Why Is It Important To Jeannette's Life?

Jeannette is very insecure about her past life of poverty, and although she has now dug herself out of the rut of destitution, her parents’ continued homelessness is always a reminder of

She has always felt a responsibility to take care of her siblings, earn money to help with finances, and control her father when he was drunk, even taking him home from the bar. Jeannette would try to bring food home for her siblings when she found any extra. At one point she says, “I felt like I was failing Maureen, like I wasn’t keeping my promise that I’d protect her.” (206) In reality, Jeannette should not be the one in charge of protecting her siblings and making sure they have enough food and necessities but she does because her parents don’t. She also feels the need to make extra money because her parents don’t have steady incomes. By the age of thirteen, she was the head of the household for the summer and had a job that paid forty dollars a week. (209, 215) She was making more money than either of her parents and she wasn’t even old enough by law to have a job. Another example of her maturity beyond her age is when Rose Mary makes Jeannette retrieve her father from the bar when he doesn’t come home after a couple of days. (181) This a job that Rose Mary should be doing herself but instead she sends Jeannette so she doesn’t have to deal with

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

Often when people decide to have children, they think of their circumstances whether they are fit for it or capable of raising a child. For some people they have no control and in this case Jeanette Walls’ memoir, “The Glass Castle,” is a crucial example of the struggle she faces growing up in poverty. Jeanette Walls was not only faced with living under the conditions of poverty, she also had to deal with the chaos and neglect from her parent’s lifestyle. Although Jeanette Walls parents were irresponsible and selfish one thing Jeanette’s Walls parents managed to do right was instilling good qualities and well-raised independent adults. Not only did Jeanette Wall’s suffer drastically from poverty, she had to deal with the constant battle of

As a child, Jeannette’s sense of wonder and curiosity in the world undermine the need for money. During her young adult years, a new wave of insecurity associated with her poor past infects her. Finally, as an experienced and aged woman, Jeannette finds joy and nostalgia in cherishing her poverty- stricken past. It must be noted that no story goes without a couple twists and turns, especiallydefinitely not Jeannette Walls’. The fact of the matter is that growing up in poverty effectively craftsed, and transformsed her into the person she becomeshas become. While statistics and research show that living in poverty can be detrimental to a child’s self-esteem, Jeannette Walls encourages children living in poverty to have ownership over their temporary situation, and never to feel inferior because of past or present socio-economic

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.

In society, there is no “normal” but there is often a certain expectation from the member in it like holding down a job, raising children, and many other. Yet Jeannette's parents do none of these things, instead they consider it to be positive that they live outside of society. To begin with the opening of the novel Jeanette is all grown up and a full member society and a complete opposite of her younger self. Jeannette illustrates ,“ I was sitting in a taxi, wondering if I had overdressed for the evening when I looked out the window and saw Mom rooting through a dumpster” (1). This is the opener of the memoir and is setting up a large class difference between two characters. Jeanette may never have been supported in her childhood but she has made her way to a high place in society, unlike her mother who never changed in her ways. Here Walls is creating a vivid picture of what society deems as correct and incorrect drawing the reader in to find out the cause of two members of the same family being so far apart from each other in society. In the same way when Jeannette is young and, is explaining how she receives her education. Jeannette admits, “ We might enroll into school, but not always. Mom and Dad did most of our teaching” (20). Most children in society have an education from some sort of school, but since the Walls family exists outside of society in many ways. Including how they receive their education, early on in life, the children are not inside a school system. Instead they are taught how to live outside of society like their parents even if they do not want to live that way. Later on, Jeanette has moved away from her parents and has the proper schooling she is a full member of society which is everything her mother did not want. Her mother argues, ‘ Look at the way you live. You’ve sold out. Next thing I know you’ll be a Republican.’ She shook her head. ‘Where are the

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

Jeannette shows that wealth is subjective. Even when she's an adult and has nice things and money, but she is still not happy. She is not happy because she is worried about her parents and she feels guilty living in a nice apartment and having all these nice things when her parents are homeless. Jeannette tries to quench her guilt by offering them help to get a house and food but her parents don't want the help. After Rex received clothes for a gift he says "you must be mighty ashamed of your old man. You think I'm some sort of goddamn charity case" (Walls 263). Jeannette sees her parents struggling to survive homeless but her dad says "Don't you fret a bit have you ever known your old man to get himself in a situation he couldn't handle" (Walls 260)?

