The Glass Castle Quotes

Jeannette Walls’ The Glass Castle influenced my ideas about poverty by showing me that poverty can yield positive results. Before reading The Glass Castle, I believed that all poverty was tragic and life ruining. I thought that nothing positive or advantageous could come of out poverty. Reading The Glass Castle changed my opinion. In The Glass Castle,

The Glass Castle, a both heart throbbing and emotional story written by Jeanette Walls shares her life through her child eyes. Walls grew with a different lifestyle than what we would normally see today. A family that isn’t much of a family but is a sense of stability and security to her. Throughout her life her family has been through hunger, unstable homes, a drunk father and very little of outer family relationships. She struggled along with her brother and sister but with free-spirited parents for her that is all she needed.

Destitution. Distrust. Deceit. These are the foundations of Jeannette Walls’ childhood, as shown in her memoir, The Glass Castle. An alcoholic father makes the Walls family homeless and impoverished, leading to an unstable lifestyle and a downward spiral of poverty, deceit and addiction..

Writer, Jeannette Walls, in her memoir, The Glass Castle, provides an insight into the fanciful and shocking life of growing up poor and nomadic with faux-grandiose parents in America. With her memoir, Wall's purpose was to acknowledge and overcome the difficulties that came with her unusual upbringing. Her nostalgic but bitter tone leaves the reader with an odd taste in their mouth. In some memories, the author invites her audience to look back on with fondness; others are viewed through bulletproof glass and outrage.

In the novel The Glass Castle, by Jeannette Walls, the uncertain future of the Walls’ children was questionable from the start. From a drunk father, to never having a steady home, the author tells of her idiosyncratic youth to describe the bitterness and longing for an ordinary childhood.

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.

Poverty is a main part of life for many people in the world, more importantly the United States. Jeanette Walls shows how big of a problem poverty is in her memoir “The Glass Castle”, with her stories of how she grew up and her family’s struggles. How her family was treated along with what the people living around them found important clearly shows their economical class. The problem of food scarcity, or not having the bare necessities are some of poverty’s main problems. In “The Glass Castle”, the issues of poverty are displayed through not having the basic necessities, not being able to provide for children, and how there is not always enough food to feed everyone in the family.

People often fall into some sticky situations, but how they deal with them is the thing that matters most. In The Glass Castle, a memoir by Jeannette Walls, she takes the readers through her life, starting at her earliest memory as a three-year-old, constantly living in a state of homelessness. Throughout the story, Walls experiences countless situations from her father being an alcoholic, to everyday school bullies. She uses a series of coping mechanisms to deal with, and sometimes terminate these issues. In fact, everyone of her siblings and parents uses various coping methods for these same situations. These methods may not always be the most effective, but people, including the Walls family, nevertheless use them to get by on their

"When Roger came to the neck of land that joined the Castle Rock to the mainland he was not surprised to be challenged… 'Halt! Who goes there?'"

Rex Walls, the father of the family had the abuse of alcohol is the major resource of the family’s suffering. It seems that alcoholism is an individual behavior, however, many family and social issues caused by it make it rather to be a social problem. Such as domestic violence, suicide, murder, drinking driving, sex assault, unemployment, child neglect, poverty and many other mental health problems are all the result of alcoholism. In the book, Rex Walls is a typical victim of alcoholism. He cannot take a

The Wall’s family in The Glass Castle is depicted moving very frequently. Their lives were constantly on the go. They decided to leave the city because Rex Walls, the father of the household, was frustrated with civilization, and believed that civilization would kill them. They moved to the polar opposite of the city; the desert, specifically to the Mojave Desert. Although deserts do not have a lot of vegetation they have cacti and creosotes, the mojave desert however is also known for their Joshua trees. They passed by a Joshua tree that was titled from the wind. Rose Walls, the mother of the household, finds the beauty in the Joshua tree and tells them that its struggle is what makes it beautiful. While they were about to go to sleep Jeanette

{Pride} -(a feeling or deep pleasure or satisfaction derived from one's own achievements, the achievements of those with whom one is closely associated, or from qualities or possessions that are widely admired.) As throughout the story of The Glass Castle we have seen all personalities and characteristics even how Jeanette’s mother, Rosemary acts. Rosemary has shown pride throughout the story. She is not ashamed to let people know she is homeless. She never takes the offers Jeannette gives her, she even has her own land but still lets her pride get in the way now she is living the life as a homeless person.

Social class and poverty impact an individual’s social experience immensely. This is proven true in multiple ways throughout the telling of The Glass Castle. The Glass Castle is more than just a book and this is discovered as Jeannette Walls begins rehashing her childhood, and early adulthood, during a state of poverty. Poverty can impact more than the well being of an individual. It can also affect a person’s social experiences as well as their choices and their actions.

The purpose of the text in The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls was to show the audience a different way of living. Jeannette is showing the audience what it was like to grow up in a family that did whatever they felt. Many people want to live how ever they like but Jeannette is showing them the downside of living that way. Jeanette's family was constantly without food due to lack of money on page 67 Jeannette said, ¨We did eat less. Once we lost our credit at the commissary, we quickly ran out of food.¨ Not only were they hungry but they moved often so they didn't get a proper education or had long time friends.

During most people’s lives, they endure many obstacles that they need to overcome either with others or independently. In these situations, one must be able to overcome them so one can keep on going; otherwise, these obstacles make life much harder to live. Booker T. Washington’s quotation insists that people should be deemed successful based not on their “position” in society, but on the “obstacles” they have overcome. In The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls and her family are faced with their own obstacles every day, which are highlighted in three moments: horrible living conditions in Grandma Smith’s house, Rosemary eating chocolate while everyone else is starving, and when Jeannette avoids mentioning her parent’s history. The Walls family