Reading The Glass Castle, by Jeannette Walls was a journey in itself. As I dived deeper into the book everyday, I started feeling like I was apart of the Walls family, going through everything that they were experiencing. Reading about all their crazy experiences from one of the daughter's point of views, was incredibly intriguing. It is a personal memoir of her years of growing up with her alcoholic father, delusional mother, and three siblings. The book is full of hardships. The family continually suffers especially the children as they grow up. The amazing part of the book is how the kids, especially Jeanette, made good lives for themselves even when throughout their childhood they had just about nothing. Jeanette took all her struggles …show more content…
I have not and will never forget those series of events. This time hurt me but also helped build upon my character. It was my freshman year of high school. I had decided to play soccer, which was not a hard decision for me since I had played travel soccer pretty much my whole life. Also my brother was in high school at the time and played for the boys soccer team, and had my dad as his coach. He loved it and was having a great experience playing high school soccer so of course I like to follow in my brother’s footsteps. I was very nervous at first. There were over eleven seniors on the team, and they were pretty intimidating to me. During the summer, I played with the varsity often and enjoyed it. As I kept playing with them and performing well, my nerves lessened. Finally when the actual season rolled around, I was put on full varsity. All my hard work had paid off. I was one of the two freshman put on varsity. I was ecstatic. I was actually very lucky at getting put on varsity because at this point in my life I played purely out of natural talent. I was never one to put in extra work outside of practice and be disciplined in the way I lived my life. I never really strived to be the best I could be. Making varsity made me somewhat of a threat for the older girls. Some were happy for me, others did not like the thought of a freshman on varsity. These girls were hard coore they were bound and determined to make it to state that year. They were not going to accept anything less than amazing. This put an incredible amount of pressure on us younger girls. I remember going to every practice nervous that I was going to mess up and they get mad at me. I never really felt at ease with them. In the first few games I got good playing time. I was doing really well. I was finally getting comfortable out there on the field, but that was not the direction God was taking me and with one swift kick of the soccer
It still holds true that man is most uniquely human when he turns obstacles into opportunities. This is evident in Jeannette Walls’ memoir, The Glass Castle, which reiterates the story of Jeannette who is raised within a family that is both deeply dysfunctional and distinctively vibrant. Jeannette is faced with numerous barriers throughout her life. Despite the many obstacles set forth by her parents during her childhood, Jeannette develops into a successful adult later in life. One of these obstacles is the lack of a stable home base moulds her into the woman she grows up to be. Throughout her life, Jeannette must cope with the carelessness of her
The memoir entitled The Glass Castle, written by Jeannette Walls is a story of the eventful life Jeannette endured growing up with her three siblings and her parents. Jeannette lived a tough life, she was constantly moving, never had nice clothes to wear, and had to grow up faster than most children. The reason for the constant struggles in Jeannette’s life led back to her parents. Her father Rex Walls was outrageous, always making spur of the moment decisions which had taken a toll on the family as a whole. He was a severe alcoholic who made way too many promises he knew he couldn’t keep. Throughout the novel, the idea of the “Glass Castle” appears quite often. The Glass Castle is
Everyone has some kind of hope for the future, something that they want to achieve or experience. “The Glass Castle” by Jeannette Walls, is the real life story of Jeannette growing up in poverty and her experiences as a child. Jeannette’s father was an alcoholic man, he was very irresponsible when it came to taking care of his children. Rex still managed to keep an emotional connection with his children, and this helped shape the Walls kids into who they became and kept their family together. Throughout Jeanette's childhood, she was always moving from place to place, and was constantly struggling to keep her family together. Throughout the book, “The Glass Castle” was mentioned a multitude of times. “The Glass Castle” was representative
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.
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.
What does a dysfunctional family look like? The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls was about her a her family and the struggle they had to go through. This memoir shows how a girl and her siblings got out of a lousy cheap lifestyle. She started her story from when she was a toddler and burned herself while she cooked a hotdog on the stove to having a successful life in New York City. In “ The Glass Castle”, Jeannette Walls uses humor to describe the ups and downs about her life. She also shows how forgiving she is even though her parents put her and her siblings through hell. In my opinion, summer readers going into the 12th grade should read this book.
The Glass Castle. Sounds like a story about some fantasy kingdom with a castle made of glass, but it’s not. This is a story about the early life of a young woman, Jeannette Walls. From drinking to living in the desert to running to New York, her life is a roller coaster ride. However, there is one thing you notice in the story: forgiveness. This happened many times in the Walls family. The act of forgiveness ultimately led the family to peace.
After nearly drowning Jeannette Walls, Rex Walls tells her that, “if you don’t want to sink, you better figure out how to swim”(Walls 66). The Glass Castle, told through Jeannette Walls, is a straightforward and content-toned memoir that describes the life within her dysfunctional family, consisting of an eccentric, free-spirited mother, an intellectual, but alcoholic father, and self-sufficient siblings. The Glass Castle should be considered as a summer reading for the class of 2019 because of its unique abilities to entertain the audience while simultaneously giving helpful guidance in the audience’s life. The book, although true, is told from an optimist’s viewpoint that gives the story an almost humorous vibe that the audience can appreciate,
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.
“Life with your father was never boring.” – Rose Mary Walls. Rose Mary Walls, Jeannette Walls’s mother and Rex Walls’s spouse, reminisces life with Rex, which included migrating frequently, refusing to conform, and advocating self-sufficiency. Despite Rose Mary finding Rex disdainful at times, she still believes that being with Rex was an adventure. In Jeannette Walls’s The Glass Castle, Walls reveals that there are turbulence and order in life, the influence of family, and how she develops as she grows up through Walls’s recollection of her life, from living in a nomadic household, where her parents neglect their children, to living in a squalid hovel with no plumbing, and finally living in New York City, where she is employed as a journalist.
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
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
“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
After reading The Glass Castle, I soon realized how blessed my life is. It is hard to imagine having such an arduous childhood and troubled family life. The way you found happiness and positivity in the most failed situations astounds me. Even though our lives couldn’t be more different, I was able to connect some many ideas and feelings you had growing up. However, other situations were too different from my situation to allow me to find a connection.
“The Glass Castle” by Jeannette Walls is a story of how Jeannette grew up in an incredibly dysfunctional family. Her father, Rex was an alcoholic and came from a very poor family. Her mother, Rose Mary was a free spirit, who never really seemed to want the responsibility of having a family and being a mother. She was an artist and would always prefer to work on her paintings instead of taking care of her children. She came from a rich, highly structured family. Jeannette’s parents, especially her mom, have really strong ideas about how you should raise kids. This involves letting them get into trouble and making their own mistakes. However, they go way too far with this philosophy and their kids are always the ones who end up getting hurt.