John Steinbeck 's The Grapes Of Wrath And Jeannette Walls

Imagine living in a life where everything around you is different from reality. Imagine running from the police, living wherever one can find, and still taking care of one's family just at the age of 16. Jeannette Walls had to deal with all of this and more in her early childhood. In the book “The Glass Castle”, the author uses the characters, Jeannette and Rex Walls, to emphasize the importance of family bonds.

Through the roughest times in life, we come across crises that reveal the true character in those around us. Those who are strong are divided from the weak and the followers divide from the leaders. In the novel, The Grapes of Wrath, author John Steinbeck presents the character Ma Joad who serves an important role as the rock that keeps the family together. The Joad family, apart from many families in Oklahoma, is forced to leave their homes in search of work and better opportunities; California not only leaves them in poverty but despair. But through it all Ma Joad is the leader of the family that exhibits selflessness in order to protect and secure her family.

American journalist, writer, and magazine editor David Remnick once said, “The world is a crazy, beautiful, ugly complicated place, and it keeps moving on from crisis to strangeness to beauty to weirdness to tragedy.” In the memoir, The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls the main character and author of the book tells of her crazy and adventurous life she experienced with her not so ordinary family. This quote relates to The Glass Castle, because like it states, life is full of both tragedies and beauty which is exactly what Jeannette experienced growing up with her free spirited and non-conformative parents. Walls is able to express her main purpose of the book that life is a mix of good and bad times through imagery, tone, and pathos.

Maya Angelou once stated, “You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated.” In the novel The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls the family faces many defeats but, the only way to overcome them is to persevere and be resilient. The Walls children are forced to do things that a traditional child would not have to. This causes the children to gain the ability to be strong and learn valuable life lessons from the hard times. Being independent, truthful and forgiving will help the Walls family persevere and be resilient through the struggles that will lead them to future success.

The Glass Castle and The Grapes of Wrath portrayed families who both acquired a common trait of perseverance. Both the Joad and Walls families struggled financially. They shared the challenge of caring for a family, while on the road. They sometimes had to do odd jobs to make ends meet, but they faced life with determination and perseverance. When Granma Joad, from The Grapes of Wrath, died in Ma’s arms, Ma did not make them stop the car. Ma drove for hours with Granma dead in her arms because she knew she could not delay the family. “I tol’ Granma we couldn’ help her. The family had ta get acrost. I tol’ her when she was a-dyin’. We couldn’ stop in the desert” (Steinbeck 228). Ma was determined to reach the border with the family, even a death in the family could not restrain her. The Walls family shows similar attributes of determination throughout the book. When Jeannette Walls’

The Glass Castle is a memoir written by Jeannette Walls, giving the public a look at her rough upbringing and her nomadic childhood. The memoir, however is written in a way of which the author is not seeking sympathy from the reader. She also wrote in such a way as to not induce anger in the reader, as that is not what she was searching for. Jeannette wrote in order to inform and inspire, and to tell a tale as crazy as it is. Jeannette grew up, one of four siblings. Her parents had alternate methods of parenting and different ideas of how children should be raised. They taught them to have similar morals to them, and similar values. Although, as the children age, they begin to realize how wrong their parents are, and how

In Jeannette Walls’ The Glass Castle, there are many important themes that pop throughout the book. Although there are many themes, the most essential one is how a hard past forces people to learn to rely on themselves to make their life better by pushing through their struggles, this changes how a person thinks and acts ultimately defining their identity. This theme is the most prominent throughout the book.

Jeannette Wall’s memoir, The Glass Castle, displays Jeannette’s life growing up as a child living in an impoverished family. It is surprising to see that Jeannette is truly loving and caring towards her family despite how completely irresponsible and negligent both her parents were. Rose-Mary and Rex Walls are unfit parents to their children.

The Glass Castle, written by Jeannette Walls, is an autobiographical novel that shows how hard life can be when you have little to no money and highly deteriorated parents. During the whole memoir it shows how hard it is to live in poverty while at the same time trying to raise a family. The exposition of the novel is how having parents that cannot support their children because the lack of a stable income. The rising action is when Jeannette was in a taxi cab going to a party when she sees her mother digging through the trash can and feels embarrassed and tells the taxi driver to take her home. The major conflict in the novel is a man vs. man because Jeannette, her brother, and her sister are all affected by her

In the book, The Glass Castle, the Walls encounter many interior and exterior conflicts. The children learned how to fend for themselves because their parents were not suitable for that job. Jeannette and Brian, two of the Walls children, took responsibility for themselves and their siblings. Jeannette retold this true story from her point of view. The characters struggles did not end in one place. The Walls were constantly on the move because their living situations were always temporary. They switched from their car to a family house in Welch. Once the kids became older, some of them decided to move to New York City to skyrocket their careers. Weaved into all of this chaos, were a few underlying themes. The reader was taken on the children's journey and witnessed them blossom. They had to mature quickly because their parents stripped them from their childhood. This was difficult and a lot of pressure for these young kids. They had to persevere which in turn made them stronger individuals. The rich characters, surplus of settings, and easily comprehensible themes made this a successful novel.

As frigid snow frosts the sun-licked ice, a glacial wind howls against the trees. As a child, one would sip hot chocolate and watch a movie with their family. However, Jeannette Walls would be sitting on a dirty floor, cold with no food. In The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, 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 destitution and endured anguish during her childhood, these obstacles formed her into a self-reliant woman who proves that just because she did not have as much money as other families, she can still achieve success in her life.

Connections Essay The Glass Castle is a memoir surrounding the events of Jeannette Walls’ unorthodox childhood. Among the many issues discussed in the novel, the effects of parentification, child abuse, and relocation are some of the most relevant and prominent issues in today’s society. As a result of their father’s regularized absence and their mother’s lack of motivation and responsibility, Jeannette and Lori Walls are forced to take care of the family’s budget, income, upkeep, and health.

The Glass Castle, a memoir by Jeannette Walls, tells the story of Jeannette's upbringing and her road to adulthood. Jeannette, and her siblings, were raised by dysfunctional, poor, and sometimes homeless parents, Rose Mary and Rex Walls. The Walls children were pretty much abandoned by their parents and in some cases they were forced into making their own money, or stealing food just so they would not starve. Rose Mary and Rex Walls allowed the children to do anything they wanted, whenever they wanted to do it, but that did not stop Jeannette from being successful. She recognized that she did not want to live her life the same way her parents have lived their lives. In The Glass Castle Jeannette Walls believes that sometimes people are actually

The memoir The Glass Castle written by Jeannette Walls follows the socially impaired and significantly eccentric Walls family and the consequences of their life style. Lori, Jeannette, Brian, and Maureen Walls endured a poverty stricken upbringing at the fault of their egotistical parents Rose Mary and Rex Walls, the hardship the children faced in their young years had an effect on how they adjusted to life as adults. The lack of support allotted for the children left them to fend for themselves. This came into effect when in order to escape a life of starvation, penury, and instability they each migrated to New York City one by one to develop a new life for themselves. Their atypical childhoods left them seeking resilience and made it

   When Steinbeck wrote The Grapes of Wrath, our country was just starting to recover from The Great Depression.  The novel he wrote, though fiction, was not an uncommon tale in many lives.  When this book was first published, the majority of those reading it understood where it was coming from-they had lived it.  But now very few people understand the horrors of what went on in that time.  The style in which Steinbeck chose to write The Grapes of Wrath helps get across the book's message.