Poverty affects many different aspects of a person's life. According to the United States Census Bureau there were 43.1 million Americans in poverty for 2015 (Proctor, 1). In Jeannette Walls’ The Glass Castle poverty affects the Walls family in some ways that make things harder on them. Poverty can affect a person’s safety, mental and emotional health, physical health, and learning abilities. The characters in the novel are affected to a great extent on those issues. There are many negative affects on the Walls family from living in poverty that stick with them throughout a large part of their lives. Research shows there is a direct correlation between learning abilities and poverty. Children that live in poverty risk having lower learning abilities compared to a more privileged child. According to Carol Lynn Mithers, “Children from poor homes suffer an especially high level of reading problems.” (Mithers). Illiteracy can cause poverty because people that are illiterate earn less money. Mithers also says that “It’s not that poverty causes illiteracy, but illiteracy often make people poor: By some estimates, workers with little or no reading ability earn roughly a third as much as the most …show more content…
Poverty can lead to post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, and anxiety as well as other mental illnesses. Based off of an article by Lindsey Wahowiak “With poverty, there’s post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, and anxiety.” (Wahowiak) that can affect a person negatively. In some cases mental health improves when the people come out of poverty. Wahowiak also said “Huang said that studies have shown that when individuals and communities are lifted out of poverty, mental health improves.” (Wahowiak). As seen in The Glass Castle poverty can cause minor mental health issues to become worse such as selfishness with the mother. The characters in The Glass Castle have minor mental health issues from being in
Jeannette Walls, American writer and journalist, in her memoir, The Glass Castle, shares her vividly stunning childhood growing up with her family. Due to her misguided and dysfunctional parents, Jeannette and her siblings had to suffer through poverty, negligence, and abuse. Jeannette Walls states, “Some people think my parents are absolute monsters and should’ve had their children taken away from them. Some think they were these great free-spirited creatures who had a lot of wisdom that a lot of parents today don’t [have].” Although a handful of individuals believe that the Walls’ parenting style was justified and has led to the sibling’s success, their children should have been taken away to be raised properly because their parents were unfit, and they experienced an immense amount of physical and sexual abuse and neglect throughout the process.
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 grim situation is depicted in the writings of Jeannette Walls. In the autobiography The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls accurately portrays homelessness by explaining its causes, its impact upon daily life, and its effect on victimized families. Walls’ autobiography establishes that there are several causes of homelessness. More specifically, she discusses how poverty prevents one from affording life necessities. As reported by the National Coalition for Homelessness, “Homelessness and poverty are inextricably linked”.
The author of the book The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls, lived an unbelievable childhood that no child should have to go through. Throughout her story she told, she overcame lots of difficult situations that her parents had put her and her siblings in. Throughout most of her life, her family did not live in one place for very long. She wanted to change this and have a place that she could actually call home. Her parents did not provide for the children to the best of their abilities and because of this, they suffered from many situations that some people could not even imagine. One of these was homelessness. In The Glass Castle, Jeannette and her siblings experience first hand homelessness when they move to New York
The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls is a memorable memoir that shows effects of obstacles and need for prosperity. Unstable home life, alcoholism, and poverty are serious issues I take into considerations talking about future planning. First, unstable home life, I view as degrading because without knowledge in location and low home prices problems can loom such as alcoholism and family conflict. Second, I view alcoholism as awful because with advances in mediation, medication, and services people can now ease into transition of life without alcohol. Third, I view poverty as depressing because many people don’t have sufficient funds and resources to even survive. Also, families that want to prove their self-worth do not sign up for welfare and try toward the middle class society.
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.
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.
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.
Literacy, or the capability to comprehend, translate, utilize, make, process, assess, and speak information connected with fluctuating settings and displayed in differing organizations, assumes an essential part in molding a young's persons trajectory in life. The ability to read speaks to a key factor of scholarly, social, and financial success (Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998). These abilities likewise speak to a fundamental segment to having a satisfying life and turning into an effective worker and overall person (Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1999). Interestingly, recent studies have demonstrated that low reading skills lead to critical hindrances in monetary and social achievement. As stated by the National Center for Education Statistics, adults with lower levels of reading skills and literacy have a lower average salary. Another study evaluated that 17 to 18 percent of adults with "below average" literacy aptitudes earned less than $300 a week, though just 3 to 6 percent of adults with "proficient" reading abilities earned less than $300 a week (Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998).
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.
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.
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.
A woman who had lived an unsteady life throughout her childhood was negatively affected as an adult by the things that she had went through in her earlier years. In an article entitled “One Family 's Story Shows How The Cycle Of Poverty Is Hard To Break,” Pam Fessler stated that “Like many before her, she carried her poverty into adulthood, doing odd jobs with periods of homelessness and hunger.” The woman had realized that her children were being negatively affected by the unsteady lifestyle that they were living. The mother had said that her six year old daughter had emotional issues, which led to her making herself throw up after eating, running away, and talking about killing herself (Fessler). The little girl had been emotionally affected by poverty, which caused her to do things that most six year olds would not think about doing. The people who live in poverty as a child are more likely to struggle in adulthood. Poverty has many negative effects on children and tends to affect the way they grow and live the rest of their life as an
Living in poverty exposes children to disadvantages that influence many aspects in their life that are linked to their ability to do well in school. In the United States of America there are an estimated 16.4 million children under the age of 18 living in poverty (U.S. Census Bureau, 2010). “The longer a child lives in poverty, the lower the educational attainment” (Kerbo, 2012). Children who are raised in low-income households are at risk of failing out before graduating high school (Black & Engle, 2008). U.S. children living in poverty face obstacles that interfere with their educational achievement. Recognizing the problems of living in poverty can help people reduce the consequences that prevent children from reaching their educational potential.