To begin, self-sufficiency is represented through symbolism. When Jeannette was little there was an incident where she was burned in a stove fire and when she was recovering her father, Rex says,”You can't live in fear of something as basic as fire.”(15) Rex says that Jeannette shouldn't let things in life scare her and she needs to overcome them. Jeannette’s need to overcome her hardships symbolizes her self-sufficiency because it shows that Jeannette is determined to support herself. Further, when the Walls family lived in Phoenix they could survive in harsh conditions with little to nothing, so Jeannette says ”We were sort of like the cactus”(22). Jeannette’s independence and how she can survive when she can't depend on other shows her self sufficiency. Jeannette’s self sufficiency is relatable to the reader because society is established in a way where in the end of it all, people can only depend on themselves to survive.

In this both heart wrenching and slightly humorous memoir, successful journalist Jeannette Walls tells the bittersweet story of her rather dysfunctional and poverty stricken upbringing. Walls grows up in a family trailed by the ubiquitous presence of hunger and broken down homes. Throughout the memoir she recounts memories of moving from one dilapidated neighborhood to another with her three other siblings, insanely "free sprinted" mother, and incredibly intelligent yet alcoholic father. The author focuses on her unconventional childhood with somewhat unfit parents much too lazy and self-absorbed to even obtain decent jobs. Although Walls's childhood gushes with heartbreaking tales of searching through dumpsters for food, she remains as

However, with her alcoholic dad who rarely kept a job and her mother who suffered mood swings, they had to find food from her school garbage or eat expired food they had previously when they had the slightest bit of money. In addition, when bills and mortgage piled up, they would pack their bags and look for a new home to live in, if they could even call it a stable home, since they would be on the move so often. Jeanette needed a dad who wouldn’t disappear for days at a time, and a mom that was emotionally stable, but because she didn’t have that, she grew up in an environment where she would get teased or harassed for it. Jeanette suffered so much, that even at one point, she tried convincing her mother to leave her father because of the trouble he had caused the family already. A child should be able to depend on their parents for food and to be there for them when they need it, and when that part of a child’s security is taken away, it leaves them lost and on their own, free and confused about what to do next.

As a child, Jeannette doesn’t realize that she’s not actually getting what she should be getting. She thinks this is how she should be living. Jeannette doesn’t understand her parents have been neglecting her all this time. Jeannette first noticed that some things were a lot nicer than what she had when she had to be hospitalized because of her fire accident. She was just so amazed about how neat and organized everything was. For instance, “The hospital was clean and shiny. Everything was

To many people poverty is simply a socio-economic issue. To Jeannette Walls, poverty is her entire life. In this passage of The Glass Castle, Jeannette and her siblings are forced to face a situation they seem to have encountered before; hunger. Due to her dad’s newfound unemployment, Jeannette and her family are forced to limit the amount of food they eat and when Jeannette brings up this idea of eating less to help limit costs, Lori simply replies “We have before”, which helps to infer that this isn’t a new issue for them. This is one issue of many that have affected the Walls family due to the environment the parents have made. In the Glass Castle, we see Jeanette’s parents create an environment for Jeanette and her siblings where for a

After Paresse’s parents—whom she was wholly relying on—died, the young woman became homeless and impoverished, since she did not have any inheritance from her parents. Although she was struggling in poverty, Paresse remained idle and did not even think about getting a job or a house.