Individualism In Rocket Boys And 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

Infatuation with Independence Imagery and word choice in The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls portrays the traumatic experiences she faced throughout her life. Descriptive language depicts her emotional journey of independence. Jeannette expresses the realization that her dreams can be truly fulfilled, in New York City. By beginning this new chapter in her life, Jeannette’s situation can only improve. Just like the “spires” that outline the city’s horizon, Jeannette too will rise up.

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.

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

Jeannette’s self-reliant behavior is frequently shown through her refusal of help from others. On one trip to retrieve her father from a bar, Jeannette’s father is so drunk that he can no longer walk. Another man offers to drive them home, and

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.

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.

I believe that the quote on page five of The Glass Castle (“‘You want me to change my life?’ Mom asked. ‘I’m fine. You’re the one who needs help. Your values are all confused.’”) is very significant because the mother is correct, and makes a valid point. Of course, the mother’s life lacks some basic necessities, like proper food and shelter, but she’s content in the way her life is. Besides, even though it wouldn’t be a piece-of-cake to turn such a life around, it’s still possible, and the mother could achieve a better life if she really wanted, so it’s really not Jeannette’s responsibility to better her mother’s life. Also, like I said before, the mother is content and I don’t think you can change a person who doesn’t want to change. In fact,

Social experiences do not always determine the outlook an individual adapts of themselves. The Glass Castle establishes this during Jeannette’s and her siblings days in Welch while they lived on top of a hill. Instead of believing what the other girls were saying, Jeannette

He influenced Sonny through his success of engineering and building rockets. In the beginning, Sonny's interest of Rockets started from hearing how successful Wernher von Braun was with rockets. Sonny was inspired by him to follow in his footsteps and to maybe be as great as him one day. Sonny said, “I began to hear about one particular rocket scientist named Dr. Wernher von Braun. His very name was exotic and exciting. I saw on television where Dr. von Braun had given an interview and he said, in a crisp German accent, that if he got the go-ahead he could put a satellite into orbit within thirty days.” (29-30). This is where Sonny first learns about him. He is immediately hooked and wants learn more about him and how he builds rockets as an inspiration. Sonny then took it to heart and started to building rockets practicing to get better so that he can one day meet his inspiration. In another example, Sonny has always wanted his true inspiration to one day see him build a rocket and see it be launched. Mr. Byvokoski told him “Mining’s in your blood, little man,” he shrugged. “I guess you’ll figure that out, sooner or later.” “I still want to work for Dr. von Braun.” He nodded. “We’ll see.” (185). This shows how much an inspiration Wernher von Braun is to Sonny. Sonny wants to work for him in the future, and is inspired to be successful in rockets just like him. Overall, Wernher von Braun was an inspiration for Sonny to keep building rockets influencing him through his success of engineering and learning from his

Jeannette is really disappointed in her family; however, the boy is happy and loves his family. Most of all Jeannette’s father is a major alcoholic and he constantly drinks. She thinks the drinking is destructive because when he does drink it causes a lot of bad fights with the family, for example, her father and mother will constantly fight about how they have no money to get food. In The Glass Castle Jeannette, said: “ It was the only thing to eat in the whole house. Why aren’t you helping?

Sonny’s interest and fascination with Wernher Von Braun shaped his career and life as a Rocket Boy. Sonny would not have built rockets without Wernher Von Braun. More so, he might not have even gotten out of the mine in Coalwood, West Virginia. I think that Sonny Hickam wanted to be something bigger and something outside of Coalwood because of Wernher Von Braun. Though Sonny never got to meet Mr. Wernher Von Braun, he still impacted Sonny’s life intensely. Wernher Von Braun was the spark and Sonny was the wood. Even more, Sonny’s other supporters were the kindling for the fire that he would

One of the obstacles that Sonny faced was the trial and error process that happened when Sonny and the rest of the rocket boys were launching their rockets. Many of their rockets flew off course at people, cars, and buildings, which had many people thinking that the boys should not be allowed to launch their rockets. Another thing that happened during the trial and error process was that many of their rockets blew up before ever lifting off of the ground. These problems made them have to find out what went wrong and would make them spend hours trying to fix the problem. They did get through these problems that they encountered. Sonny had a couple of friends at the mine that his dad worked

Even though all the people in Coalwood are miners, Sonny decides to be a different person so he decides that he and his groups of friends will build rockets. When he does this it makes his dad upset with him, and even tried to make him stop by dumping his chemicals. All this did for Sonny was make his even more determined to build and launch rockets. His first three rockets were good but then that fourth one when into the mine. “ Looks like your son wants to be a rocket scientist. He doesn’t know what he wants to be, but I do know what he is Dad said” pg 94 The thing that this quote really tells is that this action makes his dad upset. If it just ended here the rest of the story would be the same. I would be a very boring memoir of how he gave up and became a miner. Yet I can tell you that this didn’t happen. Instead, Sonny kept on launching and making rockets while his dad became more and more upset. When Sonny kept on not giving up it lead him to win the national science fair, and this finally made his dad proud of him. He achieved by being what he wants, and not letting people stop him.

Just like in “October Sky” how sonny saw the Russian missile shoot across the sky, it motivated him and even gave him a boost of confidence and he took that and turned it into something marvelous. Sonny’s hero was Dr. Von Braun and sonny wanted to be just like him unlike his dad, which is unusual because most of the time kids fall in their parent's footsteps but sonny did what was best for him and succeeded on the way. But sonny did not do all of this by himself, he had a lot of support from “Miss Riley” and further on in the story most of the town. He got help from a couple of his buddies at school and all together they made a dream come true. Sonny’s second step in pursuing his dream was getting together the resources he needed. He read books that talked about rockets and that helped him out a lot, he got some people from school that knew about rockets a little more than he did. And with all the mistakes they made they eventually learned from them, And fairly quickly toO. Soon enough they were building bigger rockets that flew higher and higher each try. Sonny even taught himself calculus! And with that they were able to calculate how long and far each rocket