Although Rex and Rosemary Walls of The Glass Castle have strange ways of parenting, and aren’t the ideal parents; the Walls’ kids should not be removed from their home. There are numerous reasons for them to be removed, indeed Rex and Rosemary, at times were awful parents, but children should never be taken away from their family, no matter how crazy they are. If the children were to be removed, they wouldn’t be anything like themselves; they wouldn’t have the education they currently have, they wouldn’t be as successful as they grow to be, and they would’ve missed out on many major life lessons.
The Walls’ children have an exquisite education, they learn from real world experiences, life lessons, and their teaching-certified mother. Although Lori, Jeanette, Brian, and Maureen were practically raised on the streets at times, their parents spent plenty of time teaching them everything from how to make beds from random appliances, to knowing the importance of not judging people because of their skin color. After the kids move to Welch, they discover some places do not have very decent teaching expertise, Jeanette says “ …but he stood at the front of the room next to a map of West Virginia, with all fifty-five counties outlines, and spent the entire class pointing to the counties and asking students to identify them”(137). In Welch, the learning is appalling. They “pass the hour watching a film of the football game that Welch High had played several days earlier”(137), in Jeanette’s second period. The Walls’ children would be better off learning from a trailer in the middle of the desert than in Welch High. Maureen however, was practically raised in a different environment, she wasn’t taught all of the lessons her siblings were, sh...
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... used. It’s important that Jeanette and her siblings were involved in some of the situations, because if Jeanette were taken from her parents, The Glass Castle wouldn’t have been written, and many readers wouldn’t have been informed about some of the circumstances that Jeanette’s family were involved in. To sum it up, children should never be taken away from their families unless something truly awful is happening; such as physical, and sexual abuse. Jeanette says in an interview at "CBS This Morning," her childhood was a "pretty wicked" time. Not many kids can say that.
Works Cited
Cochran, Amanda. "Glass Castle" author Jeannette Walls on her childhood: "Pretty wicked." CBS News. 12 June 2013 < http://www.cbsnews.com/news/glass-castle-author-jeannette-walls-on-her-childhood-pretty-wicked/>.
Walls, Jeanette. The Glass Castle. New York: Simon and Shuster, 2005.
As much as Walls loved her father, she realized he would “never build that Glass Castle. But we had fun planning it.” (279) Rex told them that special kids could have “those shining stars, he liked to point out, were one of the special treats for people like us who lived out in the wilderness.” (39) Walls really felt special when her mother said, “life’s too short to worry about what other people think. Anyway, they should accept us for who we are.” (157) This vicious cycle proves to the reader that Walls never had a way to escape from her parent’s cruel ways; she grew up thinking like her parents did. This cruel way of thinking made Rex feel good about himself while making Walls’ feel special. The idea of the Glass Castle gave Walls a sense of hope that her dad would stay true to his word, but the impracticable idea of a house of glass symbolizes just how unstable the Walls’ foundation was. Walls said, “As awful as he could be, I always knew he loved me in a way no one else ever had.” (279) Rex never had the stability to protect her and she knew he would endanger her. Walls’ father Rex had extraordinary power in convincing Walls that he only wanted the best for her, even while causing her to
One night Rex was drunk at a bar and met a man named Robbie. After Rex hustles Robbie in pool, Robbie wants to take Rex’s daughter, Jeanette, upstairs to his apartment. Rex knows that Robbie just wanted to have sex with Jeannette. He says to Robbie, “Sure… just don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.” (Walls 212) Even though Rex knew that Jeanette could handle herself, it is bad parenting. This proves that Rex Walls is out of touc...
I feel like the Jeannette’s father was sexually, physically or emotionally abused by his own family as a child growing up. From the way how Rex Walls became abusive to his family after he consumes alcohol drinks (Rex Walls wasn’t exactly abusive to the kids but he was abusive to his wife sometimes).
Jeannette Walls has lived a life that many of us probably never will, the life of a migrant. The majority of her developmental years were spent moving to new places, sometimes just picking up and skipping town overnight. Frugality was simply a way of life for the Walls. Their homes were not always in perfect condition but they continued with their lives. With a brazen alcoholic and chain-smoker of a father and a mother who is narcissistic and wishes her children were not born so that she could have been a successful artist, Jeannette did a better job of raising herself semi-autonomously than her parents did if they had tried. One thing that did not change through all that time was the love she had for her mother, father, brother and sisters. The message that I received from reading this memoir is that family has a strong bond that will stay strong in the face of adversity.
The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls is a memoir about Jeannette’s childhood experiencing many difficult situations. It is an excellent example of contemporary literature that reflects society. This story connects with social issues relevant to our time period, such as unstable home life, alcoholism, and poverty. Many of these issues, as well as others, are also themes of the story. One major theme of the story is overcoming obstacles, which is demonstrated by Jeannette, the Walls’ kids, and Rex and Mary Walls.
...d to share their deepest and most private moments with their audience members, and this in turn will create a genuine, quality story. When asked if Jeannette Walls has fulfilled the duty given to her by William Faulkner, one should not even come close to hesitating with their response. In The Glass Castle, Walls shares some of the most personal and emotion-evoking moments of her life, and they clearly include the essential characteristics of writing as defined by Faulkner. With the expert use of Walls rhetorical strategy, she makes the reader see, hear, feel, and sense the emotion as if it is occurring firsthand. So, to conclude, Jeannette Walls has most definitely fulfilled Faulkner’s expectations of a writer by crafting a memoir stuffed with superb rhetorical strategies that thoroughly translates the events in Walls’ life to the readers in a very detailed manner.
While growing up in life children need their parents to teach them and lead them on the path to a successful future. In the Glass Castle Rex Walls, Jeannette’s father, neglects to take care of his duties as a father figure in Jeannette’s life. In the same way he teaches her to be strong and independent at a very young age. As we read through the story we see the special relationship that Jeannette shares with her father. Even though he, in many instances, failed to protect his children, refused to take responsibility for them, and even stole from them, Jeannette still loved him until his death for two reasons: one, for his ability to make her feel special, and two, because he is a never-ending source of inspiration.
...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.
Jeanette Walls is the picture-perfect illustration of an individual who finds righteousness for herself. She is the protagonist in the book “The Glass Castle”, who has an unfair miserable childhood due to how her parents were. Walls stands out for her determination as she goes out to the real world to seek her own justice, with the ultimate goal of being stable for once, and take responsibility for herself, not for the whole family.
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
In “The Glass Castle”, the author Jeanette Walls describes her childhood and what motivated her to chase her education and move out to New York City with her siblings and leave their parents behind in West Virginia. The main struggle Jeanette and her siblings had was the conflicting point of view that they had with their mother on parenting. Despite their father Rex Walls being an alcoholic, constantly facing unemployment, and being a source of hope for his children, Rose Mary Walls had her list of attributes that shaped her children’s life. Rose Mary had a very interesting view on parenting in Jeanette Wall’s memoir and this perspective of parenting influenced her children both positively and negatively.
Every day the safety and well-being of many children are threatened by neglect. Each child deserves the comfort of having parents whom provide for their children. Throughout the memoir, The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls explains the childhood from being born into the hands of parent who neglect their children. Many may argue that children need to grow with their parents; however, the removal of children is necessary if the parents disregard the kid’s needs and cannot provide a stable life for their children.
There are several different social issues presented in Jeannette Wall’s memoir “The Glass Castle.” These issues included neglect – medical and education,
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 could say, and few would disagree, that perhaps the most important things for a parent to have and to give is love. Love seems at first to be all-encompassing; that as long as you love your children, you would do anything and everything for them- and this makes you a good parent.