Adversity In The Glass Castle, Art Spiegelman, And Mother To Son

The Glass Castle: A personal story In The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls creates a tone of anguish to illustrate to the reader the deep betrayal and disappointment she feels towards her father when he uses Jeanette’s physicality as a way to obtain money. While trying to win a pool a game, Jeannette’s father Rex, encourages Jeanette to distract his opponent Robbie who physically exploits Jeannette. Consequently, Rex gains money from the game, yet Jeannette “felt like throwing the money at him” (213). Jeannette feels “sleazy” and states that, “If Robbie had been set up” by her own father so had she (213).

Alcoholism does not only affect a person’s physical, mental, and emotional state, but it also changes the lives of people close to the drinker forever. It ruins relationships and trust that took years to build up, and may never be able to be restored. In Jeannette Walls’s memoir, The Glass Castle, she tells the story of her childhood in which her father was an alcoholic. Jeannette’s father, Rex Walls, was brilliant and charismatic when he was sober, but when he drank, he was destructive and dishonest.

In the book “The Glass Castle” by Jeanette Walls, Jeanette’s life has gone through many ups and down’s, all the way from her childhood to her adulthood. As Jeanette’s growing up she sees her Parent’s hopes and dreams slowly starting to elude away into reality. From the start of the book Jeanette’s parents, Rex and Rosemary have strong hopes of being rich from mining and sifting up gold in the dessert, through rexes “new Invention’s” to help detect the gold. But as time tells, Jeannette’s feelings and faith in her parents start to diminish away. Jeannette also starts to realize that her father is causing the problem. Towards the end of the story, Jeannette says to her mom, “Mom, you have to leave dad” (wells 188), and Jeanette’s mom is astonished of what she had said and asks why she suggested that, and Jeannette simply states that “He will bring all of us down” suggesting that they need to be on welfare. When Brian and Lori Begin digging the foundation for the glass castle that Rex had designed and promised them they were going to make, the idea quickly diminished into a fantasy once the hole started to fill with old rusty beer cans.

Individuals can be seen responding to the circumstances they endure in a myriad of ways. The individuals may choose to take revenge on the people that caused them to suffer or they may choose to forgive the individuals that caused their hardships. However, when one chooses to forgive the wrongdoer, he or she chooses to release the burden and pain the wrongdoer has caused them. In The Glass Castle, a memoir by Jeanette Walls, Walls describes her parent’s shortcomings but does not condemn them in anyway.

Maya Angelou once stated, “You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated.” In the novel The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls the family faces many defeats but, the only way to overcome them is to persevere and be resilient. The Walls children are forced to do things that a traditional child would not have to. This causes the children to gain the ability to be strong and learn valuable life lessons from the hard times. Being independent, truthful and forgiving will help the Walls family persevere and be resilient through the struggles that will lead them to future success.

First of all, the book is based on her struggles while she is growing up, and as she becomes successful she overcomes these struggles by putting her past life behind her. She learns to work diligently and think for herself. The entire story is fundamentally the development of Jeannette’s life, problems, maturity, and competence, which eventually leads her to unmitigated prosperity. Of course, if she hadn’t been successful in the end, the story wouldn’t have legitimately developed. Without Walls’ success, “The Glass Castle” would have merely been a ceaseless manifesto of her life problems. In fact, her story would most likely never have been written as a book if she hadn’t been as fortunate. When Rose Mary and Rex Walls eventually came to New York to follow their children and keep the family together, they finally had a permanent place to stay where everyone was content with their lives, and they tried to assist their children whenever possible. For example, when Jeannette was thinking about quitting college, her father gave her the money she needed to pay for it. Her mother also worried about her quite often and visited her from time to time. As a result, Jeannette realized how much her parents truly love and support her. All in all, Jeannette’s success is the main factor that gives the entire story closure and

"I learned that courage was not the absence fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear"- Nelson Mandela. In the book, Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes by Chris Crutcher, Sarah Brynes and Eric Calhoune had been friends for years. With them both being an outcast in their society, their bond is unbreakable. Sarah Byrnes has an abusive dad who she hides a big secret with. Sarah Byrnes being the strongest and most toughest person he has ever met, he has to uncover her secret that has her keeping quite in a hospital. In this book, many characters shows this courage. I'm going to be giving you three examples of how three different characters showed this courage.

Throughout the Glass Castle, Jeanette Walls reveals every intricacy of her childhood. She spares little to no element from the judgment of the reader, especially the shortcomings of her father. Rex Walls is a highly intelligent man. At first, he is continually encouraging himself and his children to dream. He believes in himself and aspires to be better than he is; which you can tell by the contraptions he continues to spend time building in order to get rich. His major shortfall is his dependence on alcohol. This dependence leads to him lose jobs and subsequently their home, eventually forcing them to move in with his parents. After moving his family to his hometown, Rex is driven to drink more and new revelations have a major impact on his family. Ultimately, his past abuse and troubled childhood leads him into alcoholism, making him incapable of upholding his ideals of autonomy. Despite his ideals of masculinity and fatherhood, he always comes up short due to his alcoholism, which conversely drives him deeper into depression and more drinking.

