The Glass Castle Literary Analysis

This affects how Jeannette views her life, and as a result, she wants to have a better life than

Think back to your own childhood. Could you imagine being a child, and not having a care in the world, but then, as quick as the snap of a finger, that all changes because of a thoughtless mistake made by your parents? In The Glass Castle it is revealed that as Jeannette grew up, she endured hardships inflicted upon her by her own parents. However, if Jeannette had not gone through these things, she never would have gained the characteristics that she values present day. Although Jeannette Walls faced hardships and endured suffering during her childhood, these obstacles formed her into a self-reliant woman who proves that just because you do not have as much money as other families, you can still achieve success in your life.

Jeannette Walls, Shows in the book The Glass Castle that there are a lot of situations that happen in life where people make countless mistakes, but it is very important to forgive her father and her mother for many mistakes. She has to cope with many obstacles without her parent's help. In the author's memoir, we become attracted with Jeannette constant struggle between protecting her family and the pleasure that her family is based on the same hopes and senseless falsehood with her unbelievable storytelling method. The feelings of forgiveness hold the Walls family together. Jeanette was able to describe her family's childhood, relationships with one another. The children of the Walls family are forced to begin the independent life at an

Jeannette’s self-reliant behavior is frequently shown through her refusal of help from others. On one trip to retrieve her father from a bar, Jeannette’s father is so drunk that he can no longer walk. Another man offers to drive them home, and

One of the most important theme in The Glass Castle is forgiveness. Jeannette and her brother and sisters spend their whole lives forgiving their parents for their irresponsibilities. They still love them and welcome them into their hearts even though Rex and Rose Mary didn't deserve it. By forgiving them, she feels less angry and her attitude as a whole is much more positive. When she is three years old, she burns herself cooking and her mother doesn't take care of her. After being in the hospital for 6 days, she let her cook again and says “Good for you, you have got to get right back in the saddle (15). ” Another example of forgiveness, is when she is trying to learns how to swim and her dad drops her in the water making her almost drown. She thinks he did this so she can learn, so she forgives him. Jeanette says, “I figured he must be right, there was no other way to explain it(66).” This means that she thought he didn't have an intention to harm her, but he tried to make her learn. At the end of the story, she meets her father for the last time and forgives him for all the bad things that had happened in her life and all the chaos. Although all of these bad things happened to her and her brother and sister because of him, she says she knew he loved her like no one else ever had. Jeanette said she forgives him for “all the hell-raising and destruction and chaos he [has] created in [her life].” On the other hand though, she says, “I could not imagine what my life 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 means that she knew that he made all those mistakes throughout his life, but she still found a way to forgive him and look on the brighter side of things.

While Jeanette is preparing to leave for New York and her father, Rex, attempts to talk her out of it by showing her the updated plans for the Glass Castle, Walls, through Jeanette, uses an implied metaphor to show how all her father’s promises are a Glass Castle without the use of like or as. Walls uses this to illuminate how her father’s promises are broken easily like how a Glass Castle can be broken easily as it is made of glass, which is fragile. Walls also highlights how throughout the memoir her father promised to protect her, not only by building her a home like the Glass Castle, but also by protecting her from men who force themselves upon her as seen when the father states, “Anyone who… laid a finger on… Rex Walls's children was going to get their butts kicked,” (Walls, 24), but the father later goes on to allow her to be inappropriately touched by Robbie just to make some money. This shows that the father makes promises he is unable to and often does not want to fulfill throughout the memoir, which leads to Jeanette having to face adversity as her father is not protecting her. As a result of her adversity, Jeanette reaches an epiphany and learns to look out for her own well-being as she understands that her father is no longer willing to do so. She also understands that her father will never build the Glass Castle and that all the promises that her father ever made to her are like the Glass Castle, easily broken. This ultimately to Jeanette developing from a character who depended solely on her father, to one that could make the decision to go to New York without her father’s permission after the 11th grade. Finally, by going to New York, Jeanette is able to provide for her own well-being by working at a job and renting an apartment and departs from the conventional means of wellbeing. Through the use of metaphor, Walls conveys the theme that often for one to persevere against adversity in his or her lives, he or she must learn to go against conventional means of well-being, like family, and find his or her individual means of well-being.

