preview

The Glass Castle By Jeannette Walls

Good Essays

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 …show more content…

My earliest memory. I was three years old.” (Walls, 9) At the age of three years old, the children were already experiencing neglect, no child at the age of three should be making hot dogs on a stove by themselves.
According to the scholarly article, “The Third National Incidence Survey of Child Abuse and Neglect defines physical child neglect to include refusal of health care, delay in health care, abandonment, expulsion, inadequate supervision, or other physical neglect.” (Bolger, 396) In Jeannette 's life it is clear her family neglected her, although it may have been unintentional, or the fact that her family could not make ends meet. It is quite obvious that her upbringing was not filled with the needs or necessities which her fast paced family who moved from place to place provided. Aside from “sneaking” Jeannette out of the hospital when she had severe burns on her body and was still recovering, the siblings also faced similar neglect, due to the fact that Rose and Rex did not believe in hospitals and conforming to it, their kids were the ones who got hurt from this. “Mom said he had fallen off the back of the couch and cracked his head open on the floor but she and Dad had decided not to take him to the hospital.” (Walls,13) Brian, was a victim of his non-conforming parents. They neglected him by not caring about what he did and not supervising properly, and when he got hurt they refused to

Get Access