Social Issues Presented in Jeannette Wall's Memoir, The Glass Castle

People often fall into some sticky situations, but how they deal with them is the thing that matters most. In The Glass Castle, a memoir by Jeannette Walls, she takes the readers through her life, starting at her earliest memory as a three-year-old, constantly living in a state of homelessness. Throughout the story, Walls experiences countless situations from her father being an alcoholic, to everyday school bullies. She uses a series of coping mechanisms to deal with, and sometimes terminate these issues. In fact, everyone of her siblings and parents uses various coping methods for these same situations. These methods may not always be the most effective, but people, including the Walls family, nevertheless use them to get by on their

“Don’t call me Grandma. Name’s Erma.” (Walls, 131). This is the first thing Jeannette Walls, author of The Glass Castle, hears out of her grandmother Erma’s mouth when they go to stay at her home in Welch, West Virginia. The Walls family has come across hard times and they need somewhere to live. “She don't like it none ‘cause it makes her sound old.” This was the response of Grandpa Ted, Erma’s husband, a more even tempered and gentle man. Does this make Erma an upper social class woman concerned of appearing less beautiful? Or a hardworking woman torn down by poverty who doesn’t want to feel less able than she was when she was younger.

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.

Writer, Jeannette Walls, in her memoir, The Glass Castle, provides an insight into the fanciful and shocking life of growing up poor and nomadic with faux-grandiose parents in America. With her memoir, Wall's purpose was to acknowledge and overcome the difficulties that came with her unusual upbringing. Her nostalgic but bitter tone leaves the reader with an odd taste in their mouth. In some memories, the author invites her audience to look back on with fondness; others are viewed through bulletproof glass and outrage.

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

One pessimistic person can create bleak surroundings for everyone around them. Parent child relationships are significantly important in all aspects because these affiliations provide safety and care for children. Lack of parental involvement causes

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.

In 2005, Jeannette Walls wrote The Glass Castle, a memoir of her family’s life in poverty and a quest to outrun a dysfunctional childhood and create something better for herself along with her siblings. While the children are trying to create successful adult lives for themselves they face the challenge of trying to keep their parents from being homeless in New York City. In an interview with Mondloch, Walls mentions that her childhood was “… both a blessing and a curse.” Their unusual, chaotic and an isolated upbringing, originated successful, educated and fearless children.

one parent while living with the other, all create a challenging new family circumstance in which

Children deserve to enjoy their childhood. When a parent exposes their child such as a financial problem, or the need for someone to take care of the house and siblings, a parent is submitting their child in partaking in adult work or behavior. This action can harm their child temporarily or permanently. Normally, the eldest son or daughter would be submitted in this role. Berger (2014) acknowledges this as parentification, “When children feel responsible for the entire family, acting as parents who take care of everyone, including their actual parents” (p. 372). This can happen to the parent forcing their child or the child is taking it upon himself/herself to fill in the role. Instead of the child playing outside with other children, they feel the need to work and take care of family problems. I believe exposing problems to

The parental depends and other changes create a significant amount of stress that can negatively impact health and

This misbehavior the families see as a problem and bring them to therapy. In this model the misbehaving child (the identified patient or IP) is not the problem. “Not coping with is the problem."(Banman 1987). Satir “operate[s] from the assumption that when there is pain in the family, all family members feel it in some way” (Satir, 1967). This means the therapists work is to help family understand that most family problem are a derivative of a struggling relationships. The IP, responsible for the family’s homeostasis, “family balance”, “develops symptoms” such as drug abuse or depression and low self-esteem due to the pressure of this responsibility. Individual change for the IP is difficult because as the IP starts to improve, the IP puts the family's homeostasis in jeopardy. Other family members take action to retain homeostasis by pressuring the IP to revert back to old family norms via threats or guilt. Most family therapy issues are not a result of pathology but of dysfunctional relationships caused by poor communication and low self-esteem. Satir puts greater effort into teaching, modeling and repairing

Imagine living as nomads, without any sense of a real home. In addition to that; living with a troubled family that suffers from poor living conditions, alcoholism, and family drama. To what extent would you go to fix your family, or even moving away from them? The book The Glass Castle portrays the bizarre, impoverished upbringing Jeannette Walls and her siblings, Lori, Brian, and Maureen had to endure due to her dysfunctional parents. The author of the memoir The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls, writes about everything that occurred in her life from when she was 3 to when she was old enough to have her second husband; in which I would imagine in her thirties. Her stories consist of many adventures, both meaningful and traumatic. The reasons

Writer, Jeannette Walls, in her memoir, The Glass Castle, provides an insight into the fanciful and shocking life of growing up poor and nomadic with faux-grandiose parents in America. With her memoir, Wall's purpose was to acknowledge and overcome the difficulties that came with her unusual upbringing. Her nostalgic but bitter tone leaves the reader with an odd taste in their mouth. In some memories, the author invites her audience to look back on with fondness; others are viewed through bulletproof glass and outrage.

parent in the single parent family are so difficult to take care their children when they