...Diana Benavidez Mrs. Donato-Jennings English 10 November 1, 2015 The Glass Castle In Jeannette Walls’s novel The Glass Castle, it shows the reader that even when you're growing up with hardships it doesn’t mean that one can’t grow up to be successful. She shows her readers this by writing a memoir which is The Glass Castle. She retells the stories of her life growing up with her three siblings and parents. After reading the story one would think that the Wall’s children wouldn’t have amounted to anything. They moved from place to place never really settling down in a town for too long. Jeannette’s parents were careless and irresponsible and were always looking out for their own best interest. Even though Jeannette’s parents weren’t the best they still showed them how to be independent and value the things in life others may have taken for granted. The Wall’s children grew up never really having a home and they knew that. They relied on each other because their parents were neglectful. They were okay with that though and often they were the ones who more responsible than their parents were. Their dad, Rex being an alcoholic and their mom Rose- Mary who was always consumed in her paintings or any of her other hobbies. Jeannette and her siblings often had to take the bigger role in their family....
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...Diana Benavidez Mrs. Donato-Jennings English 10 November 1, 2015 The Glass Castle In Jeannette Walls’s novel The Glass Castle, it shows the reader that even when you're growing up with hardships it doesn’t mean that one can’t grow up to be successful. She shows her readers this by writing a memoir which is The Glass Castle. She retells the stories of her life growing up with her three siblings and parents. After reading the story one would think that the Wall’s children wouldn’t have amounted to anything. They moved from place to place never really settling down in a town for too long. Jeannette’s parents were careless and irresponsible and were always looking out for their own best interest. Even though Jeannette’s parents weren’t...
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...Report on Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls 1 Book Report on Jeannette Wall’s Glass Castle Book Report on Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls 2 Jeannette Walls's story is one that gives the reader an idea of what it is like to grow up in a very complex and often self-destructive family system. Jeannette Walls's memoir Glass Castle begins with her riding in a taxi through contemporary New York City on her way to a party. As she looks out the taxi window, Jeannette sees her mother digging through a dumpster. Even though her mother had been homeless for years, Jeannette was all of a sudden filled with shame and gloom about her mother's life. Jeannette then begins to reflect on her childhood and how her Mom and Dad's choices affected her. The story then transitions to a three-year-old Jeannette and her story of catching her dress on fire while cooking her dinner. After a few days in the hospital, Jeannette's father shows up, lifts Jeannette out of bed, and leaves the hospital without paying the bill. The memoir continues with the family moving town to town in the American Southwest. Only staying in one place until Jeannette's father could no longer hold a job, or her mother demanding they spontaneously uproot and start again. Jeannette's father's paranoia about the state and organized society, coupled with his alcoholism, leads them to move more and more frequently. Finally, they settle down in a small mining town, Battle Mountain, Nevada, for a few months; where Jeannette enjoys adventuring...
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...often tended to their needs over their children. In The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls writes of how as a young adult she pulled herself out of the unhealthy lifestyle of her parents, and managed to make something of herself. In The Glass Castle, Rex and Rosemary are not the ideal American parents, but they would be considered effective. They would be considered effective because they taught their children to stand up for themselves, independent, supportive and supportive and always there for each other. One of the effects that the Wall’s parents had on their children was teaching them to stand up for themselves. “The mattress shot forward, and our arsenal of rocks flew through the air. I heard them thud against Ernie’s body and clatter on the road. He screamed and cursed as his bike skidded” (166). When Brian and Jeannette go against the neighborhood bullies they show that they may not have money or what other families have but they are clever. They demonstrate their cleverness by creating their own catapult to stop Ernie Goad and his friends. To sum it all up, Jeannette and Brian learn to stand up for themselves by being a team. The second effect that the Wall’s parents had on their children was teaching them to become independent. “I was afraid that Mr. Becker wouldn’t give me the job if he knew I was only thirteen, so I told him I was seventeen. He hired me on the spot for forty dollars a week, in cash” (215). Jeannette took care of her family, of her dad when he was drunk...
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...defensive aspect that comes along with memoir writing. No matter how happy or horrific the story is, it is the author’s natural instinct to defend it. Similarly in everyday life, there are things that people are naturally inclined to defend such as family, friends, or the way in which someone chooses to live their life. Maybe their choices or actions aren’t exactly admirable or necessarily considered “right”, but nevertheless they defend them if anyone were to ever challenge them about their legitimacy. In Jeannette Walls captivating memoir, The Glass Castle, the reader becomes enthralled with Jeannette’s constant battle between defending her family and the greatness she hopes the Walls will amount to, and settling for the fact that her family is based off of false hope and senseless lies with her incredible story telling techniques. The time the Walls spent living in Welch, Virginia serves as a major transition period for everyone in the family. While Lori, Jeannette, Brian, and Maureen were all growing up and trying to discover their identity, Rex and Rose Mary Walls were still struggling to discover the identities they always longed for but never could make a reality. Before the Walls move to Virginia, it was clear that just picking up and moving wasn’t as easy as it always had been, and the idea of a “great adventure” meant nothing more than a long car ride with only one...
