Analysis Of The Novel 'The Glass Castle' By Jeannette Walls

Earlier this year, I read Jeannette Walls’ memoir The Glass Castle. The Glass Castle tells the story of Walls and her siblings as they experience an impoverished childhood and attempt to escape the poverty-stricken lives of their parents. In her descriptions of her life and the lives of her family members, Walls influenced my ideas about poverty, homelessness, and escaping hard lives.

It still holds true that man is most uniquely human when he turns obstacles into opportunities. This is evident in Jeannette Walls’ memoir, The Glass Castle, which reiterates the story of Jeannette who is raised within a family that is both deeply dysfunctional and distinctively vibrant. Jeannette is faced with numerous barriers throughout her life. Despite the many obstacles set forth by her parents during her childhood, Jeannette develops into a successful adult later in life. One of these obstacles is the lack of a stable home base moulds her into the woman she grows up to be. Throughout her life, Jeannette must cope with the carelessness of her

Writer, Jeannette Walls, in her memoir, The Glass Castle, provides an insight into the fanciful and shocking life of growing up poor and nomadic with faux-grandiose parents in America. With her memoir, Wall's purpose was to acknowledge and overcome the difficulties that came with her unusual upbringing. Her nostalgic but bitter tone leaves the reader with an odd taste in their mouth. In some memories, the author invites her audience to look back on with fondness; others are viewed through bulletproof glass and outrage.

Earlier this year, I read Jeanette Walls’ memoir The Glass Castle. The Glass Castle tells the story of Walls and her siblings as they experience and attempt to escape the poverty-stricken lives of their parents. In her descriptions of her life and the lives of her family members, Walls influenced my ideas about poverty, homelessness, and escaping hard lives.

Colson Whitehead once said, “Let the broken glass be broken glass, let it splinter into smaller pieces and dust and scatter. Let the cracks between things widen until they are no longer cracks but the new places for things”. In the memoir “The Glass Castle,” author Jeannette Walls faces despair and turmoil as a result of her impoverished and dysfunctional upbringing. As Jeannette grows up, she watches her father Rex fail to reach his full potential and his dream to build a Glass Castle shatter as his alcoholism takes control. Aware of the devastation her father was causing, she begins to slowly lose faith in him but doesn’t fail to escape her destructive household and pursue her dreams of becoming a journalist. Due to her parent’s lack of parenting and being forced to fend for herself, Jeannette developed a sense of responsibility to care for others and make amends to improve the family’s lifestyle. Despite the turbulence and destruction her parents had caused over the years, unlike her father, Jeannette was able to find the strength to overcome obstacles, developing characteristics that ultimately lead her to achieving her dream, thus illustrating that adversity has the power to shape one’s identity.

People often fall into some sticky situations, but how they deal with them is the thing that matters most. In The Glass Castle, a memoir by Jeannette Walls, she takes the readers through her life, starting at her earliest memory as a three-year-old, constantly living in a state of homelessness. Throughout the story, Walls experiences countless situations from her father being an alcoholic, to everyday school bullies. She uses a series of coping mechanisms to deal with, and sometimes terminate these issues. In fact, everyone of her siblings and parents uses various coping methods for these same situations. These methods may not always be the most effective, but people, including the Walls family, nevertheless use them to get by on their

To many people poverty is simply a socio-economic issue. To Jeannette Walls, poverty is her entire life. In this passage of The Glass Castle, Jeannette and her siblings are forced to face a situation they seem to have encountered before; hunger. Due to her dad’s newfound unemployment, Jeannette and her family are forced to limit the amount of food they eat and when Jeannette brings up this idea of eating less to help limit costs, Lori simply replies “We have before”, which helps to infer that this isn’t a new issue for them. This is one issue of many that have affected the Walls family due to the environment the parents have made. In the Glass Castle, we see Jeanette’s parents create an environment for Jeanette and her siblings where for a

Alexander Popes famous saying goes "To err is human, to forgive is divine" (Line 525). Everyone makes a mistake every once in a while, everybody sins on way or another, and in the end almost all of them seek forgiveness. The very nature of people is to get upset and feel resentful towards those who have done some harm to them in any way. Humans tend to remember the undesirable actions that others inflict upon them. Forgiveness is overcoming the feeling of resentment towards the person who has done wrong to us. In the novel "The Glass Castle" by Jeanette Walls, Jeanette is constantly forgiving her parents for their unsuitable choices; choices that often leave them impoverished, emaciated, and in abhorrent conditions. Jeanette proves that even

