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The Importance Of Communities In The Glass Castle

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Communities play an essential role in the development of the self and learning about the stranger. Through communities, individuals are able to socialize and gain a greater understanding of each other. A community can be defined in many different ways based on every individual’s experience with it. Developing a strong community takes time. Some people, like Jeannette Walls, do not have the opportunity to develop strong communities throughout their childhood. In The Glass Castle, memoirist Jeannette Walls describes many communities of which she was a part of growing up. When detailing her time at Battle Mountain, the town where the Walls family resided the longest during Jeanette's childhood, she says, “. . . I was happy in Battle Mountain. We’d been there for nearly a year and I considered it home—the first real home I could remember (81).” Jeannette described the community of Battle Mountain as a place where she was content and felt at home. Due to the long span of time the Walls family spent in Battle Mountain, compared to other places, Jeannette was able to find her place within the community and cultivate friendships. These connections gave her a sense of stability, which had been non-existent throughout most of her life, but the community of Battle Mountain just touched the topsoil of how deep a community can go. My dance community is a forest. Within the forest, there are maple, oak, aspen, fir, pine, dogwood, and many other trees. Many of the inhabitants are deeply

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