The opening scene of the book demonstrates the current social and economic status contrasted between Jeanette and her mother. Even their relationship between the two is displayed. While sitting in a cab, Jeanette sees her mother digging through the dumpster as she happily observes the items she picks up. Jeanette on the hand hides from her so she won't be able to be seen and tells the driver to take her back home. The scene shows how the narrator views her mother due to how she lives. Because Jeanette feels guilty for ignoring her, she leaves a message to set up lunch in a Chinese restaurant. Jeanette's relationship with her mother is displayed when during lunch Jeanette tells her mom that she would like to give her some help. But her mother
Her dad carried her away from the hospital without payment, and then her mom permitted her to cook again, moreover she said, “ Getting right back into the saddle” ( Glass Castle 47). Jeanette was not angry at such young age and soon the family had to pack their belongings into bags and “do the skedaddle” as her parents always said. The parents were fleeing from bill collectors. Although Jeanette's father was an alcoholic, he could get work almost anywhere, often in small towns. The family was moving because of these things, she never complained when they did not have enough food. Jeanette always forgave her parents, she understood what they were going through.
During her cab ride she sees a woman digging through trash only to realize it’s her mother picking through a dumpster. Her mother analyzes through items she finds, and smiles when something strikes her appeal. After watching for a while, Jeannette tells the driver to take her back to her apartment. The first section of Jeannette Walls' memoir establishes the theme of class differences and introduces two very important characters, her parents Rose Mary and Rex Walls. First, in the opening scene in which the author, Jeannette Walls spots her mother digging through a dumpster, the class distinctions between them are immediately apparent. Jeannette is sitting in a taxi, worrying about being overdressed for a party when outside the cab, her mother wears ragged clothes while digging through trash. Thus, this scene introduces the quandary Jeannette finds herself in when she skips the party and goes home: She has wealth and social privilege, which her mother does not, and Jeannette must come to terms with this disparity. This specific entry caught my attention, my mother always tells me i’ll do greater things her and my father ever did and when I read this in the beginning I felt if I were put in that situation I’d feel guilty to see my mother digging through
The novel begins with the mother ignorant to modern society. Junior emphasizes this. "No one had ever taught her anything. She was an orphan at six months"(23). "At the age of thirteen, she was married off to a man rolling in money and in morality whom she had never seen. He would have been the age of
As she grows up she starts to understand more of what is going on around her. towards the beginning of the story whenever her parents got into fights she would know the outcome of the fight and not be worried. after a while though with more and more fights happening she would begin to talk to her sister and her brother about how bad it all was. Jeanette even tried to convince her mother to leave her father “ Mom never told Dad that I'd urged her to leave him”(189 walls) This shows how negative she thought her life has gotten. Just by the way she talks to her family members shows the negative tone towards the end of the book.
Her family regularly avoided paying rent by moving from place to place, shoplifted items, and generally lived against the society around them. At the beginning of the book, Jeanette is boiling water on the top of the stove. She turned away from the stove only to have her clothes catch fire. Her mother smothers the fire with a blanket and drives Jeannette to the hospital. Six weeks later, her father comes to visit her alone and says that she’s going to be checking out.
2. Jeannette and her parents have a unique relationship throughout the book. As much as Jeanette loves and cherishes her parents, she also feels unloved by them at times. As Jeanette grows and becomes wiser, she realizes just how unsafe her life was as she was a child. Jeanette feels that her parents love the way they live, although she cannot help but pity them and try to help them to live better.
Both girls obtain their own jobs to make their own money, but their fathers respond negatively towards their independence. When Jeanette works, her father “[slashes their piggybank] apart with a knife and [steals] all the money” (250). When Miranda works, her father is unappreciative and doesn’t understand why she needs a job. In addition, Jeanette's father tells many stories where he is always portrayed as the hero. However, time after time, he isn’t there for his children, and yet he still asks, “Have I ever let you down?” (248). Sadly, Jeanette never has the heart to tell her father that he has indeed let her down, several times. Her father makes many empty promises, like the glass castle for example. Her father told her he would build her a big, beautiful castle made of glass, but Jeannette’s hard work on the foundation ended up becoming a trash pile. Jeanette’s father also came home drunk many nights, where he would “[break] windows and [smash] dishes and furniture...then he’d look around at the mess and at [the] kids standing there.”
