The title of the book, The Glass Castle, is repeated throughout the book as a dream that her father had. The family knew that he would never actually build the castle, but her father still talked about it like he would actually do it, and Jeanette would believe him. Jeanette's father made her many promises, but he did not follow through with the promises. Whenever she questioned him about the promises he made to her he justs says, “Have I ever let you down?” Jeanette knows that he had let her down but she does not say it, and she had “heard that question at least two hundred times” (Walls 210). For example, for her birthday Jeanette asks her father to stop drinking. He promises her that he would do anything for her “if it’s humanly …show more content…
The Glass Castle represents the hope that is lost, and how it shatters like glass, like how the Walls family finds hope, but eventually lost it and went back to their old habits of just barely scraping by. The Glass Castle gave Jeanette and her family a false hope when they believed that their father would actually build the castle. Jeanette realizes that her father will not build the Glass Castle once she reaches adulthood, as she grows up she slowly begins to believe in this dream less and less. She stops believing in this because her father makes many promises to her, but he never fulfilled those promises. When they began to build the glass castle like her father told her they would, Brian and Jeanette had dug the foundation for the Glass Castle, her father tells her them to throw the trash into the hole, this is like calling their dream garbage. Even though they took so much time to build the foundation, believing that it was actually for the castle, “the hole for the Glass Castle’s foundation slowly filled with garbage” (Walls 155). He told them many times that they would build the castle, and that they only needed money to build it, but they never do. Even when they actually have money from Jeanette’s grandma dying, he
Jeannette Walls, Shows in the book The Glass Castle that there are a lot of situations that happen in life where people make countless mistakes, but it is very important to forgive her father and her mother for many mistakes. She has to cope with many obstacles without her parent's help. In the author's memoir, we become attracted with Jeannette constant struggle between protecting her family and the pleasure that her family is based on the same hopes and senseless falsehood with her unbelievable storytelling method. The feelings of forgiveness hold the Walls family together. Jeanette was able to describe her family's childhood, relationships with one another. The children of the Walls family are forced to begin the independent life at an
The Crucible was created to described what really happened in these witch trials, and the effects it had on the Colony itself. There was more than 50 men and women accused of witchcraft but less than 20 were hung. The town embraced their trials as a template for their envy of hate.
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.
This is a summary on the Glass Castle is about a young woman name Jeannette begins to look back of the pasts on her childhood and how her parents’ choices affected her and her siblings. When Jeannette was three-year-old, she was boils her own hotdogs and got burned horribly that she went to the hospital. After few days, her father got her out of bed and left the hospital without paying the bill. The most memories about the Walls of her childhood focus in the desert and how the family move to different desert towns to settling in as long as their father can hold a job. He has such paranoia about the state and society and he also have dealt with his alcoholism that has leads them to move often. They used to settle in small mining town, Battle Mountain, and Nevada while Jeannette and her young brother Brian spend their time exploring the desert. Their mother is an artist and takes a break from it to hold down a job as a teacher to extend their stay.
How many times have you heard this quote, “don’t judge a book by its cover?” I am sure that you probably heard the quote way too many times, even I lost track in counting. But yet, it still doesn’t stop people from judging the book’s cover. So therefore, to say that when people talk about it, it becomes a bit hypocritical when they are the ones who are judging. For instance, many people were judging the book, The Glass Castle. The book was published in March 2005. The reason why the book is being judged is because the book is under the challenged/banned list. The book has a lot of offensive language, sexually explicit content, alcohol, and abuse. The author, Jeannette Walls, is also the main character in the story.
In The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls tells the story of her childhood and describes her life in poverty. She had experienced what injustice was first hand. Her father, Rex, was an alcoholic that spent all of their money on booze. Because of this, they never had any money to spend on a house or food. They were always moving because they did not pay their bills and were running away from their problems. Her mother, Rose Mary, was irresponsible and only thought about herself. She refused to get a job and when she did, her kids had to drag her out of bed every morning. She did not watch her children and she let them do whatever they wanted. This caused the children to get into trouble with other kids and even adults. She spent money on useless commodities and could not afford to buy her starving children any food. Every day, the children had to rummage through the trash to find food to eat. When Jeannette finally realized she did not want to live with injustice anymore she left. It was very hard for her father to watch her go but she did not look back. She started focusing on the future and became a successful journalist. This was one of the many ways she gained her justice back. She offered to help her parents by buying them clothes and offering them money. She was trying to make everything just again by giving her parents what they never gave to her. Her parents never took any of her gifts because they saw it as charity and did not appreciate it. The injustice that happened to Jeannette made her who she is today. If she did not go through all of those injustices, she might not have realized that her passion in life was to write. It has made her a better person and she can now help others going through the same thing through her writings.
