Jeannette’s lesson People sometimes prefer to avoid getting taught something they don't like or understand, but in the end, they realize it's useful. In the story The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls experiences lessons she was taught through struggle. Jeannette believes parents end up teaching their kids lessons even though they don't like how they're prepared. Jeannette got caught on fire for making hot dogs. During Rose Mary’s singing, Jeannette wanted hot dogs, so she made hot dogs without her parents caring if something wrong would happen to her. “I felt a blaze of heat on the right side. I turned to see where it was coming from, and my dress was on fire” (Walls 9). Jeannette got caught on fire and ended up having a skin graft. She went to the hospital, and the conditions were terrible. She had scars all over her body from the fire and learned never to touch fire again for what happened to her. “Dad also thought I should face down my enemy, and he showed me how to pass my finger through a candle flame” …show more content…
Jeannette didn’t know how to swim, but that's when her dad came. Rex said that he would teach Jeannette how to swim. Rex and Jeannette went to the Hot Pot, and Rex threw her into the water. She had trouble swimming. “You are going to learn to swim today, He said. Dad was dragging me. I felt terrified and clutched his neck so tightly that his skin turned white” (Walls 65). Jeannette had trouble swimming. She was drowning. Jeannette breathed when she went to the hot part of the water, and water surged into her nose and mouth. Jeannette's lungs were also burning from the Hot Pot. “You're doing it, baby! Dad shouted. You're swimming!” (Walls 66). Jeannette started to swim after her dad kept throwing her back at the Hot Pot. She was thrown into the middle of the Hot Pot and pushed herself to swim. She didn't need her dad's rescue; after that, she learned to swim. Jeannette learned how to swim through many struggles with hard
(Walls 66). Jeannette’s father throws her out so she can learn to swim on her own – a strategy he uses in parenting as well as swimming. In fact, both
After the assailant inflicted the wounds on her, he set fire to her bed. The room filled with smoke which alerted the townsfolk, Helen's body was recovered but one side of her was badly burned.
Rex Walls and Walt Disney had similar parenting tactics. Rex Walls did not believe in “babying” his children. “I didn't treat my own youngsters like fragile flowers, and I think no parent should,” explains Disney. One day Rex takes his children to the Hot Pot where Jeannette does not know how to swim. Rex teaches Jeannette how to swim by throwing her into the pool and letting her struggle sink until she finds a way to swim.
Jeannette’s parents, while on the mentally unstable side, were always against being even somewhat normal. Though the younger Jeannette, at times, wished that their family could be like everyone else instead of constantly doing the “skee-daddle”, it wasn’t until she grew up that she knew her parents strange ways taught her to be an independent, unique individual. When Rex, Jeannette’s father, threw her in a sulfur spring in attempts to teach her how to swim, Jeannette got extremely upset at him for seemingly trying to drown her. Although his way of teaching her was a bit cruel, she discovered he was only trying to help her. “If you don’t want to sink, you better figure out how to swim,” he told her (Walls 66).
Jeannette ended up getting caught on fire and has to get rushed to the hospital, where she was then in there for six weeks. “I was three years old, and we were living in a trailer park in a
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).
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!’”
Jeanette’s parents were very neglectful to her and her siblings; her mother was always too occupied with her painting and her father was an alcoholic. Her earliest memory of her parents neglect was when she was three and caught fire while making hotdogs for herself. While cooking the hotdogs, her dress caught fire and she was severely burned. Jeanette was immediately taken the hospital and was treated for her burns. Jeanette’s brother Brian stopped by the hospital to visit his sister but had bandages covering his head; Brian had fallen and cracked his head open.
Jeannette Walls shares that her earliest memory is when she was three years old. She was on fire. Her pink tutu dress had ignited as she was cooking hotdogs for her family unsupervised over the stove. She describes in detail how the flames attacked her side viscously and crept towards her face mercilessly. Her mother was in another room, working on a painting.
He does this by creating a sense of sympathy for the mother’s mental illness and her actions, whilst allowing the audience to understand how her actions have negatively affected the girl. The audience gathers a developed understanding of how the detrimental state of the mother has affected the girl when she describes her as ‘sick, and bitter, and afraid’, from the use of sharp single-word descriptions it is obvious that the girl is fed up and isn’t scared to tell the truth about her mother’s issues. This independence shown by the girl elicits a sympathetic feeling for her mother and her apparent mental illness. At the end of the first page, Winton depicts a scene of havoc with the mother severely burning herself after a smoking accident, the aftermath of her mother’s accident is described by the girl as like a ‘charred side of beef’, whilst this symbolises how the mothers' actions have resulted in her relationship with her daughter being ‘charred’ or burnt, it also describes the sense of olfaction as it is easy for the audience to understand how charred beef smells, emphasizing a burnt, fierce aroma which connotates a feeling of shame and wastefulness. Throughout the novel, it is implied that the mother is incapable and a waste of space, Winton provides sympathetic perspectives for the mother whilst solidifying that her alcohol addiction has led her to this
Jeannette’s parents were not paying attention to her; in fact, her mother was in the other room painting and singing when all this happened. Jeannette is also not paying attention to her surroundings. Jeannette was too young to cook without adult supervision, but she did not know better.
“If you don 't want to sink, you better figure out how to swim” (41). Although Rex Walls was not always an admirable father and role model, he did make an essential point while teaching his daughter, Jeannette, how to swim. In life, not everything comes without resistance. As Jeannette Walls describes throughout her life story, sometimes people are forced to face hardships that make them question their whole life. However, as seen in her book, it is important to learn to take those hardships and use them to shape one’s future for the better.
She struggled with how the society and her family shaped who she was. She was exposed to her family first which made her behave the way she did under her family’s house. Jeanette struggled with her family by taking care of the house, beings told bending the rules is okay and the acceptance of her Mom’s and Dad’s homelessness. When Jeannette left her family and went to live in New York, she becomes an individual. She fends for herself and gets her life together.
When the fire is attempted to be put out by neighbors with a tub of water and tomatoes, it only makes things worse, “The water did put out the flames, but it also made steam, which seared to sealing all that was left of the beautiful Hannah Peace” (76). Unlike with Plum, who had water (kerosene) poured on him to start a fire, Hannah’s fire is put out by water. Nonetheless, destruction and death follow when Plum burns to death and Hannah’s death is accelerated from the water’s steam. This showcases how even when putting out a fire, water acted as a dangerous element, harming Hannah in the end.
Billie Jo’s own hands are scorched as she frantically tries to smother flames ablaze her mother’s skin. Following the accident, “while Ma moaned and begged for water, [Billie