The Glass Castle Analysis

The death of a loved one can result in a trauma where the painful experience causes a psychological scar. Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones explores the different ways in which people process grief when they lose a loved one. When young Susie Salmon is killed on her way home from school, the remaining four members of her family all deal differently with their grief. After Susie’s death, her mother, Abigail Salmon, endures the adversity of losing her daughter, her family collapsing, and accepting the loss of the life she never had the opportunity to live. Abigail uses Freud’s defence mechanisms to repress wounds, fears, her guilty desires, and to resolve conflicts, which results in her alienation and

As the producer of ‘ABC’s First Tuesday Book Club’, I feel compelled to inform you that recent episodes have been substandard in quality and irrelevant for today’s contemporary audience. The best suggestion is for an entire episode devoted to the poetry of Gwen Harwood, a widely celebrated Australia poet. Her poetry presents unique ideas about the beauty of music, the growth from childhood to adulthood and the recollection of memories and experiences. The nature of her poetry is both intense and brilliant, qualities which effortlessly justify the enduring value of her work to still hold great value in today’s society.

On Writing Well by William Zinsser is an informative guide to writing nonfiction. Zinsser clearly explains every aspect that makes the nonfiction writing strong and impressive. After reading the book, The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, I saw that many of the ideas and themes mentioned in the guide were displayed in Walls writing very effectively. Not only Walls develop those ideas in the book but also uses many rhetorical strategies to get her points across through the reader.

a very common fear every salve of the time inhibited. By illustrating the tragic life of a young

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.

Jeannette Walls, author of the critically acclaimed autobiography, The Glass Castle, takes on an informal style in her writing in order to achieve a mutual level of understanding with the reader. She uses literary devices to reveal the mannerisms and the lifestyle of her parents and her family, thus creating a sense of background for the reader. Walls establishes "her style" on the writing by the use of tone, diction, sentence structure, and more. For example, towards the beginning of the story, she carries an accepting tone about the unorthodox and dauntless environment that surrounded her. Despite how dangerous the situation had been, she felt pride of its uniqueness, which further explains her optimism in the actions of her dysfunctional family.

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 .

Our terror could no longer be contained. Our nerves reached a breaking point. Our very skin was aching. It was as though madness had infected us all.” (Page 26) Effect/purpose:

Jeanette Walls memoir, the Glass Castle, illustrates Jeanette’s unusual childhood caused by constant poverty and chaos of her dysfunctional parents. This memoir teaches you to be thankful for what you have and to never give up no matter how hard things get.

Sacrificed the truth, beauty and the right to think, happiness and comfort is just indulgent, it is the discomfort brought by the misery, responsibility and the bonding give us the weight of life. The world is full of people who try hard to gain happiness, and we all have at least one time the idea of living in a perfect world, a world without pain, without misery, without getting old and without cancers. We always ignored the importance and the beauty of uncomfortableness, just as a quote in this book said, “Stability isn’t nearly so spectacular as instability. And being contented has none of the glamour of a good fight against misfortune, none of the picturesqueness of a struggle with temptation, or a fatal overthrow by passion or doubt. Happiness is never grand”. After read this book, I started to be more objective at those bad things I used to hate, to understand the significance of art and to be grateful to this imperfect world we are

During this part of the book, the people of Himmel Street are crowded in a basement acting as a bomb shelter. They are frightened and anxious, fearing for their lives. This quote describes how the war affected people living in their own homes, how the cruelty of the time period affected all people (of course, some more than others). But all lived on holding the trauma from the war inside of them; everyone lost something to the darkness of the war. The author’s use of descriptive language helps to convey this message in this quote and others throughout the novel.

“I was on fire” is one out of many memorable phrases used in The Glass Castle. The Glass Castle is a memoir written by Jeannette Walls about the trials and tribulations she and her siblings had to deal with while growing up. Though not all of her childhood was a struggle, she did experience some joyous moments too. Walls later on grew up to be an author and a journalist. Her memoir, The Glass Castle, should be required as summer reading for the Class of 2019 because Walls's life is very interesting and the memoir is relatable to different aspects of our lives.

Eleanor, the protagonist, undergoes a difficult childhood which cause many of her repressed feelings to be expressed through supernatural experiences that are ambiguous. She took care of her ill mother for 11 years, until she died. That affected her tremendously. For example, during Theodora’s supernatural experience, Shirley Jackson displays how Eleanor’s inner child managed to let her grow anger and jealously towards Theodora. Eleanor felt like Hill House was giving Theodora more

This quote portrays, the loss of innocence and what horrifying effects it can do to one’s heart.

“Skepticism is a virtue in history as well as in philosophy.” -Napoleon Bonaparte. Skepticism is a mindset where everything stated as fact or the truth is questioned. The Man in the High Castle, by Philip K. Dick (1962), V for Vendetta, by Alan Moore (2005), It Happened Here by Kevin Brownlow and Andrew Mollo (1966), “Through Road No Whither” by Greg Bear (1985), The Best Alternate History Stories of the 20th Century edited by Harry Turtledove and Martin Greenberg (2001), Shattered World (www.shatteredworld.net) by Bobby Hardenbrook (2007), and “Counterfactual history” from Wikipedia, all of them contain this theme. Skepticism is an indispensable tool that allows the user to distinguish between truth and falsehood.