The Glass Castle Essay

This is a summary on the Glass Castle is about a young woman name Jeannette begins to look back of the pasts on her childhood and how her parents’ choices affected her and her siblings. When Jeannette was three-year-old, she was boils her own hotdogs and got burned horribly that she went to the hospital. After few days, her father got her out of bed and left the hospital without paying the bill. The most memories about the Walls of her childhood focus in the desert and how the family move to different desert towns to settling in as long as their father can hold a job. He has such paranoia about the state and society and he also have dealt with his alcoholism that has leads them to move often. They used to settle in small mining town, Battle Mountain, and Nevada while Jeannette and her young brother Brian spend their time exploring the desert. Their mother is an artist and takes a break from it to hold down a job as a teacher to extend their stay.

II. “It was hard work, but after a month we’d dug a hole deep enough for us to disappear in. Even though we hadn’t squared the edges or smoothed th floor, we were still pretty darn proud of ourselves. Once dad had poured the foundation, we could help him on the frame. But since we couldn’t really afford to pay the town’s trash-collection fee, our garbage was really piling up. One day Dad told us to dump it in the hole. ‘But that’s for the Glass Castle,’ I said. ‘It’s a temporary measure,’ Dad told me. He explained that he was going to hire a truck to cart the garbage to the dump all at once. But he never got around to that, either, and as Brian and I watched, the hole for the Glass Castle’s foundation slowly filled with garbage.” (Walls 155)

Bad Parenting is the act of not showing the responsibilities that should be taken as a mother or father. In The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls reveals the faults of parenting through the use of symbolism , imagery and characterization. Rosemary and Rex’s Struggles to show their children (Jeannette, Lori, Brian) the importance of the appearance and guidance of being by their side as a parent. Jeannette and Rex show their faults by destroying everything the children try to accomplish because of their personal bad habits.

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

“Blood makes you related, loyalty makes you family” - Chris Diaz. The Glass Castle is a book about a homeless family. The family faced many troubles throughout their lives. The book is about memories of Jeannette and her family. The Walls family faced many struggles and those struggles brought the family together.

Now you're probably wondering why the heck is this book called the glass castle. Well this book is called the Glass castle because Jeannette’s father Rex promised the kids that's when he “hit it big” he would build them their dream Castle that's made of glass hence the name. Sounds like a great plan right?

Early in the memoir, Walls describes the Glass Castle as something so grandiose and unrealistic that it almost seems too perfect to be true. Walls' explains,

At this particular part she was on her way to a party. ” I was in a taxi, wondering if I was overdressed for the evening, when I looked out of the window and saw mom rooting through a Dumpster” (Walls 3). She wants to help her mom but she did not want to incase someone from the party saw her. When Jeannette started working for this journalism and people asked about her family she made up a story.

Jeannette Walls develops her characters in "The Glass Castle" through her use of figurative language. Living with her family and going through so much in her life, Jeannette grows and learns the value of family. Even so her family wasn’t the best in the world, she could never hate them but only grow to love them more. She knew that even though her family was one crazy family she learned the value of having a home or having food on the table. Always on the run with her family, either running from the FBI, Police, or land owners.

During this scene, Rex confesses his guilt towards not being able to build the glass castle. To this, Jeannette responds by saying that even though they were never able to build their dream house, they had a lot of fun their entire life planning it. They also admit to each other that throughout the entire journey, travelling from city to city, in the end they loved each other no matter what. Finally, Jeannette thinks to herself, “But despite all the hell-raising destruction and chaos he had created in our lives, I could not imagine what my life would be like-what the world would be like-without him in it. As awful as he could be, I always knew he loved me in a way no one else ever had.”(279)This was Jeannette’s way of ultimately forgiving her father for everything he did to his family, and forgiving him for the chaotic life she had to live through, only two weeks before his tragic death. She did this because she knew that whatever happened in the past didn’t matter anymore, and that families need to always stick

The Glass Castle is a memoir written by Jeannette Walls. In this book, Jeannette recounts her unconventional upbringing along with her three siblings. Yet, despite of it all, she grew up to have an ordinary life as an adult with a professional career in journalism. Throughout childhood, Jeannette’s family lived like vagabonds, having no permanent residence, sometimes even not having an actual home but sleeping in the family station wagon. One day they lived in the middle of the desert by Joshua Tree, the next week they lived in Las Vegas, then following week it was Welch, West Virginia. Because of all the moving that the family did, the children sometimes found themselves homeschooled, and other times were enrolled in school. The parents, Rose Mary and Rex, though flighty parents, were intellectual, artistic, and visionaries. They instilled these values into their children. Coincidentally, the children tapped into having their own traits and talents. Lori is the artist, Jeannette is the journalist, while Brian is the mediator. Unfortunately, Maureen, the youngest, never learned resiliency nor did she find herself or come to her own. As the children grew older, one by one, they moved to New York to live an ordinary life and pursue their own individual passion. Lori became a fantasy illustrator, Brian became a police sergeant, and Jeannette became a TV correspondent. Maureen was the last one to move to New

Memories play a big role in everyone’s lives. They shape us into who we are today. Memories also play a big role in memoirs. Are all of the events in memoirs true? In The Glass Castle, some of the events could not be completely true.

The parents did not provide the basic needs for their children.Finally, they had settled in a small town named Welch in West Virginia .There they bought the oldest rustiest unpainted house they could afford and every now and then they had electricity .The dad explained he had bought that house because it came with extra land .The perfect amount to build the glass castle . The glass castle was supposed to be this huge mansion made up of glass walls and glass ceilings .In addition it was controlled by solar panels .The glass castle was never built, but young Jeannette Walls saw those words as hope .Thus Lori and Brian saw those words as excuse .For instance whenever dad was asked , why didn't he have a job he would reply it was because he was

He was the same person who gave her hope and broke it down. After letting her father borrow money from her, she perceived “I was mad at myself, but even madder at Dad. He knew I had a soft spot for him the way no one else in the family did, and he was taking advantage of it. I felt used” (Walls 423). She felt genuine betrayal and disappointment. This allowed her to grow out of the mindset that her father’s quick fixes were enough. Before leaving for NYC, Jeannette told her father “Go ahead and build the Glass Castle, but don’t do it for me” (Walls 487). She was taking the initiative of going to a healthy environment. Her father’s reckless alcoholism taught Jeannette to take action, and make sure she did not get stuck in the poverty-stricken life her father never tried to get out

"The castle today is a ruin, it is therefore of very little use to any