1. Fire is a major theme in The Glass Castle. Jeannette becomes very fascinated by fire which continues throughout the novel. The first you hear of fire is when Jeannette is burned while cooking hotdogs at the age of three. Though she suffers extreme injuries, Jeannette becomes extremely fascinated by fire. In the novel, she cannot keep herself from playing with it and watching it. In “The Glass Castle” there are a number of other fires that burn houses, sheds, and injure other people like Jeannette. The theme of fire can relate to chaos between family and other people mentioned in this book.
2. Jeannette always admired her parents despite the way that they chose to live. Even though both parents were both intelligently capable, they chose to live homeless. They both chose their own welfare over their children. With parents like hers, Jeannette took what good she could from her
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Jeannette Walls starts her story explaining why she wrote it. A main concern was to no longer hide her past. She had never shared her story before because she was ashamed of her life. Jeannette begins the story by sharing what gave her the courage to write it down.
9. Rose Mary Walls acts as a person who focuses on herself only. In the novel, she loses or quits her jobs to peruse a career as an artist. In doing this, the family is not making money. Due to her actions, Rose Mary Walls is adding to the poverty of the Walls family. At times, she acts more like a child then a mother. You catch Mrs. Walls throwing tantrums, skipping work, etc.
10. Rex Walls tends to make up fascinating explanations and stories to keep his children from thinking they are lesser then others based on how much money they have. As children, they were given stars as gifts instead of material items. The children found the stories interesting and entertaining. As the Walls children grow older, Rex’s stories start to be used to cover his bad behaviors, instead of him using them to shield his children from
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
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
In The Glass Castle, Jeanette Walls was faced with many life changing and hard obstacles. Many people who have read this book think that these hardships have helped her later in life. Her parents were never there for her when she was growing up. Her dad was a raging alcoholic who spent all of his money away at the bars. Her mom was intelligent, but still never seemed to help much with Jeanette and her siblings. Even though her parents were not much help, she loved them the same no matter what. When Jeanette was younger, she was constantly bullied at her new schools, but never went home and told on the kids her had beat her up. She stood up for herself even if she knew she had no chance at winning the fight. This showed how brave and strong
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
In this section, Jeannette Walls starts off, in the present time by telling the readers about her seeing her mom on the street, that she hasn’t seen in a long time. Jeannette uses emotional words like blustering and fretted to show that seeing her mom was an emotional time. Later in the section, she goes way back into her life to when she was three years old and when her family and her was living in the desert. She started off telling a story of when she was on fire. This story was intense, it was really dramatic on her parents part, her dad was screaming at her and the doctor a lot. Then she talked about when they moved to Las Vegas, her family lived in a motel room, which didn’t last long, they had to leave Vegas in a rush, because her dad was cheating in blackjack and the dealer found out. The last story in the section is where her family drove to San Francisco and stayed in another motel. One night her dad was at the bar, across the street. He left Jeannette and her three other siblings in the room. Jeannette got bored so she decided to play with fire and that let to a big disaster resulting in the whole hotel burning down.
The story of Jeannette Walls begins one cold March evening when she comes across a homeless woman, which is then revealed to be her mother. It is there that her troubled past comes into light in, “The Glass Castle”. But through her disastrous childhood and dysfunctional family, she manages to turn it around and and by education, expectation, and most of all environment, Jeannette grew from her experiences and came out successful and stronger than ever.
Eternal youth can seem close to perfect, but eventually everyone has to grow up and be mature. For example, In the Glass Castle Jeannette walls had to grow up young, and quickly realized the world does not wait for you.
The role of fire in the novel The Glass Castle is used in various ways throughout the book. Jeanette is one of the main characters and when she was little her mother told her to cook something, and when she did she got burned. Fire can be seen many ways in this novel, it can be in Jeanette soul, in her mind, seen as a character, or as a problem starter in the novel. Fire can burn you if you touch it, just like it can burn to see someone you love suffer like Jeanette did when she found out her parents are homeless. Fire can cause grief like the people had when their houses burned down it can cause harm like when Jeanette got burned.
Mary Walls is an optimist. Throughout the story her thoughts on life are positive, even when the situation is not. The Walls family is one that could easily be pessimistic, constantly moving with just enough money and food to survive. Mary,along with her husband Rex, is a mediocre parent at best, but can always find the good. On page 144 when her daughter Jeanette claims to hate her Grandma, she says, “You should never hate anyone, even your worst enemies. Everyone has something good about them. You have to find the redeeming quality and love the person for that.” (Walls 144). When Jeanette tests her mother asking about Hitler, Mary responds that he loved dogs.
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
Her mom had just died and this was her way of finally being free. She could finally see the new world coming to her and would take any opportunity to get to it. You learn how her childhood wasn’t the best and how it affected her. Her mother not loving or caring for
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.
Jeannette Walls’s memoir is the heart wrenching story of her past. Walls had a very troubled upbringing which consisted of her alcoholic father, careless mother, malicious schoolkids and abusive extended family. The horrible things that Jeannette Walls went through in her childhood are important social issues that should have more light shed on them by the media.
Her Mother seemed to be more put together than her father at times, even getting a job at one point helping the family out. Though her mother was a hedonist and did not contain the motherly love and sacrifice for her kids, this job helped Jeanette’s future. She helped grade papers which increased her knowledge of the outside world and “...the world was making a little more sense” as she read the papers and projects of her mother’s students (Walls 205). Her parents had such an opposition to the outside world that she hadn’t gotten every aspect of
That is why Jeannette grows up as an independent person, even though her mom didn’t observed too much of a quality in her, “Lori was the smart one, Maureen the pretty one, and Brian the brave one. You never had much going for you except that you always worked hard” (Walls 270). The experiences that Jeannette went through and the things she needed to learn inevitably to “survive” her childhood made her an independent and strong women.