Childhood In The Glass Castle

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

Rex had big dreams in providing whatever his family desired. “ All of Dad’s engineering skills and mathematical genius were coming together in one special project: a great big house he was going to build for us in the desert ”(Walls 25). Rex wanted to build a great castle with solar cells, and its own water-purification system, to meet all of his family’s needs. He would pull out the Glass Castle’s blueprints and work on them at times when the family was on the move, but never actually got around to building it. He would spend most his days, away from home, drinking away at some Pub. If Rex had spent everyday building the Glass Castle, “ gets up in the morning and gets to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do,” then perhaps he might have been considered

A. Jeannette Walls, in her memoir The Glass Castle, demonstrates Erikson’s eight stages of development. Through the carefully recounted stories of her childhood and adolescence, we are able to trace her development from one stage to the next. While Walls struggles through some of the early developmental stages, she inevitably succeeds and has positive outcomes through adulthood. The memoir itself is not only the proof that she is successful and productive in middle adulthood, but the memoir may also have been part of her healing process. Writing is often a release and in writing her memoir and remembering her history, she may have been able to come to terms with her sad past. The memoir embodies both the proof

Jeannette Walls, Shows in the book The Glass Castle that there are a lot of situations that happen in life where people make countless mistakes, but it is very important to forgive her father and her mother for many mistakes. She has to cope with many obstacles without her parent's help. In the author's memoir, we become attracted with Jeannette constant struggle between protecting her family and the pleasure that her family is based on the same hopes and senseless falsehood with her unbelievable storytelling method. The feelings of forgiveness hold the Walls family together. Jeanette was able to describe her family's childhood, relationships with one another. The children of the Walls family are forced to begin the independent life at an

The Glass Castle, a memoir written by Jeannette Walls, is a story that discusses the insights of a dysfunctional, yet vibrant family. The four Walls children have two parents, Rose Mary who was an unconventional artist, and Rex who was an alcoholic father. The family travels constantly across the country, with their parents using their imagination as a distraction from their poverty. Despite the hardships the Walls family has faced, Jeanette writes her truth in order to reconcile with her past. She expresses through her story of how she has reflected upon her childhood, and how it has shaped her character in the present (The glass castle: Jeanette Walls, 2016). The majority of readers may believe that Rex Walls is an irresponsible, neglectful parent. However, Rex’s viewpoint of how he cares for Jeanette and her siblings can be portrayed as supportive, intelligent, and sensible.

In the novel The Glass Castle, by Jeannette Walls, the uncertain future of the Walls’ children was questionable from the start. From a drunk father, to never having a steady home, the author tells of her idiosyncratic youth to describe the bitterness and longing for an ordinary childhood.

As flames engulfed her dress, they burned down her stomach as she screamed for help. This was the first memory Jeannette Walls had in The Glass Castle . The plot of the story reveals her childhood of poverty as she moved around the country with her delusional family. Her alcoholic father and mentally ill mother created a very different lifestyle for their children, and raised them like no other. The unique plot, strong characters, and many settings make the novel successful. In this autobiography, she perseveres through tough times and leads the reader down the path she took to adulthood.

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.

When Rex was more then likely drunk, he and Rosemary got into an argument which lead to rex hanging Rosemary out the window. She finally got back in the window and said “He tried to kill me, your father wants to watch me die” (Walls 78). Although it’s not proven that he is drunk it sure does show his violent side and how he hurting his family. Or when she was little older he had gotten drunk and really angry and went after her Rosemary “He picked up a knife too, tossing it from hand to hand. There he knocked the knife out of mom’s hand, dropping his own, and wrested her to the floor” (Walls 122). It shows that when he get drunk he gets mad and does not really care what types of trouble he causes to his

The Glass Castle begins when Jeannette Walls is sitting in a taxi in New York City and looking out the window. She then sees her homeless mom from the window fishing through the dumpster. Jeannette later invites her mom to her favorite Chinese restaurant for lunch. While they are talking Jeannette thinks about all the things that mom and dad did to her and how it brought her here.

After reading The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, I realized that my life isn’t as bad as I had originally thought. I have always known that there are people that have it way worse than me, but I know that I have not had an easy life, like I would prefer. Every family has their own problems otherwise they wouldn’t be a family. In The Glass Castle, Jeanette’s mother told her, “Life is a drama full of tragedy and comedy. You should learn to enjoy the comic episodes a little more.” That is what I am trying to do. In some degree my life and Jeannette’s life are related; we both had ups and downs, but mostly downs, throughout our lives.

When William Faulkner accepted his Nobel Prize in Literature on December 10, 1950 in Stockholm, Sweden, he mentioned an idea -the writer’s duty- which he describes as writing about “the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice” mankind has been through. Authors write to remind man of the troubles, the sorrows, and the accomplishments and so he can live on. Are The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls and An American Childhood by Annie Dillard examples of the writer’s duty?

Rex Walls is seen to have complications with money in the novel. In many instances, it is seen how he insufficiently uses the family’s salary, and it presents problems for the children in many ways. For example, the text states,”While Dad liked it that Mom was bringing home a paycheck, he saw himself as the head of the household, and he maintained that the money should be turned over to him. It was his responsibility, he’d say, to handle the family finances. And he needed the money to fund his gold-leaching research.” (Walls 76). This quotation shows that Rex often took the family’s money and misused it, which caused dilemmas for the children because they could not afford necessities like clothes or food, which explains how Rex is a faulty

Mary Walls has proven herself to be completely irresponsible when it comes to parenting. While her parenting style and morals are only slightly different from Rex’s, the way he behaves with them pales in comparison to Mary. As Mary was telling the story of how Brian had managed to beat his childhood seizures and survive, despite the initial thought of him being another soon to be dead child, she explained a philosophy that Walls describes as, “Fussing over children who cry only encouraged them… That's positive reinforcement for negative behavior” (28). Not only does this show us that when the Walls children were babies they were ignored whenever they cried, it also proves that Mary was definitely not an attentive mother when it came to simplistic

Many people look back to their childhood and remember their blissful naïvete. They look reminiscently at children in the same regard. While reading The Glass Castle, the Walls children represent this juvenile ignorance. Because these kids grow up accustomed to only the life their parents gave them, they didn’t know what their lives were like from an outsider- from reality. To these “real” people, their lives are dangerous and irresponsible, but to them, their lives are care-free and adventurous. This is how The Glass Castle, by Jeannette Walls, shows how a child’s naïvete can misguide them in a positive and negative direction.