Summary Of Jeannette Walls 'The Silver Star'

Jeannette Walls changes over the course of the the story because at first she always believed in her father but now she knows her father isn't reliable. In the beginning of the story, Jeannette was being taught how to swim. Rex was letting her drown and then after some time taking her out the water. Soon she finally learned how to swim by her dad’s method. Instead of thinking he was crazy she believed in him. She taught that the way her dad taught her was the only right way and her dad had done this only for her sake. A quote to prove this, ‘“If you don't want to sink, you better figure out how to swim." What other reason, he asked, would possibly make him do this? Once I got my breath back, I figured he must be right. There was no other way to explain it” (Walls 67).

Last but not least, Mama and Ruth have the aspiration of living in a new home. The apartment in which they currently reside is small, dark, and handled with care: "the furnishings of this room were actually selected with care and love and hope [. . .]" (988). It is evident that the home is a very important to the Younger family and it is a critical

To begin, this story takes place in New Jersey. The author introduces Sam who is dealing with his mother Sandra. His solution to this problem is to persuade his father to sue. The author explains that he wanted to move with his father. The author also introduces us to Phyllis who is Sam’s father wife, which is now sam’s stepmother. The author mostly focuses on Sam and his mother Sandra the relationship between the two. Such as the shouting, smoking, bringing in different boyfriends every week. Also about the letter that Sam wrote his mother regards of his decision. “Everything!The cooking, the cleaning,the shouting . Everything!”[Schwartz pg. 87]. This quote refers back to the article about his mother Sandra. The most important detail provided by the author in the beginning of the story are important because they demonstrate that Sam persuades his father to sue his mother so

   "I can no more forget it, than a mother can forget her suckling child". Jane Austen wrote these words about her novel, Sense and Sensibility, in a letter to her sister Cassandra in 1811. Such a maternal feeling in Austen is interesting to note, particularly because any reader of hers is well aware of a lack of mothers in her novels. Frequently we encounter heroines and other major characters whom, if not motherless, have mothers who are deficient in maturity, showing affection, and/or common sense. Specifically, I would like to look at Sense and Sensibility, which, according to Ros Ballaster's introduction to the novel, "is full of, indeed over-crowded with, mothers" (vii). By

The novel Make Lemonade by Virginia Euwer Wolff is mainly about a seventeen year old girl named Jolly, who encounters many difficulties as she has two children from two different, absent fathers. Jolly desperately needs help raising her two children, Jeremy and Jilly, and LaVaughn helps babysit temporarily. LaVaughn is caught up in Jolly’s problems and she guides her on the right path. However, LaVaughn cannot sacrifice her academics to babysit for her because she wants to go to college and she wants to start to build her future. These two main characters take separate paths as they each develop and mature throughout the stages of the novel and they have similarities and differences. Both, Jolly and LaVaughn, illustrate actions that

There are several different social issues presented in Jeannette Wall’s memoir “The Glass Castle.” These issues included neglect – medical and education,

Izzy’s mother had just recently received the opportunity to finish her research in Costa Rica, although this would require her to be away from her daughter for two months. During this time, Izzy must live with a grandmother she knows little about, in a city she knows nothing about; New Mexico. She is accustomed to moving around, although she resents doing so. Being in this unknown land for the summer would force her to abandon newly bonded friendships. However, the most painful aspect of this change is the fact that she would be thousands of miles away from her mother. Izzy’s mother is passionate about finishing her studies, and sees the positives that will result from it, but Izzy fails to do so. As stated in paragraph 15, ‘ “I’ll be home at the end of July. And after this I can finally graduate. Our lives will change then.” She reached over and stroked my hair. “For the better.” ’ This quotation demonstrates the mother's positive association with the move, and how it will be a beneficial change for the future. On the other hand, Izzy disagrees with her mother, and wants to remain in California. Paragraph 24 reads, “New Mexico is worlds away from California. And what am I going to do for two whole months with someone I haven’t seen since I was six? That was half my life ago. She’s a stranger! . . .” (24 Cervantes). As demonstrated by the quotation, Izzy does not want to live in New Mexico with her grandmother, and this has caused her to be infuriated. They clearly have opposing views on how the future should play out, which has resulted in fighting between the two. Izzy, easily aroused, stormed away from her mother out of fury, which worsened the situation. Depending on how this life altering decision plays out, their relationship may be weakened. To conclude, because of their contrasting views on how Izzy’s mom should respond to the

In this section, Jeannette Walls starts off, in the present time by telling the readers about her seeing her mom on the street, that she hasn’t seen in a long time. Jeannette uses emotional words like blustering and fretted to show that seeing her mom was an emotional time. Later in the section, she goes way back into her life to when she was three years old and when her family and her was living in the desert. She started off telling a story of when she was on fire. This story was intense, it was really dramatic on her parents part, her dad was screaming at her and the doctor a lot. Then she talked about when they moved to Las Vegas, her family lived in a motel room, which didn’t last long, they had to leave Vegas in a rush, because her dad was cheating in blackjack and the dealer found out. The last story in the section is where her family drove to San Francisco and stayed in another motel. One night her dad was at the bar, across the street. He left Jeannette and her three other siblings in the room. Jeannette got bored so she decided to play with fire and that let to a big disaster resulting in the whole hotel burning down.

