Imagery In The Glass Castle

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

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

Jeannette’s Fading Resilience: A Symbol Analysis. In The Glass Castle, Jeannette develops and changes over the course of the text. The Glass Castle has several universal messages that can be received, even from the first chapter. There cannot possibly be a way to describe all of the images that could be formed from the memoir.

Jeannette is talking about her entire family. The Walls’ family had been through a lot at the point in Jeannette’s life where they get stuck in the desert. The passage signifies the Wall’s will to continue and not give up. Not one member of the Walls family is uneducated. Rex lives the life he wants to live, although it isn’t a very good life, and it makes him happy. If Rex is happy there is nothing to be bitter about. Jeannette uses Buster to represent her family on a smaller scale; wounded, angry, and broken down. The Walls family can be angry at time but they are not bitter. Fights between Rex and Mary happen all the time but grudges are forgotten a minute or two after the event. Anger is an on going theme throughout Jeannette’s life

Walls, “...lived in a world that at any moment could erupt into fire. It was...knowledge that kept you on your toes.” Often times, Jeannette, Lori, Brian, and Maureen were maltreated by Rex and Rose Mary Walls, their parents, through neglectful abuse. However, as the reader stands alongside Jeannette as she matures chapter by chapter the real conflict becomes clearer. In the beginning, as most children do, she tries to understand and accept the blatant lies or finds content in the absence of what she later begins to see as her deserved respect and need of care, but of course her father was her idol, hero, star. How could she bother to complain when he was obviously “onto something” bigger than them all? To be told “...I was his favorite child, but he made me promise not to tell Lori or Brian or Maureen. It was our secret…” then lose the same passion and faith in her father that she’d worked so hard to preserve? Unspeakable horror. This conflict with herself, distinct from Yousafzai’s person vs person conflict with the Taliban, is what she struggles with and avoids any real confrontation with through most of the memoir by distracting herself with the responsibility of improving the family’s

In The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls recounts her childhood by describing the turbulent, sometimes strenuous circumstances she experienced each time her family moved from town to town in search of a new life. At each new school, Jeanette and her siblings struggle to find peace with their judgmental classmates and become victims of bullying several times. With little help from their irresponsible parents, the Walls children turn to each other, and they resolve to support each other through their countless conflicts at home and at school. Jeannette’s parents, Rose Mary and Rex Walls, take pride in their children but often fail to properly raise them; even though Rex hopes to become wealthy and eventually build a beautiful castle made of glass,

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.

A trauma narrative is a narrative that describes an experience or experiences that cause someone to be destressed and cannot be incorporated into their memory easily. Throughout her own traumatic narrative, Jeannette Wall’s describes different aspects of her everyday life that showcase various levels of significance. She is able to show how certain life events impact her plans for escaping her current socioeconomic status and her plans for the future. The text is also able to tell us about trauma, poverty, ourselves, and our society. Furthermore, the text demonstrates the impact that trauma and poverty can have and how they can have lasting effects. These concepts help us to think about our own life experiences and situations and they also show us how to be analytical about our society. Lastly, this narrative is able to reveal to us the different aspects of a traumatic childhood and how important and impactful this type of upbringing can be. Jeannette Walls uses her own traumatic autobiography to show that despite her adverse upbringing in poverty and passive and unattached parenting she was able to become successful. The Glass Castle, by Jeannette Walls, shows the benefits and the value that can come from having a traumatic narrative. This is significant because it shows that an experience can shape a person, but a person can also shape the experience.

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.

In ‘The Marble Statue’ the author, Joseph Van Eichendorff demonstrates the use of song, and the symbolism of color and flowers to characterize beauty and emotion, mainly within the statue of Venus, but also throughout other characters in the novel. Throughout the story, these characteristics are what draw the main character, Florio, deeper into his infatuation with the Venus statue. However, the deeper meaning of the statue throughout the story leads to the conclusion that one’s dream fantasy is not always what one thinks it is.

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

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.

Thirteen stripes and fifty stars were assembled to symbolize a land of the free. Symbols tend to have immenseful impacts on the lives of those they relate to. As for Jeannette Walls and her family, prominent motifs, namely the Glass Castle, New York City and a Joshua tree implicate strong faith in her father, rising up from vast dysfunction and a rebirth for not only herself, but her siblings as well. In her highly acclaimed memoir The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls utilizes striking symbols to hook her readers as they immerse themselves in the convoluted chaos that is the Walls family journey.