The Glass Castle Essay

The Secret to Jeannette’s Unusual Childhood Nearly 8.2% of all American children lived in unimaginable “deep poverty” in 2016, according to the University of California, Davis. The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls is a profound insight into these hidden lives. The Glass Castle is a autobiographical memoir detailing the nonconformist lifestyle of the Walls family. This somewhat dysfunctional family had a number of unconventional experiences. Rex abused alcohol. They leapt out of and fell back into poverty. They roamed. They rejected civilization. However, poverty always wound its way back into Jeannette's childhood. As the family’s financial situation worsened, the family gradually fell apart, and poverty always remained a blotch to their

It was the 1970s in Jeannette’s childhood. President Lyndon B. Johnson had declared a “war on poverty” in the previous decade, and it seemed to be effective. The University of California, Davis reported that poverty is down to 11.1% in 1973; just 14 years earlier, the poverty rate was 22.4% (“Current Poverty Rate in the United States”). However, despite these advances in reducing poverty, part of the US population still lives in poverty. A case in point: the Walls. While they are living in Welch, West Virginia, they can be seen in extreme poverty. Jeannette Walls uses a variety of setting as well as imagery to emphasize this situation as well as the strong pathos felt by Jeannette and her family. Their “slipshod” house “tilted dangerously” (Walls 151). They have no bathroom, no running water, no money for electricity (Walls 151). Given that these are what most people would consider necessities, the lack of them exemplifies the deep poverty the Walls live in. Hunger, a byproduct of Walls’s financial situation, played a significant role in Jeannette’s life. At times, for instance, Jeannette’s family had “no money for dinner” (Walls 197). This had a strong influence on Jeannette’s behavior; at many times during the book, she is always thinking about food. When at a friend’s house, she pilfers food from their kitchen. Other times, Jeannette

In Battle Mountain, Phoenix, and Welch, and everywhere the Walls lived. Poverty was a central component in many of Jeannette’s decisions. It played a pivotal role in shaping the behaviors and attitudes of the family. More importantly, poverty was always coming back to the Walls, like it did for so many other impoverished American families. Most importantly, poverty’s powerful childhood force exerted its influence into Jeannette’s adult life, permanently affecting her behavior and mind. She highlights a glaring, though ironically forgotten problem in today’s American society: the influence of childhood poverty. The way poverty fed itself and wound its way into Jeannette’s later life made it the single most haunting and defining factor in Jeannette Walls’