...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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...The Glass Castle is a descriptive memoir written from the perspective of Jeannette Walls. As she eventually finds success as a writer, Jeanette recounts her dreadful childhood she faces raised by eccentric and egotistical parents. Rex and Mary, her parents, are very non-functional because of their drinking habits. Mom and Dad are very energetic people who push their kids, learing how to nurture themselves by feeding, clothing, and protecting one another. Jeannette Walls applies the lesson of self-discipline from her childhood in order to be self-sufficient in New York City. While not being the parent she wishes to have, Jeanette’s Dad teachers her to be self reliant when he tells her that she would be fine when learning how to swim. Jeanette...
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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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...“I wanted to let the world know that no one had a perfect life, that even the people who seemed to have it all had their secrets” the Glass Castle. We all feel the stress eventually. The only real difference people have growing up is that some people have the luxury of living in a better setting. I am definitely one of those people. When looking in on my life it may seem quite easy going. You would be right for the most part, but as I mentioned before, nobody's life is as easy as it may seem. I am not proclaiming my life to be unbearably difficult, but I do struggle with a certain hardship. That hardship is my relationship with my father, much like Jeannette with her father in the Glass Castle. Sadly, Jeannette Walls, was not the only person to grow up in that type of situation. My father was born in Buffalo, New York. His family managed to travel to three different states in his eighteen years living with them. Along the whole way they were dirt poor. He does not speak of his childhood much, but from what I have heard there were many nights he would not eat. Sometimes he would have to wait till midnight when his father got off of a late shift to eat. He slept on...
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...There are many themes throughout The Glass Castle, but one theme that sticks out the most is forgiveness. The act of forgiving someone is sometimes hard for certain people, also depending on the situation. Some people forgive others and some just forget the person and move on with their life. In The Glass Castle there is a family consisting of a mother and a father and children. The kids were raised poorly because of the way their parents lived their life. Despite these kids childhoods they still loved their parents anyway. Forgiveness is shown threw Jeanette’s relationship with her parents, mainly her father, and then the other kid’s relationship with their parents, also The Last Song is a story with the same theme. Jeanette’s father is Rex Walls. Rex has always had a probably with drinking. Growing up Jeanette had always seen her father get drunk and not be able to control himself. She knew that he had a problem very early on in her life. No matter the situation, Jeanette would always stand up for her father and defended him. Rex would let Jeanette down over and over again. It got to a point where Jeanette knew she could fend for both herself and her father, so she chose herself. Even though all the troubles Jeanette went through growing up with Rex as her...
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...I think the quote “Life’s too short to worry about what people think… they should accept us for who we are.” (Page -157) is important to the book and it can be used to teach people a life lesson. It is important to the book because Jeanette has been through so much as she grows. She’s been judged her whole life. In the book “The Glass Castle”, Jeannette said that she and her family would move place to place and never stayed for long so they never had the time to make friends but she would make enemies. Every place they would live, something bad would happen to her, boys or men would try to take advantage of her or girls would want to beat her up because they would be jealous of her since she was really smart. Jeannette would always get bullied either by kids her age or older people like her teacher....
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...In life we learn numerous life lessons, usually by trial and error, but we can also receive these messages through literature. The two memoirs The Glass Castle and Rocket Boys were no exception. The parallel between these two books is the moral that you must work hard in order to achieve your goals. In The Glass Castle, written by Jeanette Walls, Jeanette, as a young girl, learns that in order to get food or money it has to come from her own hard work. If Jeanette was desperate for money she, “Walked along the roadside picking up beer cans and bottles that we [Jeanette and her brother Bryan] redeemed for two cents each” (Walls 62). However, her true dream was to become a journalist. As she grew older, Jeanette was able to get a job at...