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...Review of “The Glass Castle” by Jeannette Walls “The Glass Castle” by Jeannette Walls is an intriguing story of Walls’ family and their experiences. Through Jeannette’s story as both the narrator and the protagonist in the story, the actual state of Walls’ family is vividly described. Through the eyes of Jeannette, the reader finally shares the troubles of Walls family, where the parents are less concerned about the children. Jeanette herself is rendering the burden and responsibility of taking care of her siblings on her shoulders. In conjunction with the other Walls (Jeannette’s siblings), the theme of the story is relinquished while at the same time developing the character of Jeannette. This context will embark on describing the Walls from a family’s point of view while at the same time highlighting their attachment styles. Right from the beginning of the story, the immediate surroundings of the Walls Family is disgusting. It clearly portrays negligence which is symbolic throughout the story as portrayed by Rex and Rose Mary Walls. Though Rex is a loving and caring father, he is irresponsible. Despite his academic qualifications, he cannot keep any job when his family needs it most. Under his alcoholic cover, Rex becomes a completely different person (Walls, 2006, p. 25). Throughout the story, Rex lives a dignified life in dreams and illusions. This is the only way he escapes his responsibilities and problems as the head, the provider, and the protector of the...
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...daily basis. Poverty has been a major issue throughout the world, and places a wide span of negative affects on children. In the memoir, The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, The Wall’s family lives most of their lives in poverty which buries their children in stress, unstable environments, and misery. Poverty contributes to a lack in a child’s intellectual abilities, mental health, abuse, and family stability. Poverty puts a strain on children’s intellectual abilities in school. Kids who are in poverty feel as if they have no control over their life, and are less motivated to put forth effort into their education. This is also known as “learned helplessness”...
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...Jeannette Wall’s memoir portrayed in The Glass Castle, depicts the impact of education in a person’s life. Rex and Rose Mary Walls raise their children (Lori, Jeannette, Brian and Maureen), in an unusual parenting way that involve giving the children infinite independence. Even though this independence brought a lot of misfortune to the children, in terms of starving and Rex stealing their money to drink, this independence introduced a unique style of educating the children. This unique style involved not going to school for the first years of the children’s life, spending their majority of their time reading books and taught them everything they needed to know about the “world” and technology. Rex trained the children by teaching them variety...
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...Rose Mary and Rex Wall’s free-spirited way of life regularly caused tension in their everyday lives, and more importantly in their relationships with their children. While reading The Glass Castle it’s clear that the pairs parenting leaves a lot to be desired. They both seem to refuse to see how their addiction to an adventurous lifestyle may impede their children. Despite their faults, the two do manage to impart some meaningful lessons to their children along the way. But the lessons they teach are typically undermined by the harmful way they are taught. One of the many examples of Rex and Rose Mary’s harmful way of teaching lessons plays out in the house Grandma Smith leaves Rose Mary. For a while things seem to be going well for the family despite their odd and even occasionally dangerous neighbors. But eventually, Rose Mary and Rex’s parenting choices ended up costing their children yet again. The two’s stubborn refusal to close the front and back door, along with the windows, so they could air out the house, has adverse consequences for at least two of the four children....
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...The tightness of our parents grip on us as we grow up under their wing can reflect the way we function for the rest of our lives. As many will say "strict parents make sneaky kids" and kids who have uninvolved parents, are often found lost and hopelessly searching for love. In The Glass Castle, Rex Walls and Rose Mary, the parents of four bright and innocent children are often faced with struggles that many are not used to everyday. Constantly on the skedaddle; the hardships of being dirt poor and unsupervised, the Walls children develops an independent mindset and rely on each other to survive. The Glass Castle clearly portrays that the parenting of Rex Walls and Rose Mary is unconventional through Jeannette Wall's evoked sympathy and anger...