Jeannette is the second child of four children. She tells her life story through the book. She starts out from her earliest memory, when she was three years old, and into her adulthood. Her actions foreshadows that she will be successful when she grows up away from her parents. Since Jeannette’s parents were often careless of their children, Jeannette had to take care of younger siblings and work to get money for food, but she still loved her parents. Eventually, she decided to leave her parents and go to New York. There she became a successful author and journalist.
While she is in the hospital, her mother does not stay with her. Instead she visits a few times and gives her oranges, seeming to be disappointed in the fact that it is an illness. At this point in the story, the reader can begin to feel sorry for young Jeanette. She is left all alone in the hospital while her mother is busy helping the church. Jeanette wants to be a missionary, just like in the stories her mom has read to her. In the beginning of the book, it appears that Jeanette’s mother does love her. However, it appears that she only loves her based on if she fulfills her expectations or not.
Jeanette's mother, though she's always trying to have a positive, loving outlook on their life, is a selfish woman. The starvation was getting to her head, at which point she began to hide from the family and indulge herself in what little they have. "She told us we should forgive her the same way we always forgave Dad for his drinking. None of us said a thing. Brian snatched up the chocolate bar and divided it into four pieces. While mom watched, we wolfed them down" (Jeannette 174). This is one of the many moments in the novel where forgiveness is vital in the family. In order to get through their life of willingly living in poverty, they need to have trust in one another, as well as forgive each other for their mistakes. Sometimes times are difficult, and we start to lose sight and control of what's important. In this case, Jeanette's mother, though she insists their life is perfectly fine, is breaking down. She is so deprived of her own needs that she forgot of her own families needs, to the point where she hid herself from them to eat a single candy
The opening scene is one of neglect where Jeannette is cooking hot dogs all by herself as a three year old and burns herself to an extent that it could’ve been fatal. With Jeannette being so young and trusting she doesn't really give a second thought to the incident other than a fear of fire. Another example of the neglect is when the mom leaves for the summer to renew her teaching license. She leaves Jeannette in charge of the budget of the summer. Though Jeannette carefully budgets their money, when her father asks for some fo the money she reluctantly gives in and gives aid to his alcohol addiction
When Dad asks Jeanette for money, it shows that Dad doesn’t know how to handle money. Since Dad can’t be trusted with money, Jeanette has to be the responsible adult in the family.
Throughout the beginning of the story, Marjane begins to gain a sense of wisdom. She is soon exposed to the true meaning of social classes and the divisions. In the beginning of the story, Marjane realizes how fortunate she is to live in a home, have
Her Mother seemed to be more put together than her father at times, even getting a job at one point helping the family out. Though her mother was a hedonist and did not contain the motherly love and sacrifice for her kids, this job helped Jeanette’s future. She helped grade papers which increased her knowledge of the outside world and “...the world was making a little more sense” as she read the papers and projects of her mother’s students (Walls 205). Her parents had such an opposition to the outside world that she hadn’t gotten every aspect of
2). Montogomery explains that the beginning shows the “basic plot line”, as the mother is a burden for the son (para. 7). When seeing the negro woman on the bus, Montogomery points out that Julian thinks his mother will fail to see the “symbolic significance” of the identical hat (Montogomery para. 11). Jeffrey J. Folks points out that O’Connor deliberately uses “uneducated southern poor whites” for a symbolic contrast (para. 6). Montogomery says that when confronting the negro woman and her child, Julian sees an identical relationship between him and his mother. The mother cannot make distinctions, just like a child, especially when giving a penny is like “natural to her as breathing” (Montogomery para. 13). According to Susanna Gilbert, Julian is consistent with O’Connor’s short stories as he is “powerless to change” and the mother’s shock could have been something that enlightens him” (para. 19). It may be intriguing that Julian thinks the mother is to blame yet he promises “Someday I’ll start making money’...he knew he never would” (Gilbert para. 16). Much like the evolutionary vision of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, the symbol of the mother’s passing is Julian’s time to ascend, “which give the story its title” (Montogomery para.