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...princess that have evil villains trying to ruin them, but their stories are not the same. For example, they have different struggles, and how they overcome them. They both sing magically, but have different songs. They may be two of the most known princess in the world, but they also have many differences. However, in the end either the glass slipper fits, or true loves kiss wins. Cinderella and Aurora are two of the most beloved Disney princess of all time. How they got to be the most loved princesses is two completely different stories literally! Cinderella is a good-hearted girl, who is a servant in her own home to her cruel step-mother and two step-sisters because her father died at a young age. As Aurora is a kind hearted princess born into royalty. Although she is living with misfortune, as Cinderella, because and evil fairy named Maleficent curses her to die on sixteenth birthday. So Aurora is a more tragic story. However, Cinderella is a more hopeful and optimistic story that one day things will turn around. She dreams of a day that she will no longer be a servant in her own home. Her chance comes true when there is a ball at the castle, where the prince is looking for his future wife. With the help of her mice friends they make a perfect pink dress. The worst comes and Cinderella’s step-sisters ruin her dress. When all is looking down for Cinderella her fairy god-mother comes to her, and she gets the chance to go to the ball to dance the night away with Prince Charming...
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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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...Parenting Styles The Glass Castle was written by Jeanette Walls and tells the story about her life as a child. Throughout the story, the Walls family easily exemplifies a permissive parenting style through the interactions, lessons, and conversations that Rex and Rosemary have with their children. Permissive parents are, “Often taking on the status of a friend more than a parent” (Cherry, “The Four Styles of Parenting”). One example of this from the Walls family is the time that, “Mom started yelling at Lori to prove to Miss Beatty that she was capable of disciplining her students” (75). Beating her child to impress someone else is not a motherly action. The interaction was more similar to a friend trying to help another friend by...
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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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...There are more than one destination that can either be how you wanted it or be totally unexpected. You never know the outcome of a journey. Just like with Malcolm X’s “My First Conk,” Jeannette Walls’s “The Glass Castle,” and Jon Krakauer’s “Into The Wild.” All outcomes of a journey with a successful destination. The journey itself is more important than the destination because only the lessons you learn come from the journey such as curiosity, identity, and courage. Curiosity is one of the many lessons learned from a journey. In Malcolm X’s “My First Conk” its states, “This was self degradation: when I endured all of the pain, literally burning my flesh to have it look like a white man’s hair” (Malcolm X 2). The burning curiosity Malcolm...
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...how they function in groups while he has always survived with only one other. When Grendel first met the humans, Hrothgar was their leader, and a successful one. In this time period, as Grendel has described it, it was a large step to take land, settle with neighbors, and build a castle. He was able to unite wanderers, create rules and establish trade and dominance over neighboring groups. And once he establishes his reign, he continues to wage war and rule. He even set up a system, relying on a group of warriors for support: “Hrothgar met with his council for many nights and days, and they drank and talked and prayed to their curious carved-out creatures”(39). Hrothgar’s problem is he is too decent. King Hrothgar is over-civilized. Civilization involves repression of uncontrolled, primitive forces, and in the time it takes for him to create his rule the culture of the land adapted to allow him to do so. But his society is loose and unstable, as all cultures become at a point. As he grows old, he does not produce a heir and the group becomes unsettled due to lack of progression. This society is fragile, and Grendel immediately shows the flaws in the system: if he attacks the king, the castle crumbles. But when Grendel begins his raids, the...
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...In the book the Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls has a serious of events and attention grabbers. I related to Jeanette when she said “I told him I would never lose faith in him and I promised myself that I never would” (pg 79). I can relate because my dad is my favorite person he probably is not the best person but he is my favorite person. My dad can do so much and does do so much but no matter what I will not lose faith in him. He might irritate me, make me mad, and make me cry but knowing no one else's is there for him I will always be. In the book the Glass Castle Jeannette family wasn't always supportive of what her dad was or the way he lied but she was always had a cover up and still thought no matter what he did he was always the...
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...Andrea Irvin poignantly states in her article, "I love allowing students to explore characters and their motives vicariously through the stories we study in class, and I hope by doing so that students learn something about their own character in the process" (57). She clearly has a passion and dedication to teaching character development in the classroom. While Irvin wrote about Jeanette Wall's memoir The Glass Castle, it is interesting to note how Sebold's memoir Lucky similarly reveals "inner strength and determination" and manages to show how a person can "persevere in the face of obstacles." Facing her fears, surrounding herself with supportive people, and seeking justice despite difficulties are lessons we all can learn from. First of...
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