What Does The Glass Castle Fire Symbolize

In the novel, The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, the author uses the fire motif to assert that attempts to control the uncontrollable will leave scars. For example, when cooking hot dogs Jeannette “Watched the yellow-white flames make a ragged brown line up the pink fabric on my skirt and climb my stomach”(11). The fire grows bigger and bigger with Jeannette stunned until Rose Mary puts it out showing that Jeannette is not scared of fire but in awe of it leaving her in a state of shock. Although because of this Jeannette will carry scars wherever she goes reminding her of what happened when she tried to control fire. After Jeannette asks herself about her experience with fire she thinks “I didn’t have the answers to those questions, but I did know that I lived in a world that at any moment could erupt into fire”(34).

Look at this fire! This terrible fire! Have mercy on me!", but nothing was there “only the darkness of night” (25). During the day she remained absent but towards the evening again she began to shout again: "The fire, over there!"(26). In the beginning people had just thought of her to be mad in a concerning way but eventually after all her hollering they got tired of it and begun to struck her.

The others believe she has been driven mad and do not take her cautions into account. She cries, “‘Look! Look at this fire! This terrible fire! Have mercy on me!’”

Matthew Seikel Mrs. Wood English III 07 February 2023 The Importance of The Metaphor The Glass Castle The goal of building The Glass Castle caused many ups and downs for the Walls family. In the book The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls the family is very poor and Rex who is the father wants to build a glass castle for the family. Jeannette who is the author and one of the main characters has positive outlooks and negative outlooks on her father wanting to build the glass castle. Rex tries his hardest throughout the book to bring happiness in trying to build the glass castle however, it seems he hurts the family rather than helping the family.

First and foremost, fire symbolizes inhumanity. Throughout Night inhumanity is reflected through physical abuse and starvation. “He threw himself on me like a wild beast, beating me in the chest, on my head, throwing me to the ground, and picking me

Mrs. Schachter (the lady) started seeing fires after she got split up from her family. She didn’t know what was going to happen to her kids and her husband, all she knew is that she was split up. In this book fire symbolizes death. Mrs. Schachter saw fire constantly and it tormented her. Not being able to know the whereabouts of one's family can eat someone from the inside out.

In the memoir The Glass Castle, journalist Jannette Walls tells the bittersweet story of her childhood struggles and what it was like growing up in poverty. “I lived in a world that at any moment could erupt into fire. It was the sort of knowledge that kept you on your toes.” (pg.34) Walls grows up in a family trailed by broken homes, and she focuses on her untraditional childhood with her parents that were too self-centered and lazy to have steady jobs.

The Sea of Flames acts as a symbol of hope throughout the novel as it gave the reader the confidence that Marie will survive the war occurring right outside

In The Glass Castle, I think the significance of Jeanette's fascination with fire is that she no longer fears it. After her incident, she was afraid of fire. On page 15, her mother said, "You've got to get right back in the saddle. You can't live in fear of something as basic as fire." Also, on page 15, her father told her that she should come face to face with her enemy.

Look at the flame! Flames everywhere…,” (26). But there were no flames. Not yet, at least. No one believed her, they thought she was crazy.

Since her parents do not pay heed to her, Jeannette continues to get into situations with fire. When the house lit on fire, it likely had nothing to do with the toilet paper; but Jeannette is still unsafe around flames. The Walls family finally planned Christmas for the first time. The morning of, Rex got drunk and caused a scene at church. When they all came home he decided to light their cheap, dry Douglas fir tree on fire.

Throughout the beginning of the novel, Ralph is the leader of the fight to keep and maintain the fire, but he is starting to give up hope and lets the fire die. Lastly, fire symbolizes hope during the end of the novel. Jack and most of the other boys have turned on Ralph and want to “hunt” him. They decided that the best way to get Ralph to come to them on the beach was to light the whole forest on fire so Ralph would be forced out to the beach. Ralph was trying to run out of the forest as “the roar of the forest rose to thunder and a tall bush directly in his path burst into a great fan-shaped fan.

The Glass Castle would have solar cells on the top that would catch the sun’s rays and convert them into electricity” (Walls 25). The glass castle represents the family’s hope and dream towards the future. The castle represents Mr. Walls’s hope for an idealistic life where he could provide for his family and have a safe, stable roof above their head; the castle also represents all of Jeannette’s wonderful wishes and aspirations growing up. The glass castle is a powerful tie shared by everyone in the Walls family. “[Mr. Walls] [carries] around the blueprints for the Glass Castle wherever [he] went” (Walls 25).

The burning symbolizes the force of eros consuming the subject which causes the subject pain. The ‘cooled’ and ‘burned’ also create a juxtaposition that can be analyzed to express what turmoil the mind is undergoing. The subject directly says, “I was crazy for you” This line clearly expresses how significantly the madness has advanced because she admits, that the longing made her crazy. However, after the object is obtained the fire is slightly distinguished the subject is not as

The creature experiences the “fire” in a different way than most, he finds that the fire can be warming but if he gets to close he could be burned. " The cup of life was poisoned forever, and although the sun shone upon [him], as upon the happy and gay of heart, [he] saw around [him] nothing but a dense and frightful darkness, penetrated by no light but the glimmer of two eyes that glared upon [him]" The first experience the creature has with fire he discovers there is multiple purposes of a flame although it creates light and beauty in dark places but also can be extremely harmful and dangerous if it gets touched. (166) The Symbol of fire also has a connection to the Greek god Prometheus who had inadvertently given humanity the gift of the knowledge of fire, but was severely punished for it after the fact.