The Glass Castle Themes

After nearly drowning Jeannette Walls, Rex Walls tells her that, “if you don’t want to sink, you better figure out how to swim”(Walls 66). The Glass Castle, told through Jeannette Walls, is a straightforward and content-toned memoir that describes the life within her dysfunctional family, consisting of an eccentric, free-spirited mother, an intellectual, but alcoholic father, and self-sufficient siblings. The Glass Castle should be considered as a summer reading for the class of 2019 because of its unique abilities to entertain the audience while simultaneously giving helpful guidance in the audience’s life. The book, although true, is told from an optimist’s viewpoint that gives the story an almost humorous vibe that the audience can appreciate,

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

In Jeannette Walls’ memoir The Glass Castle the author’s use of symbolism conveys the memoir’s theme of internal strength and determination. These two skill sets are what Walls the successful woman she ended up being at the end of the memoir. She expresses her internal strength through the challenges she is faced with during her childhood. A well as her unstable relationships she experienced made her woman she became at the end of the Memoir. Wall’s use of symbols demonstrates Jeanette’s degree of internal strength and her determination to have a stable relationship in her adulthood.

The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls is a memoir about her life growing up with her dysfunctional family. Jeannette and her siblings in poverty and were very independent due to their parents. The Glass Castle should be a required summer reading for the class of 2019. The story gives reader a chance to view the world in a different meaningful perspective of a poor happy child. It also helps guide readers with meaningful advice.

The memoir, Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls take place in many different settings such as Nevada, Arizona, California, West Virginia, and New York City. One of Jeannette’s Walls, the author, strengths is perseverance and resilience. Walls said, “ You’ve got to get right back in the saddle. You can’t live in fear of something as basic as fire” when she was just three years old. Because of her hectic lifestyle, Walls learned to use resilience in many occasions to overcome her problems throughout her life.

Imagine living in a life where everything around you is different from reality. Imagine running from the police, living wherever one can find, and still taking care of one's family just at the age of 16. Jeannette Walls had to deal with all of this and more in her early childhood. In the book “The Glass Castle”, the author uses the characters, Jeannette and Rex Walls, to emphasize the importance of family bonds.

Jeannette Walls begins her memoir with an encounter with her mother, a homeless woman digging through garbage. Walls is “overcome with panic that she’d see [her] and call our [her] name… that [her] secret would be out” (Walls 3). This gives Walls the opportunity to answer the question she has created in the reader’s mind; how did this happen? Walls answers this with a recollection of her, to say the least, unique childhood. In writing The Glass Castle, Walls is forced to reflect on her life and family and realize how both have affected her as an individual; quotes of her mother are filled with litotes, descriptions and interactions with her father are surrounded with motifs of “being tough”, and the effects of being raised by these two characters

The scene in The Glass Castle that presented me with the strongest universal topic of theme is abuse. An example of this in The Glass Castle is when Jeanette’s parents are having a heated argument. Towards the end, her mother is dangling from the window, her father trying to hold her up. When the kids interfere and pull their mother to safety, she says he tried to kill her. In the book his response was, “I didn’t push her, I swear to God I didn’t. She jumped” (Walls 72). But even though Jeanette’s father said he didn’t push her, it is very obvious that he lied. This is because later in the book, he stated that he only believed in science, and claiming that there wasn’t a God. Therefore, his swear didn’t

The Glass Castle shows an infinite amount of themes; however, there are 5 themes that stand out the most. Coming of age, home, possessions, non-conformity, and Turbulence and order. Coming of Age is when a character starts out with little knowledge or maturity and by the end of the novel becomes mature and has moral values. In The Glass Castle Jeanette experiences coming of age. For example, Lori asks Jeanette if she likes moving. Walls writes, “Do you like always moving around?’ Lori asked me. ‘Of course I do!’ I said. ‘Don’t you?’ “Sure’ She said… ‘What do you think would happen if we weren’t always moving around?’ I asked. ‘We’d get caught’” (Walls, 29). In the beginning of the book Jeanette views her life in poverty as an adventure and

As flames engulfed her dress, they burned down her stomach as she screamed for help. This was the first memory Jeannette Walls had in The Glass Castle . The plot of the story reveals her childhood of poverty as she moved around the country with her delusional family. Her alcoholic father and mentally ill mother created a very different lifestyle for their children, and raised them like no other. The unique plot, strong characters, and many settings make the novel successful. In this autobiography, she perseveres through tough times and leads the reader down the path she took to adulthood.

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.

The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls is a descriptive and emotion filled memoir of her childhood and how it affected her in her adulthood. The novel was released in 2005 and in 2017 the film version was released. The purpose of both the novel and film was not only to inform the reader about Jeannette’s story, but to also encourage people to achieve their dreams and to not let their past determine their future. In comparison to the movie, the book portrays the theme, characters and the mood of events better. Although both the novel and film allows the audience to get a sense of the central purpose, the book has a way of making the reader emotionally attached and want to continue reading.

In this both heart wrenching and slightly humorous memoir, successful journalist Jeannette Walls tells the bittersweet story of her rather dysfunctional and poverty stricken upbringing. Walls grows up in a family trailed by the ubiquitous presence of hunger and broken down homes. Throughout the memoir she recounts memories of moving from one dilapidated neighborhood to another with her three other siblings, insanely "free sprinted" mother, and incredibly intelligent yet alcoholic father. The author focuses on her unconventional childhood with somewhat unfit parents much too lazy and self-absorbed to even obtain decent jobs. Although Walls's childhood gushes with heartbreaking tales of searching through dumpsters for food, she remains as

The Glass Castle is the story of Jeannette Walls, the main character and author, and her upbringing in a dysfunctional family ravaged by poverty. The book gives the readers insight to the life of the less fortunate in a chilling and capturing way. Throughout the book, they’re many underlying themes yet only one resonated throughout the text and captured the essence of what the glass castle is truly about: the importance of hope in burdensome situations. Through the struggle of the Wall’s family, the author is able to highlight hope as a significant factor in their survival even at a subconscious level. Be it through the mother, Rose Mary Walls, refusal to give up the farm land due to her long-held family beliefs; or the father's, Rex Walls,

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.