Within the memoir, The Glass Castle, the self destructing addiction of alcohol becomes an apparent theme throughout the literature. Alcoholism is a disease that can cause destruction to families and even ruin lives. This is a common occurrence that effect’s many Americans today. Alcoholism is one of the most common problems in families, it doesn’t always interfere with just the person drinking the alcohol. It also affects the people around the influenced person. Rex’s struggle with alcohol is logged through his daughter Jeannettes struggles as she is finding the balance between respecting daughter and a strong individual. It is through her accounts that the reader is able to see the truly damaging effects of this disease. Rex Walls is the …show more content…
They shared a special father-daughter bond. However, as she grew older she realized things more clearly and understood them more. She realized who her father truly was and did not want to end up the same way. “What I wanted to say was that I knew Eric would never try to steal my paycheck or throw me out the window, that I’d always been terrified I’d fall for a hard-drinking, hell-raising, charismatic scoundrel like you, Dad…” (Walls, 268). Their relationship weakened over the countless times of him coming home drunk, lying and getting the family into hard times. Jeannette also asked him to stop drinking several times, especially on her birthday as a birthday wish. Rex tried several times to stop and went into a depression while he stopped. He even locked himself in his room tied on his bed so he couldn’t move. He then again started drinking again and broke his promise to his daughter after their trip to the Grand Canyon. However, Jeannette could never imagine her life without him. “But despite all the hell raising and destruction and chaos he had created in our loves, I could not imagine what my life would be like-what the world would be like-without him in it.” ( Walls, 279). This shows how Jeannette will always have spot for her father, no matter how much he put her, her siblings and mother through. “Seeing the world that way has always helped Walls survive. In her first 10 years, her family lived in "at least 20 places" across the American West, she says. "I don't quite know what it means to live somewhere. Do you have to unpack? Does staying in a motel for a few weeks count?" Her dad would find odd jobs before getting fired or feeling the itch to move on. Her mom took teaching work but repeatedly quit when it interfered with her painting time. There were no new clothes, rarely enough to eat, no doctor visits.” (Hubbard, 76-80). Life got tougher and tougher as Jeannette got older. Rex’s drinking became worse as the
Being more engaged in his drinking, and less engaged in his word was one thing Rex Walls was good at. After neglecting this promise Jeannette, his favorite daughter, who always believed in him, eventually sees how awful alcohol makes him. Leading her to draw a end with believing in her father's word saying, “you will never build the glass castle” (238). Which then causes Rex to go into an even bigger depression.
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.
This can lead to frequent absences from work, unemployment, and misusing financial resources of the household and family. In Rex’s case in particular, he hurt the entire family: Distinctly, the Walls hold a short budget to begin with, but due to Rex’s constantly poor employment situation, and his control of Jeannette for alcohol money from their miniscule budget, the family is worse off than when they even started. Rex struggles to find employment due to alcohol’s effects: loss of work ethic and the pull to drink according to Drug Free. It doesn’t help that Jeannette gives in to Rex’s requests, but in the end they have even less money than they had. In addition to the financial hardships, the children tremendously suffer from their Rex’s behavior. As soon as Rex’s alcoholism hits it peak and the family grows well aware, Jeannette begins to adopt a trait called codependency. Codependency may be
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).
Children these days have a variety of needs, often being surrounded by the ideas of freedom and security. While some people seek complete freedom from society’s rules, others seek the comforts of security that a normal life provides. Children’s preferences on freedom and security are reflected from their Mom and Dad’s parenting style. In The Glass Castle, by Jeannette Walls, the characters Brian, Lori, and Jeannette show that while growing they would rather have security over freedom because they repeatedly find themselves in a state of danger due to their parent’s lack of security. For example, if Jeannette’s parents were accountable while Jeanette was in proximity to fire she would not have been traumatized and severely burnt. Another reason the children want security is Rex is an excessive alcoholic who is very dangerous to be around while he is under the influence of hard liquor, they would rather a father that responsibly handled alcohol. Rex’s surplus of expenses on booze led the family into poverty because instead of using the family’s rare profit to pay off bills Rex uses it to buy alcohol and items that were not a necessity to their survival. Therefore, their parents struggled to give even the simplest things for them such as food and clothes.
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 Walls, author of The Glass Castle, has most definitely responded to Faulkner’s outreach, and responded very strongly at that. She has more than accomplished her duty as a writer. Her memoir The Glass Castle is one of the most honest, raw, emotion and heart-filled pieces of literature ever to grace humanity. In this memoir, Walls uses many various rhetorical strategies to fulfill her duty as an author and embrace Faulkner’s message. Throughout the book, every range of emotion can be felt by the reader, due in large part to the expert use of Walls’ rhetorical strategies. These rhetorical strategies paint such vivid images that the reader can feel the sacrifice, the pity, and the love of Walls’ story as if they were standing alongside Jeannette herself.
It is a fact of life that Alcoholism will distort the victim’s view of reality. With authors, they put parts of their personality and symptoms of their condition into their characters sometimes, flawed distortions included, with varying degrees
Throughout the Glass Castle there is a constant shift in Jeanettes tone through her use of diction. Her memoir is centered around her memories with her family, but mainly her father Rex Walls. Although it is obvious through the eyes of the reader that Rex is an unfit parent and takes no responsibility for his children, in her childhood years Jeanette continually portrays Rex as an intelligent and loving father, describing her younger memories with admiration in her tone. The capitalization of “Dad” reflects Jeannette’s overall admiration for her father and his exemplary valor. “Dad always fought harder, flew faster, and gambled smarter than everyone else in his stories”(Walls 24). Jeanette also uses simple diction to describe her father, by starting sentences with, “Dad said,” over and over. By choosing to use basic language instead of stronger verbs, she captures her experience in a pure and honest tone.
...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.
Imagine, a little boy sitting at home alone, hungry and scared because he doesn’t know where his parents are. Millions of children live this scenario every day because they have parents who abuse alcohol. Alcohol abuse is an addiction that affects everyone in the drinker’s life. Many examples of this are shown in The Glass Castle, Jeanette Walls and her siblings are heavily impacted by their father’s drinking habit and are constantly forced to take care of themselves. Having a parent with a harmful history of alcohol abuse increases the risk of child maltreatment greatly, alcohol use disorder creates many problems especially when children are involved so government should step in and remove children from that environment.
Even though things were good with Rex and Jeannette , but “ He did have what mom called a little bit of a drinking situation”(23) which wasn’t that big of deal to Jeannette in the beginning, but due to his habit of changing jobs, more so losing them, and having the same excuses for losing them creates doubtful feelings in Jeannette’s mind. which exhibits a bit of concern in Jeannette about her father’s doings. One time the walls family went to the church but Rex wasn’t himself for he was drunk, so he started insulting the people at the church, which just shows his miserable state every time he drinks. He then goes out of hand by insulting Jeannette, “ I didn’t like dad when he talked like that” (p;114), first time Jeannette feels negative towards
In the memoir, The Glass Castle, Jeannette tells about her less than easy life. Her family was constantly moving about, never staying in one place for very long, or how Rex Walls would say they were always doing “the skedaddle”. But Rex, while trying to be a good father, struggles with a strong alcohol addiction. But all throughout the book we see that Rex has many of the traits of an admirable parent. These traits being that he never expects perfection from any of his kids or himself or his wife. He doesn’t fear occasional failures from them either. All parents should try to be admirable parents for their
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.