In the memoir, The Glass Castle, Jeanette Walls, the main character, grows up in a dysfunctional family that travels from place to place like nomads. Her father is an alcoholic, who is verbally abusive and destructive when drunk; however, when sober, he is charismatic and knowledgeable. Her mother is an artist who does not want to take on the responsibility of raising a family. Walls and her three siblings live out of the ordinary and in the worst possible environments and circumstances. Despite all the troubles and hardships she has been through, she remains indefatigable. Although Walls had a traumatic and atypical childhood, she demonstrates her strength and ability to overcome the past through the use of tone, imagery, and pathos. …show more content…
Every time it rained, the plasterboard ceiling would get all swollen and heavy, with water streaming from the center of the bulge (Walls, 153)." Walls uses imagery to provide the readers with a vivid illustration of the house. Furthermore, a graphic description makes the readers feel like they are looking at the setting or situation as if they were actually in Walls' shoes when she was a child. Imagery can also portray themes throughout the story. Walls recounted the memory of her favorite tutu that made her look "like a ballerina (Walls, 9)", which demonstrates the theme of innocence and happiness. Then, she says, "I screamed. I smelled the burning and heard a horrible crackling as the fire singed my hair and eyelashes (Walls, 9)." These two contrasting images express opposing themes in her life from happiness to destruction. The purpose of using imagery is to provide the readers with a clearer perspective of Walls' past lifestyle. Walls' use of pathos evokes diverse emotions in the readers throughout the book. For instance, when Walls flies out of the car and her parents are nowhere to be seen, she thinks, "They might not notice I was missing. They might decide that it wasn’t worth the drive back to retrieve me; that, like Quixote the cat, I was a bother and a burden they could do without (Walls, 30)." This quote makes the readers feel sympathy towards Walls. Walls shares her personal thought to appeal to the readers' emotions and to communicate that
American journalist, writer, and magazine editor David Remnick once said, “The world is a crazy, beautiful, ugly complicated place, and it keeps moving on from crisis to strangeness to beauty to weirdness to tragedy.” In the memoir, The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls the main character and author of the book tells of her crazy and adventurous life she experienced with her not so ordinary family. This quote relates to The Glass Castle, because like it states, life is full of both tragedies and beauty which is exactly what Jeannette experienced growing up with her free spirited and non-conformative parents. Walls is able to express her main purpose of the book that life is a mix of good and bad times through imagery, tone, and pathos.
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
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.
Walls sets the tone of her memoir with the story of her earliest memory, being on fire. She uses this story to introduce the reader to the fact that from the start, her life did not fit the picture of the typical American dream. The first line of part two is, “I was on fire.” (9) and it is a very powerful one indeed. By using this eye catching sentence, she uses the Pathos method of appealing to the readers emotions, namely, natural curiosity and empathy. (add on)
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.
Colson Whitehead once said, “Let the broken glass be broken glass, let it splinter into smaller pieces and dust and scatter. Let the cracks between things widen until they are no longer cracks but the new places for things”. In the memoir “The Glass Castle,” author Jeannette Walls faces despair and turmoil as a result of her impoverished and dysfunctional upbringing. As Jeannette grows up, she watches her father Rex fail to reach his full potential and his dream to build a Glass Castle shatter as his alcoholism takes control. Aware of the devastation her father was causing, she begins to slowly lose faith in him but doesn’t fail to escape her destructive household and pursue her dreams of becoming a journalist. Due to her parent’s lack of parenting and being forced to fend for herself, Jeannette developed a sense of responsibility to care for others and make amends to improve the family’s lifestyle. Despite the turbulence and destruction her parents had caused over the years, unlike her father, Jeannette was able to find the strength to overcome obstacles, developing characteristics that ultimately lead her to achieving her dream, thus illustrating that adversity has the power to shape one’s identity.
The Glass Castle, by Jeannette Walls, describes the unfortunate struggles of Jeanette and her family throughout her childhood. Often times, the hardships in one 's life can shape their future and how they develop as a person. Jeanette went through so many hardships that seem unbelievable to me. Her struggles and life experiences are much more extreme than mine will ever be. Her hardships have helped shape her personality and her career. She has made the best out of her childhood, and everyone should take a tip from Jeanette, including myself. I have not had many giant hardships in my life to this date. Jeanette is a role model to people everywhere. She showed that it doesn’t matter where or how you grow up, the only thing that matters is
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.