One of the most important theme in The Glass Castle is forgiveness. Jeannette and her brother and sisters spend their whole lives forgiving their parents for their irresponsibilities. They still love them and welcome them into their hearts even though Rex and Rose Mary didn't deserve it. By forgiving them, she feels less angry and her attitude as a whole is much more positive. When she is three years old, she burns herself cooking and her mother doesn't take care of her. After being in the hospital for 6 days, she let her cook again and says “Good for you, you have got to get right back in the saddle (15). ” Another example of forgiveness, is when she is trying to learns how to swim and her dad drops her in the water making her almost drown. She thinks he did this so she can learn, so she forgives him. Jeanette says, “I figured he must be right, there was no other way to explain it(66).” This means that she thought he didn't have an intention to harm her, but he tried to make her learn. At the end of the story, she meets her father for the last time and forgives him for all the bad things that had happened in her life and all the chaos. Although all of these bad things happened to her and her brother and sister because of him, she says she knew he loved her like no one else ever had. Jeanette said she forgives him for “all the hell-raising and destruction and chaos he [has] created in [her life].” On the other hand though, she says, “I could not imagine what my life would be like- without him in it. As awful as he could be, I always knew he loved me in a way no one else ever had(279).” This means that she knew that he made all those mistakes throughout his life, but she still found a way to forgive him and look on the brighter side of things.
Jeannette, during her childhood, always looked forward to building "The Glass Castle". Her and her father would always talk about how it would be self sufficient in the desert with solar panels and made completely out of glass. This gave Jeannette hope for the future. When Jeannette is an adult, she loses sight of believing in her family and tries to push them out of her life causing her to be more unhappy. But, by the end she came to her senses and went and visited her father while he was sick.
Many people tend to take things for granted. We overlook the things that some people wished they had so they can live without struggle. It usually just comes so easily for us and we don’t realize how hard other people’s lives are. Jeannette Walls knows firsthand what it’s like to be without these modern luxuries. In her memoir, “The Glass Castle” she writes about how she sometimes grew up without things like a place to live, clothes to wear, food on the table, electricity to power the house and keep her warm. In her upbringing, her parents never really supplied her with the things she needs or took very good care of her so she learned how to survive with the little she got. She learns throughout her life that she should never take anything for granted and to appreciate the good things in life because she doesn’t get most of the essentials that other people have normally. Throughout the story she always knew to be grateful and value every little thing she got because she didn’t get much.
Through The Glass Castle, Jeannette shows the world how an impoverished, neglected girl grows into a successful author and wife. Jeanette, herself, is a living proof of ultimate success showing the world that no matter what situation you come from, ultimate success is completely possible. She starts out with memories from the time when she was as young as three along with the rest of her family, constantly on the move, deserted towns in the middle of the night "Rex Walls ' style” and lived in numerous places, all the way up to her present-day. Throughout her life, Jeanette dealt with poverty, hunger, malnourishment, along with an alcoholic father and an unstable mother. But for Jeanette, the
Jeannette and her little brother Brian spent a long time digging this hole, therefore it must have been devastating to watch as it was used as a place to stow away the family’s garbage. Jeannette was starting to realize that her father was probably never going to build the Glass Castle. Rex still hoped that his daughter would believe him, that she would feed him the lies for a little while longer even though the idea of the Glass Castle was slowly slipping away.
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.
“Children shouldn’t have to sacrifice so that you can have the life you want. You make sacrifices so that your children can have the life that they deserve.”- Unknown. In the book The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls readers are given a front row seat into a family that is constantly being destroyed by the parents. This book allows readers an inside look at having an alcoholic father and an absent mother. There’s no such thing as “normal”, but society often expects certain things from it’s citizens - things like holding down a job, responsibly raising children, and giving back in some way, but in The Glass Castle, Rex and Rose Mary Walls do none of these things. Rex and Rose Mary walls have trouble keeping their jobs, maybe it’s because
Those thirteen stripes and fifty stars not only represent a land of the free, but a faith for the people. As for Jeanette, her faith constantly lies in the in the hands of her father, Rex. Like most little children do, Jeannette, always believes daddy is capable of anything. On the other hand, Jeannette’s siblings, Lori and Brian do not have as much faith in their father. Faith, much like the Glass Castle, is simply an idea; it does not physically exist. The Glass Castle is merely nothing more than a ploy, a ploy which Rex, Jeanette's father, uses against her to maintain her trust by describing the glorious structure with “glass ceilings and thick glass walls and even a glass staircase”(25). Yet the castle does not even exist, nor will it ever; the fictional formation of glass symbolizes hope for young Jeannette. But her siblings are not as faithful in their father's fantasies of a
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.