In the memoir The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, Jeannette travels and lives in many different places throughout her childhood. The most influential of these places being a town in Nevada called Battle Mountain. As a young child, our author viewed her lifestyle with a rosy optimism. It wasn’t until the Walls family moved to Battle Mountain that the now seven year old Jeannette has her eyes opened to the family’s hardships. Within a short amount of time after moving in, Jeanette's father, Rex, loses his job. This is not uncommon for Rex Walls as he frequently evades being dragged into the “Rat Race”of America. However, this particular instance proves hard on the Walls family. They quickly run out of food and with Rex’s drinking problem,
The book is told from Jeannette’s point of view; Jeannette is an adventurous child with high hopes. Her father Rex Walls is an alcoholic who would distract the kids from when they had to move house to house,
In a memoir called The Glass Castle, a young girl named Jeannette Walls shares her crazy life stories as if they were regulars to everyone else. These
At the early age of 3, she began forgiving her mother for the way she treated her, always neglecting her children. Her mother refers to a saddle as an analogy saying that if falling off the horse, it shouldn’t stop a person from riding horses. Similarly, even if she burned herself from cooking, she shouldn’t stop doing that. As faulty as her mother was, Jeanette's extremely strong mind made her braver and more courageous through the tragedies. Despite the hardships, she walked through life optimistically no matter the circumstance. She forced herself to have complete faith in her parents. When Jeanette’s dad threw her into a pool to teach her to swim, she thought to herself, “I figured he must be right, there was no other way to explain it” (66). Rex put his daughter in a life or death situation. Although she was extremely nervous, her attitude towards the end was incredibly optimistic, forcing herself to believe that her dad was right without doubt. She doesn’t let herself experience pity and depression for being born into a unfortunate family, she hopefully searched for the sliver of light at the end of the dark tunnel. Although Jeanette went through a lot growing up, in the end when her dad is sick and in
In The Glass Castle, Jeannette has lived in several interesting places throughout her life, especially in her younger years. Her family frequently uprooted and fled either to escape debtors, police, or even the mafia. Consequently, each area she spent time in embedded influences and ideas into her. However, the area that gave the most influence was when her family settled down in Battle Mountain, where she was able to properly go to school and everyone in the family seemed to be enjoying themselves. Battle Mountain had the strongest impact on Jeanette, as it was the first location she grew attached to, she had to watch her parents have an intense fight, and had to suffer through almost running completely out of food.
Jeanette Walls and her out of the ordinary family live their lives surrounded in pure craziness and poverty. Jeanette has been raised to be as independent as her age allows her. At age three she could make herself a hot dog and by the age of eighteen she had started a new life in New York away from the craziness that followed her parents throughout the kids nomadic childhood. Jeanette and her siblings Lori, Brian and Maureen live their childhoods with almost nothing. They were always wondering where their next meal would come from and where there parents had mysteriously disappeared to. Rex Walls, the father and husband was a severe alcoholic who spent most of his money on gambling or a beer from a local bar. Rose Mary Walls, the mother and wife was not better, never being to hold onto a job for long enough to get paid and support her family caused many problems for Rose Mary, Rex and most importantly… the kids. The kids all had the dream of escaping the prison their parents called home and heading to New York or California where they could feel endless happiness. The kids grow up with almost no parents, which forces them to become independent from the day they were born. In The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, Jeanette's parents teach her to only rely on herself and never get attached to something you can lose, forcing Jeanette to become strong and independent throughout her childhood.
One consequence, for example, showed Walls's parents trying so hard to separate themselves from society itself, that they didn't focus their attention on what's most important: their children, which in return showed the Walls family to be dysfunctional. They were constantly running away, always having problems with finances, which eventually resulted in scarce food and no working electricity. Although Jeannette Walls's parents earned
Jeannette Walls has always been moving from place to place. Her father, Rex Walls, is a raging alcoholic who is constantly running from the police in order to keep his kids. They have lived in houses, their van, even outside. Imagine sleeping outside because the police are looking for the children of the parents who haven’t paid a
In the memoir, The Glass Castle, Jeannette walls, the author, was most influenced by her time in Battle mountain, as indicated by how she describes the memories there. She learned a lot of life lessons there and how her family loved her and would do anything for her. How her parents would try and provide for her even when they didn't like their jobs. Then again how her family would stick up for her and the hardships they went through when they lived there.
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.
Throughout the book, Rex has consistently let his children down. One example of this extreme disappointment he gives his children happens during Christmastime in Phoenix. The kids prepare the most “normal” as possible Christmas as family and Rex prepares by drinking all day. In his drunken stupor, Rex lights the Christmas tree on fire, demolishing the everyone’s presents and good mood, except his own (Walls 115). His brain is self-absorbed that he takes happiness the children have for the holiday season and burns it like the tree. Losing hope once isn’t enough to stop the kids but Rex will never lose his ability to destroy hope. Jeanette asks her dad to stop drinking for a present for her birthday. After going through the struggles of withdrawal and the cleansing experience of being sober for a few months, Rex goes back to the bottle (Walls 116-122). He tries his hardest so readers can see that he wants to be a better father. Still he finds a way to satisfy his own wants before his family needs. Another example of Rex letting down his children happens in Welch. The children are making the best out of their dreary, rundown home on Little Hobart Street by starting on the Glass Castle’s foundation and Rex allows “...as Brain and I watched, the hole for the Glass Castle’s foundation slowly filled up with garbage,” (Walls 155). At various times in the second section of this book Jeanette talks about the Rex and the kid’s goal to build the Glass Castle. Once they have a start on it though he lets what he wants, the garbage, take over instead of trying to complete his kids wishes. Besides taking away some of the children’s hopes and dreams,
The Glass Castle is a memoir written by Jeannette Walls. An interesting novel, it switches back and forth between Jeannettes childhood adventures and her current life in New York City. During the childhood adventures, she describes growing up with her mom, Rosemary Walls; her father, Rex Walls; and her three siblings, Lori, Brian, and Maureen Walls. Invariably short on food and money, life is not easy in this family. Neither of her parents can maintain a steady job, resulting in no income for the family.
Some of Jeannette Walls's story events from her memoir, The Glass Castle, are a bit hard to believe. An unimaginable past that seems to be fiction created by the author, but in reality, has been fabricated by the cooperating hands of time and chance. Jeannette Walls lived through poverty and recklessness, later to find herself in New York with a stable career and family, much different from what her family had. Going through hardships and trying to survive in her childhood shaped her into the successful individual she is today.
The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls is a descriptive and emotion filled memoir of her childhood and how it affected her in her adulthood. The novel was released in 2005 and in 2017 the film version was released. The purpose of both the novel and film was not only to inform the reader about Jeannette’s story, but to also encourage people to achieve their dreams and to not let their past determine their future. In comparison to the movie, the book portrays the theme, characters and the mood of events better. Although both the novel and film allows the audience to get a sense of the central purpose, the book has a way of making the reader emotionally attached and want to continue reading.
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.
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