The Glass Castle Stereotypes

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

Jeannette and her siblings learn to provide for themselves and try to avoid the continuous problems caused by their parents and others around them. The effects of poverty, as witnessed through The Glass Castle, are still felt throughout America today.
Poverty in America is a very complex issue that can be looked at from many directions. There are a plethora of statistics and theories about poverty in America that can be confusing and at times contradicting. It is important to objectively view statistics to gain a better understanding of poverty and to wade through the stereotypes and the haze of cultural views that can misrepresent the situation.The official poverty line in America begins with a person making at or below $12,060. To calculate the poverty line for a family, an additional $4,180 is added to the base of $12,060 for each additional member(“Federal Poverty Level Guidelines”). According to the last U.S. census, over 45 million or 14.5% of Americans are at or below the poverty line(Worstall). At this level, the U.S. poverty level has not changed much from the 1970s when the government began a “War on Poverty.” However,

Many of these groups utilize surveys and other census data to compile a greater amount of statistics. These studies find that a large amount of Americans that are in poverty today actually have far greater privilege in household appliances and conveniences than did those in poverty in previous years. According to surveys from 2012, 80% of households in poverty have air conditioning as compared to only 36% of all homes in 1970. About 75% have one vehicle and around 31% have two or more vehicles. Over two-thirds also have cable/satellite TV and DVD/VCR machines(Sheffield). Some commentators chalk this up to the devaluation of goods and the commonality of many of these household appliances but others see this as an increase in quality of living. Most people thinking of poverty also think of hunger and malnourishment. In the memoir, we see that the kids often go hungry do to lack or mismanagement of money by their parents. A quote from the book, “When other girls came in and threw away their lunch bags in the garbage pails, I’d go retrieve them” displays the struggle the writer had in finding enough