While Jeanette is preparing to leave for New York and her father, Rex, attempts to talk her out of it by showing her the updated plans for the Glass Castle, Walls, through Jeanette, uses an implied metaphor to show how all her father’s promises are a Glass Castle without the use of like or as. Walls uses this to illuminate how her father’s promises are broken easily like how a Glass Castle can be broken easily as it is made of glass, which is fragile. Walls also highlights how throughout the memoir her father promised to protect her, not only by building her a home like the Glass Castle, but also by protecting her from men who force themselves upon her as seen when the father states, “Anyone who… laid a finger on… Rex Walls's children was going to get their butts kicked,” (Walls, 24), but the father later goes on to allow her to be inappropriately touched by Robbie just to make some money. This shows that the father makes promises he is unable to and often does not want to fulfill throughout the memoir, which leads to Jeanette having to face adversity as her father is not protecting her. As a result of her adversity, Jeanette reaches an epiphany and learns to look out for her own well-being as she understands that her father is no longer willing to do so. She also understands that her father will never build the Glass Castle and that all the promises that her father ever made to her are like the Glass Castle, easily broken. This ultimately to Jeanette developing from a character who depended solely on her father, to one that could make the decision to go to New York without her father’s permission after the 11th grade. Finally, by going to New York, Jeanette is able to provide for her own well-being by working at a job and renting an apartment and departs from the conventional means of wellbeing. Through the use of metaphor, Walls conveys the theme that often for one to persevere against adversity in his or her lives, he or she must learn to go against conventional means of well-being, like family, and find his or her individual means of well-being.

Rex Walls, a character in The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, is an abusive, manipulative parent. He exhibits many traits that are classified as neglective, abusive as well as endangering to the general well being of his children. This book tells the heartbreaking story of Jeannette Walls childhood into her adult life. As a child she was exposed to the worst and most sickening aspects of the world due to her parents incapabilities. It emphasizes the struggles of growing up in an underprivileged as well as dealing with her abusive and mentally ill parents. Tried in the court of law, Rex Walls would be charged guilty, due to the countless examples of evidence against him.

Individuals can be seen responding to the circumstances they endure in many different ways. The way they choose to respond to issues can determine whether the effect of their exposure will end up to be a positive strengthen to their character. In the memoir The Glass Castle written by Jeannette Walls, we see the effects of past experiences on Jeannette and we see how she uses those situations to shape the person that she becomes. Jeannette is a focal point to the life of success that a person can live even after growing up in an unorthodox family. She goes to prove that even with the strangest life she lives, she had the passion to pursue her goals is significant and her desire achieves the life she wants while her dreams were being

Throughout the Glass Castle, Rex can not keep a stable, long living job. Sometimes even leaving his family starving, with no home, and not having the necessities the family needs. Rex can never pull through for his kids, and if he does it is extremely vague and only for a special occasion. Jeanette's father chooses to spend the money that he makes from his odd end jobs on his own wants, not his children needs. He comes home and finds things that the rest of the family can not seem to find, for example when Jeanette says “ He’d find a can of tomatoes on the back of the shelf that everyone else had missed, or he’d go off for an hour and come back with a handful of vegetables- never telling us where he got them. But disappearing a lot” (67). Rex never learns the value of his money and is continually burning a hole in his pocket. The money that Rex spends on his alcohol and his addictions he could be using to benefit his family extensively. He leaves his family hungry when he could be providing for them. When the Walls did have a stable income, Rex would always come up with a way to waste it. When Rose Mary went to Charleston, Jeanette is left in charge of the money flow and comes up with plenty to have a stable food flow. She was doing the reasonability of the her father.

The novel, The Glass Castle, exhibits the human tendency to be selfish. This is manifested in both Rex and Rose Mary. Rex is characterized as a selfish father throughout the novel, and his paternal image is consistently skewed because of his actions. His addiction to alcohol ruins countless family events. One year the family’s Christmas is ruined when Rex drinks a great deal of alcohol and burns their tree and presents. Jeanette remembers, “Dad sat on the sofa [...] telling mom he was doing her a favor [...] no one tried to wring dad’s neck [...] or even point out that he’d ruined the Christmas his family has spent weeks planning” (115). Jeanette and her family are always left cleaning up their father’s drunken mess. Even when Rex is sober he does not apologize for ruining sentimental family events and continues to put alcohol before his family. Selfishness can also be seen in Rex’s relationship with money. He takes Jeanette into a bar in order to get money from his friend, Robbie. When Robbie asks if he can take Jeanette upstairs, Jeanette recollects, “So, with Dad’s blessing, I went upstairs” (212). Rex is so self-absorbed that he allows his daughter to go into a strange man's apartment, fully knowing his intentions. During Jeanette and her siblings’ childhood, they experience dangerous situations with their parents’ knowledge and approval. While Rex’s selfish nature is typically derived from his addiction, Rose Mary’s selfishness is simply a reflection of her personality.

The Glass Castle, a story about Jeannette Walls and her more than dysfunctional family. Jeannette and her family move around from town to town throughout America's west coast. Eventually, Jeanette’s begins to run out of money because of this they decide to move in with Jeanette’s grandmother in Welch, West Virginia. Jeanette and her siblings eventually decide to start saving up money to move to New York. Jeanette’s parents follow her and her siblings to new york after a while and end up on the streets. Rex, Jeanette's dad dies of a heart attack in New York City and her mother sticks to her life on the streets. The memoir comes to a close as Jeanette is able to reconcile with her past and all the adversity that she has gone through. The author uses literary devices such as imagery, irony, and foreshadowing to captivate the reader. The literary devices imagery. The irony and foreshadowing make the story worth telling because they make her story interesting.

This entry parallels Rex Walls behavior by showing the outcome and the effects on a family suffering from a father or husband abusing alcohol and becoming a destructive monstrosity. Congruent to the article previously mentioned, Rex Walls demise in the "Glass Castle" is imposed to of been caused by his excessive drinking during his life. " The fact was that, although Dad was only fifty- nine, he had been smoking four packs of cigarettes a day since he was thirteen, and by this time he was also putting away a good two quarts of booze daily. He was, as he had put it many a time, completely pickled."(Walls 278- 279) Considering the circumstances Rex Walls was fortunate that he had lived as long as he did.'