Her father later told her that she was a special girl, that not many little girls can cook or boil water all on their own. Jeannette realizes that she is special just by this happening and later learned to laugh at her crisis. All of her life, decisions affected her life growing up. She decides that she will be the person she wants to be. Jeannette has had a rough life, but as soon as she faced a crisis, she learned something new about herself.

Jeanne is riding in the first trip to their new home. The trip is quite wild and disorderly due to Papa’s state of drunkenness. When they reach their destination, the family is in a state of apprehensiveness. They fear the worst possible situation. Luckily, everything remains normal, the people are indifferent to them. Unfortunately, it

In her younger years, Jeannette was an smart and imaginative child. At first, she enjoyed moving around, and had a lot of faith in her father, which created a good relationship between them. “All we had to was find gold, once we’d struck it rich, he’d [Rex] start work on our Glass Castle” (Walls, 25). The tremendous faith that she has in Rex creates a strong bond because she is the only family member who trusts his ideas. Unfortunately, he is a raging alcoholic who can’t hold a job, so most of his promises are broken. As Jeannette gets older, he lets her down more and more. One time he brought her to a bar where she was then sexually violated. When the two had a talk after, he said “I knew you could handle yourself” (Walls, 213,) instead of defending her. It was upsetting to watch their relationship grow apart and to see how poorly he provided for his family, yet they still loved him.

In Jeannette Walls’s memoir, The Glass Castle, Jeannette and her siblings are constantly plagued with various accidents and injuries, more so than “typical” children would be. Her parents have a carefree and lenient approach to parenting, oftentimes leaving the children to fend for themselves or in perilous situations. In The Glass Castle, Jeannette recounts some of the injuries she and her siblings suffer, the reaction her parents have to those injuries, and the parallel episodes they refer to.

*One of the themes of “The Glass Castle” is that, although you might have a horrible and hard childhood, it doesn’t mean you’ll stay that way. Jeannette had gone through so many things, but because she tried her very best to get out of her struggle she now succeeds in life.

Often times, when a family decides to have children, those children are usually a priority. In order for a child to lead a healthy, functional life, a family needs to be strong. When a family becomes dysfunctional, the most effected are the children. However, sometimes as the child grows up. They see past the dysfunction and forgive the parents for the problems they had caused in their children’s lives. In the novel, The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls she describes a unique dysfunctional family story. The Walls family have lived through constant struggles, and ran into new situations every day. Rex and Rose Mary Walls, the parents of their children Jeannette, Brian, Lori and Maureen, chose to live in poverty bringing their children along

While life has various precious resources, only some ever truly are important to the world. Even though we may choose what is precious to us, there will always be one above the rest. Money is our most precious resource in this world because we make lives for ourselves with it, and without money life would be difficult to go through.

In the desert, they decide to go to the hot pot instead of going to the pools. Dad swims towards the center with Jeannette and leaves her there she has to swim back to the sides but without dad’s help she drowns but seconds before dad always pulls her to the side. The final trial she starts to believe in herself so she propelled herself as fast as she could to get to the side of the hot pot. This shows that Jeannette had to learn how to take of herself and how to stay alive when her parents

Forgiveness, is one of the highlighting themes of The Glass Castle. Jeanette forgiving her parents for their actions allowed her to thrive. In a person’s life, they are most likely going to come across a point in time where they have to forgive someone. Throughout my life, I have been presented with several opportunities to forgive someone. Some of those times, I didn’t forgive. One of the times I had to forgive someone was last year. My two best friends got into an argument. At first, I thought they would work it out since it didn’t seem that problematic. However, I came to find out that the argument was worse than I thought and one of my friends kept accusing of my other friend for things she didn’t do. This led my friend to go through a