The Power to Overcome
Sid Udayan
January 10, 2012
ENG4U1
Ms. Skakic
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
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Billy had thrown the ring at me. I kept walking. ‘Guess what?’ Billy shouted. ‘I raped you!’” (pg. 87). Jeannette is confused when she hears what Billy says. She is sexually assaulted at the age of eight, and it only seems to get worse as she moves from place to place. With each attack resulting due to the continued neglect that Rex and Rose Mary show towards their kids by not providing stability. The neglect that Jeannette experiences, but does not yet understand, eventually results in the involvement of Social Services with the Walls family; “He’d launch an investigation and end up sending me and Brian and Lori and Maureen off to live with different families, even though we all got good grades and knew Morse code. I couldn’t let that happen. No way was I going to lose Brian and Lori and Maureen.” (pg. 194). It is here that Jeannette shows how much she truly cares about her family. The neglect of her parents has required her to become the responsible figure head of the Walls household and she learns to protect and care for her siblings. Jeannette develops the characteristics of a mother figure despite the careless absence of her own mother. Rose Mary Walls is far from being a caring mother or a positive role model to her children. She is unable to provide the basic necessities required for survival and even resorts to stealing what little resources the family has for herself; “I wondered if she had been looking forward to
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
American journalist, writer, and magazine editor David Remnick once said, “The world is a crazy, beautiful, ugly complicated place, and it keeps moving on from crisis to strangeness to beauty to weirdness to tragedy.” In the memoir, The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls the main character and author of the book tells of her crazy and adventurous life she experienced with her not so ordinary family. This quote relates to The Glass Castle, because like it states, life is full of both tragedies and beauty which is exactly what Jeannette experienced growing up with her free spirited and non-conformative parents. Walls is able to express her main purpose of the book that life is a mix of good and bad times through imagery, tone, and pathos.
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.
A. Jeannette Walls, in her memoir The Glass Castle, demonstrates Erikson’s eight stages of development. Through the carefully recounted stories of her childhood and adolescence, we are able to trace her development from one stage to the next. While Walls struggles through some of the early developmental stages, she inevitably succeeds and has positive outcomes through adulthood. The memoir itself is not only the proof that she is successful and productive in middle adulthood, but the memoir may also have been part of her healing process. Writing is often a release and in writing her memoir and remembering her history, she may have been able to come to terms with her sad past. The memoir embodies both the proof
Again the danger of parenting is depicted through walls’ use of symbolism. Jeannette being a child (three years old) and having to cook and take care of herself is substandard. Having to be surrounded by hardship and
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
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.
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
On the other hand Rose Mary grew up with loving parents in a nice house with structure, but she hated that life and became a free spirit, addicted to the adrenaline Rex brought her. Rose Mary believed children should not be burdened with lots of rules and restrictions. She was a very selfish woman who would refuse to work because she wanted to become an artist. Rose Mary was a certified teacher and could easily receive a job in the towns which the Wall’s had lived because it was difficult to find teachers that had actually graduated from college. Even when Rose Mary would come around and take a teaching job “she had problems organizing paper work and disciplining her students”, and “at least one morning a week she’d throw a tantrum and refuse to go to work” (Walls 196). She’d eventually quit her job and the Wall’s once again would not have any money coming in except when Rex performed odd jobs.
Children do not always need loving and supportive parents in order to grow up successful. In The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, not every child needs loving and supportive parents. Although they do love their children, Rex and Mary use very basic parental decisions; the children are very independent and raise themselves for the most part. With the right mindset, motivation and knowledge this can lead to success in life even through the hardest of times.
“Mom frowned at me. 'You'd be destroying what makes it special' she said, 'It's the Joshua tree's struggle that gives it its beauty'.” -Page 38 | I think that what Rose says symbolizes is that Jeannette is beautiful because even through everything she's gone through with her family, it has just made her a strong person, or the “Joshua Tree” in this case. |
A. The Walls family consists of five members; Rex Walls is the father and Rose Mary is the mother (47 years old). Lori, Jeannette, Brian, and Maureen are the children. Lori is the oldest, she is approximately 27 years old, Jeannette is 24 years old, Brian is 23 years old, and Maureen is 18 years old. As disclosed by Jeannette Walls in The Glass Castle, The Walls have a history of stressors within the five systems levels. More specifically, each member of the Walls has particular challenges they have overcome within the individual, immediate family, extended family, community, and larger society.
Throughout Rose Mary’s life, she has always been up for an adventure. She was constantly on the move, living in different houses, living on the streets. No matter what she was doing, she was always up for change in her life. Even when her kids tried to help her, Rose Mary was very self-involved. She wanted to always do things on her own. “Being homeless is an adventure” (pg.255). The Walls family never had an actual home, they were always on the move and Rose Mary sought it out to be an adventure. While Rex had a job, Rose Mary always stayed home and would draw something. Rex was the only one bringing money into the house so there were times when they would have to move due to not paying any bills. Rose Mary had liked the concept of always moving. There were times where they would be homeless, Rex had a bad habit of drinking so bad that he would beat the children for no reason
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.
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