The Glass Castle By Jeanette Walls Essay Topics

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

The book is told from Jeannette’s point of view; Jeannette is an adventurous child with high hopes. Her father Rex Walls is an alcoholic who would distract the kids from when they had to move house to house,

While Jeanette was young she was a “daddy’s little girl”. She had always been her father’s favorite. He payed more attention to Jeannette than his other kids. Jeannette loved her dad very much. She would always believe in his dreams and his adventurous side. She looked up to him. Whatever her father told her she believed. Rex tends to create unrealistic explanations to keep his children from considering herself lesser than others because of their lack of money. His stories made his actions seems okay. Jeannette always believed him, she was still too young to see things at another perspective.

The story of Jeannette Walls begins one cold March evening when she comes across a homeless woman, which is then revealed to be her mother. It is there that her troubled past comes into light in, “The Glass Castle”. But through her disastrous childhood and dysfunctional family, she manages to turn it around and and by education, expectation, and most of all environment, Jeannette grew from her experiences and came out successful and stronger than ever.

In the beginning of the novel, she is wild and adventurous, she’s also her father’s favorite because she hangs at his every word. She thinks he’s perfect, with n shortcomings and nothing he does shakes that view of him. It feeds right his ego to see his favorite daughter view him so highly. As a child, Walls’ didn’t see anything wrong with the state her family was in. Because of her being a child she’s innocent and ignorant to the truth about the wretched state of he family. She doesn’t even realize that the reason she was burned as a child was because of a mother’s laziness and inattentiveness. She ignorant to the fact that a child isn’t supposed to operating a stove, regardless of their intelligence level. As a child or she wants his for her father to find the gold and build the glass castle, he’s always rambling on about. She’s clueless to how improbable it is for him to find gold or even the lack of technology at the time for him to be able to construct a house that was solely powered solar panels, in the middle of the desert. As she gets older and interacts with more people outside of her family, including classmates, she begins to see the cracks in what she thought was the perfect life. She begins to see how detrimental her father’s drinking is to the family. Money that could be used to spend on food or

In the long history of mankind, the family has been one of the key environments that affect the growth of individuals. Through her unconventional and often overlooked upbringing, Janet Walls' The Glass Castle offers a profound insight into how the choices and lifestyles of her parents shaped her character. The purpose of this article is to explore the profound influence of Walls' parents on her personal development. Walls tells "The Glass Castle" as a true story of how she and her three siblings, scarred and naked by their frustrated artist mother, Rosemary, and the self-reliant upbringing of her brilliant but alcoholic and gambling father, struggled to grow up in trash cans and eventually escape the vagabile life of the poor. This kind of narration makes it easier for the reader to empathize with the inner world and growth process of Janet and her family members.

He can be considered an antagonist due to the fact that he hinders Jeanette's plans by spending the money she saved and preventing her and her family from living in less deplorable conditions. Jeannette describes him as smelling like cigarettes, whisky, and hair tonic. When he is not drinking he is brilliant, but his alcoholism is quite plainly destructive as it becomes an issue throughout the whole novel. It can be inferred that the reason Rex drinks is because his own childhood was surrounded by drugs in a town he couldn’t escape. It can be assumed that he was abused and molested by his mother, whom was also an alcoholic. He had a special place in his heart for Jeannette, because she would forgive him for whatever destruction he caused. Rex leaves the family for days on a drinking binge. He loved that she saw him as a highly intelligent man with a passion for logic. She knew he was a skilled electrician and engineer, proven by the time he spent inventing contraptions that he hoped would make the family rich. She saw her father as a dreamer, especially when it came to his plans for the Glass Castle. Jeannette didn’t even disapprove of his paranoia towards the U.S. government. Jeanette's views about him didn’t stop him from being deceitful and deceptive. Although, she did manage to convince him to go sober a couple of time, but those few attempts all eventually fail, demonstrating a weakness that is a central

One some level the Walls children perceive that their mother and father weight them down. In order to be successful they cannot be kept under their thumb. Each of the Walls children left their home in Welch to make a new beginning and create new identities that would not be associated with impecunious or slovenly. Maureen and Jeannette differ from the rest of the children because both grew independent and remote from their family overtime because their parents continued to leech from advantages earned from the life they built for themselves. In other words, they are more concerned with constructing families and careers of their own rather than relishing in the past.

