Childhood In The Glass Castle By Jeanette Walls

Success is determined by the actions a person takes, a person that’s making moral decisions can be successful. The memoir The Glass Castle, by Jeannette Walls, tells a story about Jeannette’s life and the influences her parents, Rose Mary and Rex Walls, had on the person she is now. Rose Mary and Rex Walls are not successful parents because their relationship is unstable and they can’t manage their finances.

The Glass Castle gave Jeanette and her family a false hope when they believed that their father would actually build the castle. Jeanette realizes that her father will not build the Glass Castle once she reaches adulthood, as she grows up she slowly begins to believe in this dream less and less. She stops believing in this because her father makes many promises to her, but he never fulfilled those promises. When they began to build the glass castle like her father told her they would, Brian and Jeanette had dug the foundation for the Glass Castle, her father tells her them to throw the trash into the hole, this is like calling their dream garbage. Even though they took so much time to build the foundation, believing that it was actually for the castle, “the hole for the Glass Castle’s foundation slowly filled with garbage” (Walls 155). He told them many times that they would build the castle, and that they only needed money to build it, but they never do. Even when they actually have money from Jeanette’s grandma dying, he

Perseverance is steadfastness in doing something despite difficulty or delay in achieving success. In The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls illustrates the beneficial effects of perseverance through the use of figurative language, symbolism, and imagery. The Glass Castle is a memoir written about the dysfunctional family of Jeannette Walls. Being that her family situation was one of neglect, irresponsibility, and poverty, Walls had to endure many hardships which shaped her as a person.

“One day soon after Brian was born, we were short on cash, so Dad pawned Mom’s big diamond wedding ring, which her mother had paid for, and that upset Mom. After that, whenever Mom and Dad got in a fight, Mom brought up the ring, and Dad told her to quit her damn bellyaching. He’d say he was going to get her a ring even fancier than the one he pawned. That was why we had to find gold. To get Mom a new wedding ring. That and so we could build the Glass Castle.” (Walls 28) In this quote, Jeanette is reminiscing about something her mom told her. Mom told Jeanette that after their second child Mary Charlene died at nine months old; her Dad became an alcoholic and started to have dark moods. Jeanette goes on to talk about how her Dad dreams of finding gold in order to build their Glass Castle. The title of this memoir, “Glass Castle”, is revealed to be a dream castle Mr. Walls has in mind to build and even carries around the blueprints for them everywhere they go. Throughout the story, Rec frequently brings up the Glass Castle as an excuse for many things her

Think back to your own childhood. Could you imagine being a child, and not having a care in the world, but then, as quick as the snap of a finger, that all changes because of a thoughtless mistake made by your parents? In The Glass Castle it is revealed that as Jeannette grew up, she endured hardships inflicted upon her by her own parents. However, if Jeannette had not gone through these things, she never would have gained the characteristics that she values present day. Although Jeannette Walls faced hardships and endured suffering during her childhood, these obstacles formed her into a self-reliant woman who proves that just because you do not have as much money as other families, you can still achieve success in your life.

While Jeanette is preparing to leave for New York and her father, Rex, attempts to talk her out of it by showing her the updated plans for the Glass Castle, Walls, through Jeanette, uses an implied metaphor to show how all her father’s promises are a Glass Castle without the use of like or as. Walls uses this to illuminate how her father’s promises are broken easily like how a Glass Castle can be broken easily as it is made of glass, which is fragile. Walls also highlights how throughout the memoir her father promised to protect her, not only by building her a home like the Glass Castle, but also by protecting her from men who force themselves upon her as seen when the father states, “Anyone who… laid a finger on… Rex Walls's children was going to get their butts kicked,” (Walls, 24), but the father later goes on to allow her to be inappropriately touched by Robbie just to make some money. This shows that the father makes promises he is unable to and often does not want to fulfill throughout the memoir, which leads to Jeanette having to face adversity as her father is not protecting her. As a result of her adversity, Jeanette reaches an epiphany and learns to look out for her own well-being as she understands that her father is no longer willing to do so. She also understands that her father will never build the Glass Castle and that all the promises that her father ever made to her are like the Glass Castle, easily broken. This ultimately to Jeanette developing from a character who depended solely on her father, to one that could make the decision to go to New York without her father’s permission after the 11th grade. Finally, by going to New York, Jeanette is able to provide for her own well-being by working at a job and renting an apartment and departs from the conventional means of wellbeing. Through the use of metaphor, Walls conveys the theme that often for one to persevere against adversity in his or her lives, he or she must learn to go against conventional means of well-being, like family, and find his or her individual means of well-being.

Nearly 1/2 of the world's population more than 3 billion people live on less than $2.50 a day. Jeannette Walls the quiet, tall red haired girl, daughter of the town drunk, neglected by her own parents and bullied for the way she is. Jeannette Walls quick witted, creative, and kind to everyone. These girls that I explained are the same person but separated by different personalities. In the book The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, it describes the development of the Walls family and how they are growing up. Despite Jeanette's struggle as a child she has persevered through hard work and self sufficiency, which demonstrates overcoming hard times leads to amazing goals.

