The Glass Castle Analysis

The Glass Castle is a memoir about the hardships faced by a young girl, Jeannette and her tangible indigent family and how she overcame them by becoming a successful writer she is today.This memoir is an example for today’s younger generation that you shouldn’t let

The Glass Castle, a memoir written by Jeannette Walls, is a story that discusses the insights of a dysfunctional, yet vibrant family. The four Walls children have two parents, Rose Mary who was an unconventional artist, and Rex who was an alcoholic father. The family travels constantly across the country, with their parents using their imagination as a distraction from their poverty. Despite the hardships the Walls family has faced, Jeanette writes her truth in order to reconcile with her past. She expresses through her story of how she has reflected upon her childhood, and how it has shaped her character in the present (The glass castle: Jeanette Walls, 2016). The majority of readers may believe that Rex Walls is an irresponsible, neglectful parent. However, Rex’s viewpoint of how he cares for Jeanette and her siblings can be portrayed as supportive, intelligent, and sensible.

Jeanette Walls’ The Glass Castle influenced my ideas about poverty by showing me that poverty can yield positive results. Before reading The Glass Castle, I believed that all poverty was tragic and life ruining. I thought that nothing positive or advantageous could come of out poverty. Reading The Glass Castle changed my opinion. In The Glass Castle, Jeanette Walls and her siblings are resilient and brave. When the Walls family moves to Welch, West Virginia from Phoenix, Rex and Rose Mary Walls, Jeanette’s parents, travel back to Phoenix to pick up some of their old belongings and bring them to West Virginia. While Rex and Rose Mary are gone, Jeanette’s grandmother assaults Jeanette’s brother and banishes the children to the freezing basement. However, in the face of cruelty and cold, Jeanette and her siblings persevere and survive until their parents return. Poverty gives Jeanette and her siblings the ability to endure horrific circumstances. Because of their previous experiences with poverty, Jeanette and her siblings can withstand conditions and treatment that would have killed or crushed the spirit of a

Different circumstances shape people into who they will become. This is relevant in both books, John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath and Jeannette Walls’ The Glass Castle. Both the Joad and Walls families faced adversities but made it through them stronger. The two families move from place to place and greatly struggled financially. The value of family and lessons that can be learned from them is prevalent in both novels. The attributes that enabled both the Joad and Walls families to endure in the face of adversities are perseverance, faith, and their devotion to each other.

In the memoir, “The Glass Castle”, there were characters that desired freedom from the rules of society while the others however, wished for a normal life that had the happiness and security that they wanted. A normal life would be having a decent home, going to school everyday, parents with stable jobs, bills paid and at least three meals a day. The Walls Family didn’t have a normal life, in fact they always traveled from place to place because they couldn’t pay their bills, the children were home tutored by their parents (although later on they go to school) and worst of all, the Walls would starve going many days without food. For every child, it’s important that they have a sense of freedom by being able to do what they want while they’re still young. Then again, children should also feel like they’re secured, protected and safe from everything. Although if I were to choose which is more important for children, I would say security is more important .

In The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls tells the story of her childhood and describes her life in poverty. She had experienced what injustice was first hand. Her father, Rex, was an alcoholic that spent all of their money on booze. Because of this, they never had any money to spend on a house or food. They were always moving because they did not pay their bills and were running away from their problems. Her mother, Rose Mary, was irresponsible and only thought about herself. She refused to get a job and when she did, her kids had to drag her out of bed every morning. She did not watch her children and she let them do whatever they wanted. This caused the children to get into trouble with other kids and even adults. She spent money on useless commodities and could not afford to buy her starving children any food. Every day, the children had to rummage through the trash to find food to eat. When Jeannette finally realized she did not want to live with injustice anymore she left. It was very hard for her father to watch her go but she did not look back. She started focusing on the future and became a successful journalist. This was one of the many ways she gained her justice back. She offered to help her parents by buying them clothes and offering them money. She was trying to make everything just again by giving her parents what they never gave to her. Her parents never took any of her gifts because they saw it as charity and did not appreciate it. The injustice that happened to Jeannette made her who she is today. If she did not go through all of those injustices, she might not have realized that her passion in life was to write. It has made her a better person and she can now help others going through the same thing through her writings.