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...Children do not always need loving and supportive parents in order to grow up successful. In The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, not every child needs loving and supportive parents. Although they do love their children, Rex and Mary use very basic parental decisions; the children are very independent and raise themselves for the most part. With the right mindset, motivation and knowledge this can lead to success in life even through the hardest of times. Jeannette was at the lower class growing up, but she learned to survive anyway she could at a very young age. Considering Jeannette’s parents were not very stable, Jeannette saw that even though she was at the lower side of things, there is always a chance for greatness. A good example of this is when Jeannette tries to explain her survival technique: “We kids usually kept are hunger to ourselves, but we were always thinking of food and how to get our hands on it. During recess at school, I’d slip back into the classroom and find something in some other kid’s lunch bag that wouldn’t be missed-a package of crackers, an apple-and I’d gulp it down so quickly I could barely be able to taste it.”(68) This is the knowledge Jeannette will have all her life, even though it’s unpleasant, she has this mind set and knowledge to use when she is older, which will come in handy. Mary and Rex seem to have unconventional reactions to their children when they needed help and it’s clear that their children take after them even though it’s...
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...The Glass Castle is a memoir written by Jeannette Walls. The book illustrates her struggle through life and how her hardships shaped her into the person she is now. Jeanette is the second out of four children, she has an older sister, Lori, a younger brother, Brian, and a younger sister Maureen. The family is very dysfunctional, they are always doing the skedaddle and living in very poor conditions. They move all around Western America running from their father's mistakes. The way Jeanette's parents raised her, it took her a while to realize that the way she was living was not right, eventually her and Lori came up with a plan to get away from their toxic living conditions. The Glass Castle has three pages in the beginning reserved for praise...
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...Regarding the Walls Family Children Every child deserves a warm and caring family. These days, many children are left in abused and neglected families that affect their life afterwards. I believe it is the duty of Child Protective Services to give children the best environment in which to succeed and grow, to evaluate the situation and develop plan for the family while their parents demonstrate that they love their children, their shortcomings as parents outweigh their good intentions. In Jeannette Wall’s memoir The Glass Castle, she talks about her childhood and life, her parents Rex and Mary Walls, her two sisters, Lori and Maureen, and her brother Brian. According to her memoir, Walls family is very different from others families. They are free spirited; moving from town to town, experiencing exciting adventures, using different approaches of teaching their kids, while looking for help from others despite their rough life. The Walls family presents a difficult challenge to me, as the family dynamic is such that a case can be made both for and against the removal of the children from the parents' custody, but Rex and Rose Mary Walls have subjected their children to a host of questionable situations as they have moved about the country in a transitory lifestyle that I cannot consider permissible for the development of healthy children. As an agent of CPS I cannot in good conscience recommend that Lori, Jeanette, Brian, and Maureen Walls remain in the custody of their parents...
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...After reading Jeannette Walls’ memoir, “The Glass Castle”, it became clear that there were many repetitive factors that shaped the Walls family’s lives. There are numerous accounts of sexual abuse, parental alcoholism, evidence of mental illness and finally poverty in the form of homelessness. For even when the children prospered the parents choose to be homeless. The question is, are these factors relative? Can it be that childhood sexual abuse can inflict mental illness or alcoholism in adulthood? Does mental illness and alcoholism affect the chances of being homeless? The focus of this essay is to provide evidence that the events in Walls own life, documented in her memoir, have a butterfly effect in the outcome of their parent’s lives. In Her memoir Walls documents several cases of sexual abuse during her and her sibling’s childhood. She writes of her own experiences with Billy Deel, although he is only a minor as well, he sexually assaults her during a game of hide and seek. PAGE 85-87 Afterward Jeanette was reluctant to tell her father, “I had a feeling it would cause problems” (Walls 87) The second assault Walls documents, was when she was nine years old. “I was awakened by someone running his hands over my private parts.” “‘I just want to play a game with you’ a man’s voice said.” The next day when they told their father, “he said he was going to kill that low life…” Although, no serious action was taken to find him or prevent it from happening again. (Walls...
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...Mercedes Morelli Kristen Brady AP Lang November 5, 2012 Traditional Parents vs. Rex and Rose Mary Walls Rex and Rose Mary Walls were not the average parents to four children, but were self centered children themselves; leaving their children to suffer with harsh living conditions. They would constantly be putting their children in situations where their well being was at risk. There was a time when Rex took his daughter, Jeannette, to, “The Hot Pot [which] was a natural sulfur spring in the desert north of town, surrounded by craggy rocks and quicksand.” (Walls 66) “Dad kept telling me that he loved me, that he never would have let me drown, but you can’t cling to the side your whole life, that one lesson every parent needs to teach a child is ‘If you don’t want to sink, you better figure out how to swim.” (Walls 66) This quote is saying that people cannot be afraid to take risks in life. Even though they might, figuratively speaking, drown; people have to be able to have the courage and the strength to pick themselves back up and go after their problems head on. Rex is also teaching his daughter to not be dependent on other people but, to stand on her own and accomplish tasks by herself. The Walls’s parents were not traditional parents their lifestyles, beliefs, morals, and values were not the same as average parents today, which caused for the Walls’s children to also be affected. Traditional parents take care of the basic needs of their child by providing them with...
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