As flames engulfed her dress, they burned down her stomach as she screamed for help. This was the first memory Jeannette Walls had in The Glass Castle . The plot of the story reveals her childhood of poverty as she moved around the country with her delusional family. Her alcoholic father and mentally ill mother created a very different lifestyle for their children, and raised them like no other. The unique plot, strong characters, and many settings make the novel successful. In this autobiography, she perseveres through tough times and leads the reader down the path she took to adulthood.
In the memoir, The Glass Castle, by Jeannette Walls the author depicts her poverty-stricken past along with her eccentric morals, and dysfunctional parents as they traveled around the country avoiding debt-collectors, while handling unruly situations. The author lives with her three siblings: Brian, Lori, and Maureen Walls; and her two parents: Rex, and Mary Walls. The mother a struggling artist, and the father a jack-of-all-trades with an alcohol addiction. Together they move from town to town, and state to state avoiding the clutches of the ‘FBI’ a nickname Jeannette 's father gave to the debt collectors that were constantly chasing after them. Along the way they struggle with cases of sexual harassment, bullying, and
In the vivid, personal memoir The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, she painstakingly recalls her “story” and how it affected and made her who she is today. She grew up in an environment that most children typically do not. Her father was an alcoholic, and her mother was a selfish woman who put herself first. You could say their way of parenting was not your average “cookie cutter” household. One main social issue in The Glass Castle, is the impact on child neglect in a family and how that affects the way the child turns out. Although, Jeannette Walls ended up as a successful writer along with her siblings Lori and Brian, her other sister Maureen took a route which many neglected children face. What set apart these siblings and how the
Jeannette Walls is an American writer in journalist who found success in New York City, most notably writing a gossip column for MSNBC in which she details the effects of gossip in politics. She published her memoir, The Glass Castle, in 2005. The book spent 261 weeks on the New York Times Best Seller list. In it, Walls recounts her childhood while growing up in an unstable family with her father and mother, Rex and Rose Mary Walls, her older sister Lori, and her younger brother and sister, Brian and Maureen. Rex and Rose Mary could not settle down and constantly uprooted their family of six to different locations in the southwest region of America. Neither parent could keep a job and struggled to feed and put a roof over their heads. In the novel, Walls views her parents as irresponsible because it rarely seems as though Rex and Rose Mary genuinely want to work and make money to support the family. They thrive off their sense of adventure, as they drive all over the country in a rundown car, looking for their latest shack to pile their family into, usually without running water, heat, or indoor plumbing. Walls will tell the story of her childhood through a series of pivotal moments that ultimately shape her opinion of her parents and lead her to a successful career in New York City.
Walls sets the tone of her memoir with the story of her earliest memory: being on fire. She uses this story to introduce the reader to the fact that from the start, her life did not fit the picture of the typical American dream. The first line of part two is, “I was on fire.” (9) and it is a quite a powerful one indeed. By using this eye-catching sentence, she uses the Pathos method of appealing to the readers emotions, namely, natural curiosity and empathy. As the story continues, the reader experiences the cool calmness of the hospital with Jeannette. Jeannette is not afraid during a hospital stay and enjoys the attention from the nurses. Walls uses simple childlike language to take the reader on a journey with her, from being placed in an ice bed with severe burns to chewing gum for the first time. By using this language, Walls gets the reader to sympathize her. The reader feels the loneliness that she feels while in the hospital and away from her family, but the reader also feels Jeannette’s excitement from being able to watch television all day and receiving three meals a day. From the start, Walls is incredibly tough and self sufficient. Through the tough lessons her parents teach her and the strong ties she has with her siblings, Jeannett becomes strong-willed and persistent.
“The Glass Castle” by Jeanette Walls is an extremely captivating novel that really kept my attention throughout the entire story. It’s a fascinating story of growing up in circumstances that kept me shaking my head as I turned the pages. The Walls family is unquestionably one unlike any I’ve ever come across. The lessons and experiences that the children learned and endured were ones that molded their lives and established who they are today. Jeanette Walls goes through many descriptions of situations that she faced that people normally should not face. For most of her childhood, her family traveled from town to town because her parents always thought that they would hit it big, unfortunately her father was never ever to find a
presents the readers with an opportunity to tap into the “emotions” of the house. “"Who goes