Jeannette Walls Thesis

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. She was oblivious to her daughter’s agony until the little girl let out a panicked scream, which she immediately responded to by getting the child to a hospital. The hospital stay triggers an investigation of the family. Her father Rex, who is adamantly anti-medicine, steals the child out of her bed and the family makes a run for home. Rex and the doctor had gotten into an altercation prior to the reclaiming of Jeannette over whether or not she needed to wear bandages over her wounds. The doctor

Hawthorne-Allen once said during a lecture that power and politics ruled the world during the time of Aristotle. This unfortunately stands true today, particularly in our government. With tax breaks for the wealthy and layoffs for the working class, it seems the government stands in favor of those with monetary pull. If a child in the same socioeconomic class as the Walls children were to find him or herself in trouble, ‘justice’ seems to be delivered more swiftly than for a child with parents in a position of power in the community. Take, for instance, what can be dubbed as “Hollywood Crimes” compared to normal crime. If a celebrity is busted for doing illegal drugs, they are immediately sent to rehab. Meanwhile, a young man without a household name or money would be spending some time in jail. Smaller scale: if a child from a middle or upper class family acts out in school, the teachers immediately first thought is that something is going on at home. If a poor child acts out or gets in trouble, many teachers are swifter to punish first instead of investigate. Times have changed, but people have not