[Imagine having irresponsible parents that are constantly moving around the country] That is what Jeannette Walls went through and she tells her story in The Glass Castle. She is abused by her grandparents and is abandoned by her parents. Jeannette and her siblings eventually end up moving to New York City for a new life. *Hardships bring families together by teaching them to help each other out.*

Ever since the beginning of Jeanette Walls childhood, Rex Walls was always an alcoholic father who abused not only his wife, but his family too. Like anyone when intoxicated, Rex was an entirely different person when he drank too much. There were several instances throughout The Glass Castle when Rex displayed abusive tendencies toward the mom (Mary Rose) and the rest of the family. For example, when the Walls were still residing in Battle Creek, Rex disappears for hours after he had been drinking for a while. Rose Mary and Rex got in a huge fight and the next thing the kids knew, “Mom’s feet appeared in the window, followed by the rest of her body. She was dangling from the second floor, her like swinging wildly” (Walls 71). In this specific passage, Walls shows the reader just how unacceptable and unhealthy the home environment was for the walls children. The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism defines that heavy alcohol abuse is “binge drinking on five or more days in the past month” (Alcohol Facts and Statistics). This was definitely a reoccurring habit of Mr. Walls and

A. Jeannette Walls, in her memoir The Glass Castle, demonstrates Erikson’s eight stages of development. Through the carefully recounted stories of her childhood and adolescence, we are able to trace her development from one stage to the next. While Walls struggles through some of the early developmental stages, she inevitably succeeds and has positive outcomes through adulthood. The memoir itself is not only the proof that she is successful and productive in middle adulthood, but the memoir may also have been part of her healing process. Writing is often a release and in writing her memoir and remembering her history, she may have been able to come to terms with her sad past. The memoir embodies both the proof

In New York, Jeannette seems hardened when she effectively ignores her mother’s scrounging for food. Thus, there is a role reversal between Jeannette and Rosemary. As Duckworth says of gritty people: “when you look at healthy and successful and giving people, they are extraordinarily meta-cognitive” (Scelfo, New York Times). Indeed, Jeannette is metacognitive; after all, she wrote this book about her own upbringing and present life, but she is not “giving” and neither were her parents. If Jeannette’s drive was due to grit, one certainly must question what her successes were. She achieved her “singularly important goal,” but lacks successful interpersonal relationships having failed to help her family. It seems Jeannette has not changed, but simply grown further into her parents lessons and roles. Like Rosemary, she does not give. Like Rex, she has high ambitions. Granted, without the abuse of alcohol, Jeannette is able to hold a job, which may be a result of witnessing alcohol’s effect on her father. That positive effect, however, is the result of observation, not Rex’s parenting. The effect of the laissez-faire parenting style was the self-reliant ability to flee to New York and do as she pleased, but the neglectful

Again the danger of parenting is depicted through walls’ use of symbolism. Jeannette being a child (three years old) and having to cook and take care of herself is substandard. Having to be surrounded by hardship and

While her father’s dismisses his destructive nature, Jeannette becomes conscious of his actions which motivates her to make amends in hopes of leaving their desolate life. Instead of getting help for his childhood trauma, Rex immerses himself in alcohol causing him to become

The novel, The Glass Castle, exhibits the human tendency to be selfish. This is manifested in both Rex and Rose Mary. Rex is characterized as a selfish father throughout the novel, and his paternal image is consistently skewed because of his actions. His addiction to alcohol ruins countless family events. One year the family’s Christmas is ruined when Rex drinks a great deal of alcohol and burns their tree and presents. Jeanette remembers, “Dad sat on the sofa [...] telling mom he was doing her a favor [...] no one tried to wring dad’s neck [...] or even point out that he’d ruined the Christmas his family has spent weeks planning” (115). Jeanette and her family are always left cleaning up their father’s drunken mess. Even when Rex is sober he does not apologize for ruining sentimental family events and continues to put alcohol before his family. Selfishness can also be seen in Rex’s relationship with money. He takes Jeanette into a bar in order to get money from his friend, Robbie. When Robbie asks if he can take Jeanette upstairs, Jeanette recollects, “So, with Dad’s blessing, I went upstairs” (212). Rex is so self-absorbed that he allows his daughter to go into a strange man's apartment, fully knowing his intentions. During Jeanette and her siblings’ childhood, they experience dangerous situations with their parents’ knowledge and approval. While Rex’s selfish nature is typically derived from his addiction, Rose Mary’s selfishness is simply a reflection of her personality.