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.

The Glass Castle, by Jeannette Walls, describes the unfortunate struggles of Jeanette and her family throughout her childhood. Often times, the hardships in one 's life can shape their future and how they develop as a person. Jeanette went through so many hardships that seem unbelievable to me. Her struggles and life experiences are much more extreme than mine will ever be. Her hardships have helped shape her personality and her career. She has made the best out of her childhood, and everyone should take a tip from Jeanette, including myself. I have not had many giant hardships in my life to this date. Jeanette is a role model to people everywhere. She showed that it doesn’t matter where or how you grow up, the only thing that matters is

In the vivid, personal memoir The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, she painstakingly recalls her “story” and how it affected and made her who she is today. She grew up in an environment that most children typically do not. Her father was an alcoholic, and her mother was a selfish woman who put herself first. You could say their way of parenting was not your average “cookie cutter” household. One main social issue in The Glass Castle, is the impact on child neglect in a family and how that affects the way the child turns out. Although, Jeannette Walls ended up as a successful writer along with her siblings Lori and Brian, her other sister Maureen took a route which many neglected children face. What set apart these siblings and how the

This summer I read the memoir “The Glass Castle” by Jeannette Walls. This is the first book that I have read of hers, although I would be interested in reading one of her other books such as “The Silver Star” or “Half Broke Horses”. The memoir takes place in many different cities and states. The novel starts out in New York City when the author is an adult and married, but then it flashes all the way back to when Jeannette, the main character, was three and living in southern Arizona. Jeannette was home alone and she was making herself food when she caught on fire and was taken to the hospital. After six weeks of being in the hospital, her dad, Rex Walls, decided that the nurses and doctors were not trustworthy and was uncomfortable with hospitals, so he snuck her out without being discharged. Soon after, the family “did the skedaddle” as Jeannette called it, and moved to Las Vegas. On the way to their destination, at night, the kids asked their dad to tell them a bedtime story. He told them mostly stories about himself and in the stories he was always the hero. In this particular story, however, the author’s dad describes the plans that he has for the future. This plan consisted of building the Glass Castle, which he has been planning for a very long time. The castle would be a large house for the whole family in the middle of the desert and it would have a glass ceiling, thick glass walls, and a glass staircase. For electricity, there would be solar cells on the

“The Glass Castle” by Jeannette Walls is a memoir of a family that is frequently homeless and living in very poor conditions. Despite all this, the protagonist Jeannette Walls does not lose faith but, but does the exact opposite. She does everything in her power to earn money and get an education so she can escape her current life and move to a place with better opportunities, which is New York (Walls 2005) This book intrigued me because of the way Walls tells her story. She does not have a trouble-free life, but she is a brave woman for telling her story to others. Walls admitted in her interview with Oprah as well as in her book, that she is so embarrassed of her parents in the streets. While she lives in her warm and comfortable home, her parents are in the street looking through garbage cans for food. Jeannette Walls’s approach to life is astounding, and the way she tells her story with such emotion but at the same time some parts are relatable to many others. Walls uses many rhetorical techniques in her writing that absorbs the reader not only to enjoy her book but also to empathize for her.

“Be who makes the impossible possible,” my grandmother loves to say. In life dreaming big is the idealistic state of mind. Dreaming big is what gives one hope to becoming who they aspire to be and reach their goals.

Jeannette Walls is an American writer in journalist who found success in New York City, most notably writing a gossip column for MSNBC in which she details the effects of gossip in politics. She published her memoir, The Glass Castle, in 2005. The book spent 261 weeks on the New York Times Best Seller list. In it, Walls recounts her childhood while growing up in an unstable family with her father and mother, Rex and Rose Mary Walls, her older sister Lori, and her younger brother and sister, Brian and Maureen. Rex and Rose Mary could not settle down and constantly uprooted their family of six to different locations in the southwest region of America. Neither parent could keep a job and struggled to feed and put a roof over their heads. In the novel, Walls views her parents as irresponsible because it rarely seems as though Rex and Rose Mary genuinely want to work and make money to support the family. They thrive off their sense of adventure, as they drive all over the country in a rundown car, looking for their latest shack to pile their family into, usually without running water, heat, or indoor plumbing. Walls will tell the story of her childhood through a series of pivotal moments that ultimately shape her opinion of her parents and lead her to a successful career in New York City.

“The Glass Castle” by Jeanette Walls is an extremely captivating novel that really kept my attention throughout the entire story. It’s a fascinating story of growing up in circumstances that kept me shaking my head as I turned the pages. The Walls family is unquestionably one unlike any I’ve ever come across. The lessons and experiences that the children learned and endured were ones that molded their lives and established who they are today. Jeanette Walls goes through many descriptions of situations that she faced that people normally should not face. For most of her childhood, her family traveled from town to town because her parents always thought that they would hit it big, unfortunately her father was never ever to find a