Symbolism In The Glass Castle By Jeannette Walls

In the memoir by Jeannette Walls, “The Glass Castle”, the author shares the bittersweet and slightly humorous story of her dysfunctional family and destitute upbringing. Walls grows up with a family that is always on the move and stricken by hunger. In the memoir, Walls writes about her memories of moving from one place to another with her eccentric mother, her alcoholic but intelligent father, and her three other siblings. Walls used language that was quickly understood to describe the happenings in the book. When I read the part where Rex brought Jeannette to a roadside bar so that he could earn the money that he owed her, I felt so disgusted and angry at the father.

In a passage from “The Glass Castle,” Jeannette Walls describes what life was like growing up with her broken family and how she felt about it. Jeannette writes about how she feels about her younger sister, Maureen, and how she believes that she is failing Maureen. Jeannette promised Maureen that she will protect her, but with her manipulative, alcoholic father and selfish, depressed mother, it is a challenge to maintain that promise made at Maureen’s birth. She also includes how she was made the head of the household because her dysfunctional family couldn’t maintain their lives properly. At 13 years old, Jeannette had to create a budget of $200 over the course of two months for her two younger siblings while her mom and older sister were

Symbolism is used in the memoir The Glass Castle, by Jeannette Walls, whenever the phrase “glass castle” is used. When someone in the book refers to the “glass castle” they are talking about a hope for the future of the Walls family. Rex Walls, her father, always promised that “Once he finished the Prospector and we struck it rich, he’d start work on our Glass Castle” (Walls 25). The “glass castle” represents the hope she has as a small child, because she was an optimist, who believed in a bright future for herself and her family. It also represents the hope she had as an adult, because a glass castle is fragile, and one wrong move can send the whole thing crashing down, just as one wrong move could send propel her life into chaos. As an author,

The human experience of an outcast is illustrated by Jeannette Walls in The Glass Castle by the element of chaos expressed throughout the book, the parents’ refusal to conform to social standards, and the poverty that shaped her childhood.

Authors use symbolism in order to prove points, represent emotions, or even to show ideas. In the memoir, The Glass Castle written by Jeanette Walls, the 'Glass Castle' itself represents the ray of hope that each child had as they grew up in a financially troubled and twisted family. The Glass Castle design was also used by her father as a way to get his children to trust that he will always try to provide for and protect his family. Rex Walls, Jeanette's father stated that the Glass Castle would have glass staircases, heating and cooling powered by solar energy, and even a water purification system. He planned the rooms with extreme precision and, “Carried the blueprints for the Glass Castle wherever [they] went” (Walls 25). He even had the kids, “Work on the design for our rooms” (Walls 25). All of this would be funded by his Prospector machine which would separate gold from other rocks. However, this machine was never used and Rex's drinking and gambling habits would always force the Walls family to move to a new location, putting the idea of the Glass Castle in the back of their minds.

The scene in The Glass Castle that presented me with the strongest universal topic of theme is abuse. An example of this in The Glass Castle is when Jeanette’s parents are having a heated argument. Towards the end, her mother is dangling from the window, her father trying to hold her up. When the kids interfere and pull their mother to safety, she says he tried to kill her. In the book his response was, “I didn’t push her, I swear to God I didn’t. She jumped” (Walls 72). But even though Jeanette’s father said he didn’t push her, it is very obvious that he lied. This is because later in the book, he stated that he only believed in science, and claiming that there wasn’t a God. Therefore, his swear didn’t

III. The Glass Castle is an extended metaphor for the broken promises and false hopes that Jeannette's father

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

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.

The book The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls is a memoir about her struggles through life. She explains her struggles and how she worked to overcome all of them. Her family was constantly on the move, because they could never keep the house or the dad would lose his job. Her first memory was when she was burned from cooking hot dogs and her parents took her out of the hospital before it was time. They would constantly struggle with hunger and while the mom had a teaching license she never wanted to work, all she wanted to do was paint and write. They could never really afford much for christmas and all they really had was each other. While my struggles may seem like nothing compared to hers, I have had to overcome many things. Track and field has been my biggest success and my biggest failure all at the same time; I have had to overcome many

Throughout the entire book the reader is constantly confronted with hidden meaning and symbols that add depth to the story. One of the major symbols is the glass castle itself, and how it represents the unrealistic and unstable life of the Walls

The Glass Castle represents the hope that is lost, and how it shatters like glass, like how the Walls family finds hope, but eventually lost it and went back to their old habits of just barely scraping by.

In the beginning of the book, Jeanette’s father promises to build her a dream house in which she and her family could finally live the life they deserve. As the story progresses, Jeanette realizes that her father’s promise would go unfulfilled yet the glass castle remains as an image of hope. Through her arduous upbringing, Jeanette continues to hold on to the idea of the glass castle with a sort of childhood innocence even at the end of the book when it becomes apparent that “[Rex Wall will] never build the Glass Castle.” As it influenced the lives of both Jeanette and Rex Walls and helped them not only survive but overcome their onerous situations, The Glass Castle remains one of the biggest symbols throughout the

The Glass Castle is a memoir by Jeanette Walls in which she tells the story of her childhood and the way she became who she is. Her path to her balanced present was too difficult and full of hardships, yet she managed to become a successful and prosperous person whose life experience gives her a push to make her life happy. It stands to mention that the novel is full of symbols which contribute to reader's understanding of Jeanette's character and represent her most important traits and desires. Besides, all the symbols such as the fire, the Joshua tree, the geode and the glass castle are recurring and contribute to understanding the struggle of Jeanette's childhood, her ability to overcome it and build a successful life.

The memoir entitled The Glass Castle, written by Jeannette Walls is a story of the eventful life Jeannette endured growing up with her three siblings and her parents. Jeannette lived a tough life, she was constantly moving, never had nice clothes to wear, and had to grow up faster than most children. The reason for the constant struggles in Jeannette’s life led back to her parents. Her father Rex Walls was outrageous, always making spur of the moment decisions which had taken a toll on the family as a whole. He was a severe alcoholic who made way too many promises he knew he couldn’t keep. Throughout the novel, the idea of the “Glass Castle” appears quite often. The Glass Castle is