Analysis Of The Glass Castle By Jeannette Walls

It is well known that most people would consider a billionaire to be successful. On the other hand, a person impoverished would not be considered successful by most. In the memoir The Glass Castle, author Jeannette Walls tells her story of growing up with her parents Rose Mary and Rex Walls. Rose Mary and Rex Walls are not successful parents because they can’t support their children. Both parents are unsuccessful because they have trouble providing food for their children every day.

For the first part of the memoir Jeannette, talks about when she was three years old. She is cooking hotdogs by herself and accidentally gets set on fire. She gets rushed into the hospital and her dad, Rex takes her to avoid paying the hospital bills. They then skedaddle to another place. The main characters of this memoir includes

Two readers, two different age groups, two different opinions, and one text. The Glass Castle is a memoir written by Jeannette Walls. In this nonfiction story, Jeanette and her family are homeless and move all around the country for a place to stay for a few months before they have to “skedaddle” and move to another location, and repeat the process all over again. In this text, maturity plays a big role, in which the children, Jeannette and her siblings must make big decisions ordinary children wouldn’t be able to make because their parents are incapable of doing so, even if we, the readers, don’t approve of them. In The Glass Castle, the text can be interpreted by two different readers based on their age because the opinions of the readers

Many themes are present throughout the memoir, some of which include nonconformity, the definition of a home, and family. One theme that was reinforced throughout the entirety of the memoir was self sufficiency. Jeanette and her three siblings come from a broken home which includes a drunk of a father who could never fully accept his role as a provider and a mother who was more interested in pursuing her failed art career than taking care of her children. This led the Walls family

The best-selling memoir, The Glass castle by Jeannette Walls was recently made into a movie. It was released in the spring of 2017. The movie did an amazing job representing the memoir and its characters. The character Rex whose describe as a tough, hard headed man and intelligent was played by Woody Harrelson.

“On at least one point, though, their parents were right: The Walls kids were smart. The oldest daughter Lori escaped to New York City, where she worked as a nanny; Jeannette and her younger siblings Brian and Maureen eventually followed. For Jeannette the turning point came when her mom left for a job in a nearby town, leaving her 13-year-old daughter with just a few dollars to feed her and her siblings. Rex begged, and Jeannette gave him the cash to buy beer instead. ‘I realized that as much as I loved him, I couldn't fix him,’ she says.

After an incident where Rex’s mother Erma was caught molesting Brian, the family moved to a house essentially made of rocks, plywood and cardboard. By then there was another child Maureen and the children were old enough to realize that their family was not like everyone else’s. Rex was suffering from alcoholism and while it wasn’t discussed, her mother Rose Mary possibly had a mental illness where sometimes she was excited to go and teach in the random elementary schools in the random towns they lived in and other times she wouldn’t get out of bed. She had a college degree

In Stephen King’s memoir, On Writing, he expresses dozens of opinions on his craft and provides a compilation of writing preferences for an audience of readers and aspiring writers alike. Jeannette Walls, the author of the memoir The Glass Castle, seemingly displays similar writing preferences to those of Stephen King. Specifically, Walls and King both leave out unnecessary words, they both use dialogue as a characterization tool, and they both believe in writing honestly. One of the first writing tactics King proposes is to, “...

As innocent children, we grow up with intentions of being just like our mommies and daddies. We dream that one day, we can wear the same powerful red cape, that we watch our parents wear with courage and bravery on a daily basis. Sadly, not every child is fortunate enough to have superheroes as parents; some children have villains as their mothers and fathers. When the walls of naivety begin to fade away and reality comes into play, certain children have to face the harsh reality that what should be their number one supporter(s) is actually their number one offender. In A Child Called It by David Pelzer, Pelzer learns how to survive abuse from his mother, and isolation from his entire family.

In the memoir, Rex Walls’ internal conflict, Jeannette Walls’ conflict with Rose Mary, and Jeannette’s conflict with society push her to become the person she is today. Therefore, Jeannette Walls’ owes her success to the hardships she had as a child. To begin, Rex Walls’ internal conflict comes from his inability to provide for his family. Being a father, Rex Walls has an obligation to look after his family and to make sure everyone is looked after.

The joy of learning is what unified the Walls family and is the source of the children’s most endearing memories. They would read together and bond over learning. Jeannette recounts her happier moments “after dinner, the whole family was stretched out on the benches and the floor of the depot and read with the dictionary in the middle of the room so we could look up words we didn’t know. (Walls 56-57) The Walls not only believed in a growth mindset; sharing knowledge was in fact how Rex and Rose Mary best expressed their genuine love and affection towards their children.

Since the Walls family is so poor and homeless it seems that Rex and Rosemary are not always there to give their children the support and comfort that kids need at a young age. Instead of giving love and comfort, they decide to teach their kids how to be tough and how to learn to do things themselves. Unlike most parents, who focus on supporting, caring for their children first, and then teaching them how to live on their own once they get much older. This attentive parenting method is not visible in the Walls’ family. For example, when Jeannette has her accident with fire and explained it to the nurses she gets rather surprised and

The walls parents consider themselves to be their kids’ friend rather than a concerned parent. “’ Good for you, Mom said when she saw me cooking. You’ve got to get right back on the saddle”’ (15)… Friends tend to encourage you to do stupid things but in this situation Jeannette’s mother is the one encouraging her to do something not so bright. Rex and Rosemary do not expect their kids to become any greater than they are.

When Rex Walls would announce that they had to leave, the children would not become irritable because, to them, this meant a new adventure was ahead. As she grew up, Jeannette brought

I believe they are inadequate parents. My opinion is based on everything, Jeannette had experienced in her early years as a child, and as a teen growing up in Welch. The first reason why I think Rex and Rose Mary Walls are inadequate parents, is the skedaddle. The skedaddle is something that Rex and Rose Mary Walls used as an excuse to escape the “FBI” and debt collectors (and they had a large sum of debt).