The society that is portrayed during this novel is neither happy nor sad. The citizens are glued to their "walls", or gigantic televisions, and live a life that is remembered by nothing of importance. True happiness as a society in this novel is the idea of living with a sitcom family, and the dream of adding more wall size televisions. People do not

Throughout the book, the idea of a glass castle isn’t always brought up and recognized, but it’s a main point made over and over. It is a

Peace and conflict have always been controversial and simplistic factors in the world. There is belief that a balance is present and that there is a same amount of calmness and distress in a person’s life. The Walls family lived a nomadic lifestyle and always moved when they could no longer pay bills or got in trouble with the law. Conflict always followed the family wherever they went; this caused Jeannette and her siblings to seek stability and peace, progressively as they got older in age.

Could the dysfunction of the Walls family have fostered the extraordinary resilience and strength of the three older siblings through a collaborative set of rites of passage? One could argue that the unusual and destructive behavior of the parents forced the children into a unique collection of rites of passage that resulted in surprisingly resilient and successful adults. In moving back to Welch, Virginia, the children lost what minimal sense of security they may have enjoyed while living in their grandmother’s home in Arizona. The culture and climate (both socially and environmentally) along with an increased awareness of their poverty resulted in a significant loss of identity. As they learned new social and survival skills in this

In the memoir “The Glass Castle,” by Jeannette Walls, the author describes the childhood she was apart of with her uninvolved parents was somewhat disparate from what other children would experience in their childhood involving their parents.

The Walls’ life in Welch is completely different than the one in Battle Mountain and Phoenix. Jeannette was in the same classrooms and had the same lunch as her siblings back in Battle Mountain and Phoenix. However, in Welch, she is all alone at school since Brian is a year younger and Lori is a year older. Jeannette is also getting bullied often in Welch. Back in Phoenix, all the teachers likes her because she is smart. Jeannette describes Welch as being “surrounded on all sides by such steep mountains” (Walls 133). In addition, Welch gets very cold compared to Battle Mountain and

Walls opens the middle of the chapter by demonstrating her father’s acts of selfishness. Walls creates a angry tone by showing the father as an antagonist. Her father steals all of Jeannette and Lori’s collected money for them to go to New York. Lori stays home from school to angrily confront her father for what he did. “You bastard” Lori Shouted.

For some people having friends brings happiness, but for the Youngers buying this new house is what brings happiness. The whole family is happy about moving, each for their own reasons. Mama had this little plant sitting out by the steps, but she didn’t think it was going to live because it never got sunlight. It was the only plant she had, however, she has always wanted her own garden to tend to. She was never able to have that because the apartment had no yard, the new house has a yard where she can plant what she wants. As I said before there was no yard at the apartment, which meant Travis really didn’t have anywhere to play. Having a yard of their own will give him somewhere to play outside. Playing in the yard is all a 10 year old kid ever wanted during the time this story took place. Ruth was always disappointed. You could look at her and see the disappointment in her face, all she ever really wanted was to make her family happy and keep them together. Moving will make everyone happy and happiness helps a family not fall apart. Walter and Beneatha will see happiness just by moving and being able to say they live in a house, but not just a house, their house. The overall happiness of the whole family will most likely come from them all knowing that in their hearts they kept papas dream alive even though he is no longer alive. This affects Lena the most because she mainly wants to do best by her late

The wall isolates all of the women from the outside and doesn’t allow them to see what’s going on outside of Brewster place. This wall can somewhat depress the women or have them feeling down about moving on. Simple things like this wall can affect these women dreams heavily. This wall is considered an obstacle, interfering with all of these women, stopping them from pursuing their dreams as they would like. Without the wall around, Brewster lace would be much livelier. Things wouldn’t be looked down on as much and would be viewed with much more optimism. There are many themes consulting dreams as well. Mattie Michael appears to be the center piece to all of the women there. She is able to understand the ultimate common dream. “As the community's best voice and sharpest eye, she is well-qualified to express the unconscious urgings of the community and dream the collective dream.” (Matus). Mattie holds everything together in Brewster. She constantly aims to not let her hardships break her. She is aware of all of the failures and difficult times she has faced, but she is always pushing forward and ready for what’s next. She has lost her home and her child in the past, and dreams to find another home in the future. Her son really hurt her when he left in the past and she struggled with that hardship for a very long time and still thinks about it throughout the story. “Mattie's is the first story, and from it