The book The Bean Trees, by Barbara Kingsolver, is a coming of age story about a young girl, Taylor, that is thrust into motherhood when a baby is left in her car. Taylor however, is not the only example of a mother in the story. There is Lou Ann and Esperanza, both literal mothers, but only one of them has their child to take care of. There is Mattie, one of the first people that Taylor meet in Tucson, and who becomes almost a surrogate-mother for both her, and also the refugees that she shelters. In all of the both literal and figurative examples of motherhood in the story, none of them really fit into the idea of a traditional family setting. Kingsolver is expressing to the reader that being a successful mother does not rely on whether the family is “normal”, but rather being able to do the best for your children.

“He [Jeannette’s father, Rex] will not keep me out of harm’s way, he will put me in harm’s way and I have to find a way to remove myself from the situation.” (Diversity Connection). I feel like this quote, from Jeannette, came t directly from the situation where Rex took her out to the bar to help him earn money for alcohol, but yet she still doesn’t see herself as a victim. Even though Jeannette Walls was the victim of sexual abuse at a very young age, she tries to recreate the freedom from her childhood into her adult life, But in her younger years where she has no occupational activities, no nurturing, no money and no friends to turn to, it proves to be very hard to maintain.

Throughout The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver, Marietta “Missy” Greer goes through many changes. For example, she changes her name to Taylor, adopts a child, and experiences life-changing events. When she left Pittman County, she probably did not expect to have a family that she avoided having in the beginning. Taylor left her home in Kentucky because she did not want to end up like all the other girls who did not finish school, got married early, and did not have much to look forward to in life. Taylor wanted a better life for herself so she left and made a new life in Tucson, Arizona. Some significant items that changed Taylor’s life along the way were Lou Ann’s ad in the newspaper, a photo of her with Estevan after Esperanza’s suicide attempt, and Turtle’s custody documents. These items are very meaningful because they play an important role in Taylor’s new life

“1,520 children [nationally] died from abuse and neglect in 2013 [with] an average of four children dying every day from abuse or neglect,” according to the Child Welfare Information Gateway in “Child abuse and neglect fatalities 2013: Statistics and interventions.” The Glass Castle, a memoir by Jeannette Walls, depicts the harsh childhood the elder three Walls children experienced due to the choices their negligent parents made. The siblings’ childhood was unstable due to bouts of the parents’ unemployment, financial instability, and travels to new homes. The three siblings—Jeannette, Brian, and Lori—came together to survive against starvation from lack of food and to protect against getting abused by the people around them. As they grew up, they learned to support one another to

She feels this especially when her father is so consumed in his drinking and her mother is so consumed in her artwork. With the parents worried about other things, they do not have time to worry about the actual concern: the safety and protection of their children. With the poor decisions they make in regards to their children's safety, it seems as though they do not love them which is where Jeanette feels she has to pick up their slack. Towards the end of the novel Jeanette and her new husband, John, invite her mom, brother, and sister to a family Thanksgiving dinner showing love and compassion even after all the pain and suffering her mom caused her, “It had been John’s idea to invite her and Lori and Brian out to the house for Thanksgiving, the first Walls family get- together since Dad’s funeral.” Jeanette’s love and compassion even during the hard times, helped her to gain love in her life. After leaving in poverty fir all her life, she was finally able to be apart of the upper-middle

The girl distrusts her mother and believes her to be out of touch, while helping her father in "his real work" (468). Surprisingly, the girl's desire to avoid the manifestation of her femininity in womanly tasks, such as cooking and cleaning, influences her into feeling that her mother is "plotting now to get [her] to stay in the house [. . ]. and keep [her] from working for [her] father" (469). The girl chooses to dismiss her mother, thereby dismissing her own future role as a housewife.

Instead these two poor girls are from a mother, who is a washerwoman, and they do not know who and where their father is but rumor is that the father is in jail. So ideally the mothers of the children of middle minds with adult matters, children start thinking like adults.