to a very different perception of the world around her than those of higher social status. However, despite the constant hardships she faced, Walls makes it clear that a lower social status does not define an individual as inferior to those in a higher class.
The Walls family consists of three daughters and a son. Out of all of the kids, Rex the father favors Jeannette who is the middle child only because he felt that they both understand each other. “ I swear, honey, there are times I think you’re the only one around who still has faith in me” (P;79). This shows how their trust in each other is compared to the rest of the family and it also shows their bond, their sense
Walls and her family also do not have enough money to buy food and clothes. As Walls described, “I had three dresses to my name, all hand-me-downs or from the thrift store” (Walls 140).... ... middle of paper ...
...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.
...victims, the Walls siblings may not have chosen to overcome their painful history to become such strong and successful individuals. The abdication of what one could consider appropriate parental responsibility by moving to Welch isolated the children in a very hard environment. In their time there, the remarkable survival skills and character that the children developed served as a source of strength in their escape from their environment. Their determination in forging a better future for themselves is realized by utilizing the skills they formed while trapped in Welch. The courage to embrace change; putting aside such a deplorable childhood speaks volumes about the remarkable ability of these siblings to overcome hardship and achieve their own powerful and unique lives.
...ndurance of poverty, as we witness how Walls has turned her life around and told her inspiring story with the use of pathos, imagery, and narrative coherence to inspire others around her (that if she can do it, so can others). Jeannette made a huge impact to her life once she took matters into her own hands and left her parents to find out what life has in store for her and to prove to herself that she is a better individual and that anything is possible. Despite the harsh words and wrongful actions of Walls’ appalling parents who engage her through arduous experiences, she remained optimistic and made it through the most roughest and traumatic obstacles of her life at the age of three. Walls had always kept her head held high and survived the hardships God put upon her to get to where she is today; an author with a best selling novel to tell her bittersweet story.