Every kid wants to be able to go out whenever they want to, and yet a child wants to come home to a bed to sleep on every night. The question of whether a child wants to have freedom or security is one that someone can contemplate over and over again, and the more you think about it, the more your mind could alternate between the two options. After reading the novel The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, which is a memoir that describes the life of her nomadic family of six who dealt financial, family, social, and emotional issues all the way from her father being an alcoholic or the children at her school bullying her for her dirty clothes. The children had to deal with unusual circumstances in order to survive the ordeal, and while sometimes

In The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, Jeannette finds herself caught between colliding ethnic cultures when she makes a new friend who is African American and her grandmother, Erma, does not approve. Jeannette is confronted with Erma’s opinion when she says, “Keep this up and people are going to think you’re a nigger lover” (143). This quote shows how Jeannette was caught between the approval of a family member and what she considered was the right thing. It is obvious Erma is very racist and this greatly bothers Jeannette, whose parents have taught her to see no difference, but regardless she is not swayed by anything Erma says. Jeannette later recalls, “That didn’t seem like Mom. She and Dad happily railed against anyone they disliked or

Many people tend to take things for granted. We overlook the things that some people wished they had so they can live without struggle. It usually just comes so easily for us and we don’t realize how hard other people’s lives are. Jeannette Walls knows firsthand what it’s like to be without these modern luxuries. In her memoir, “The Glass Castle” she writes about how she sometimes grew up without things like a place to live, clothes to wear, food on the table, electricity to power the house and keep her warm. In her upbringing, her parents never really supplied her with the things she needs or took very good care of her so she learned how to survive with the little she got. She learns throughout her life that she should never take anything for granted and to appreciate the good things in life because she doesn’t get most of the essentials that other people have normally. Throughout the story she always knew to be grateful and value every little thing she got because she didn’t get much.

In The Glass Castle, Jeanette Walls was faced with many life changing and hard obstacles. Many people who have read this book think that these hardships have helped her later in life. Her parents were never there for her when she was growing up. Her dad was a raging alcoholic who spent all of his money away at the bars. Her mom was intelligent, but still never seemed to help much with Jeanette and her siblings. Even though her parents were not much help, she loved them the same no matter what. When Jeanette was younger, she was constantly bullied at her new schools, but never went home and told on the kids her had beat her up. She stood up for herself even if she knew she had no chance at winning the fight. This showed how brave and strong

In the book, The Glass Castle, Jeanette Walls tells her life story growing up in the Walls family. She goes back to her earliest memory as a child, cooking hotdogs in a trailer park in small town southern Arizona. While she was cooking, she caught fire and was rushed to the hospital with severe burns. Once she started to recover, her father, Rex Walls, took her from her hospital bed and ran out of the hospital, bypassing all medical expenses. That is how the Walls family lived, off the radar, hopping from town to town when things got bad. They lived like this for years, making their way through Nevada, Arizona, and California with no money or place to call home. Walls’ father was an alcoholic, so any money he did earn went to sustaining his habit. Jeanette’s mother was a dreamer who refused to take responsibility for her kids. It becomes clear that Jeanette doesn’t want to live this hectic dysfunctional

This is probably the most important passage of the novel. It summarizes what the novel is all about ,fore shadows the whole book, and gives a theme. The Joshua tree is beautiful because of its struggle. The quote {"You'd be destroying what makes it special,"she said. "It's the Joshua tree's struggle that gives it its beauty."} is a metaphor for the Walls family’s life and their outcome. They are not normal family, and their nomadic lifestyle is exciting as well as very difficult. Throughout the book, the Walls family has to overcome many challenges but as the reader gets closer and closer to the end of the novel the you can see how these hardships turn into success stories. For example, each one of the Walls children has their own hardships

Despite what several students think, analyzing literature is not summarizing the text nor the plot of a story. Yet, not many educators, so far, have discussed literary analysis thorough enough for students to understand. Thus, this results in an unpleasant score on their homeworks and class assignments, and leading to ignorance. Similar to critical thinking, analyzing literature means to closely focus on parts of the story, like the: plot, characters, settings, and events, to view how the author combines them to create a meaning or theme. Certain techniques are used to discover the author’s meaning and purpose of his or her writing.