Walls was offered by her father to have sex with one of his friends in return for money. Luckily, she was able to avoid having sex with the man, stating that she is “not that kind of girl.” Another instance of sexual abuse in The Glass Castle is when Walls’ Uncle Stanley touches Jeannette inappropriately. After telling her mother of this incident, Jeannette receives no sympathy. In fact, Rose Mary ends up giving her sorrow to Stanley, claiming that she feels bad for him because he is “lonely.” Rose Mary also states that sexual assault is a “crime of perception.” This dismissal and victim-shaming is prevalent in today’s world. Unfortunately, even our youth experience what Jeannette Walls experienced.
The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls is an engaging book that should be read over the summer. It’s a memoir based on how she describes her unconventional and eventful life. Walls was born in Phoenix, Arizona to Rex and Rose-Mary Walls, along with three other siblings. The Walls family had never had any steady course of income or a home. This would contribute to Jeannette Walls childhood being unlike any other.
Abuse, chaos and bitter love are some things that are clearly seen in the film The Glass Castle (2017), through the Walls family. In the book Jeannette Walls, sheds light on how her father was an alcoholic and how he “brought” the family down with him. Jeannette is the closest one to her father and truly connects to him, and goes along with everything he does. Rex’s alcoholism is a symbol for endurance and hardship and can be seen sporadically throughout the movie and book. In Destin Cretons film version we see the hardships and pains of a troubled growing family.
In The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, Rose Mary is the mother of the Walls children who often does not act as a true adult. Rose Mary’s attitudes and behaviours are childlike, and therefore her children must take on responsibility for the lack her own. Rose Mary ignores her obligations as a parent and chooses an irresponsible way of life which endangers her children. Rose Mary has never properly matured into adulthood due to her lack of financial stability, bliss ignorance and optimism, and her selfishness nature. To begin, the lack of financial stability in the Walls family has always been problematic, however as the mother of her children, Rose Mary never contributed much to the family income due to her stubbornness and free-spirited nature.
Character List The protagonist, narrator, and author of the memoir, The Glass Castle is Jeannette Walls. From a young age, she was very optimistic and outgoing. Her personality is shown through her fearless actions and her mindset of that everything will become better. Jeannette was independent and strong from the age of three, as shown when she got a terrible burn from cooking and when she was bullied. However as she grew up, she started to become less ignorant to the state of poverty she and her family were going through.
It’s one of the main key issues addressed in this memoir. The Walls family were very poor and sometimes ‘stable’ in the basic needs of life. Unfortunately, Walls children had to grow and suffer in a wretched and miserable home, enduring poverty and hunger. Jeannette and her family always make do with the situation they are in, from sleeping in their car to overdrawing their accounts at the bank by having Mary and Rex (Jeannette’s parents) withdraw money simultaneously. And Jeannette and her siblings always picked their lunches from the cafeteria trash at school.
The Glass Castle is a memoir by Jeanette Walls in which she tells the story of her childhood and the way she became who she is. Her way to her balanced present was too difficult and full of hardships, yet she managed to become a successful and prosperous person whose life experience gave her a push to make her life happy. It stands to mention that the novel is full of symbols which contribute to reader 's understanding of Jeanette 's character and represent her most important traits and desires. Besides, all the symbols such as the fire, the Joshua tree, the geode and the glass castle are recurring and contribute to understanding the struggle of Jeanette 's childhood and her ability to overcome it and build a successful life. Fire is an
Yet, there is something to be said that Maureen was put in jail. It is evident that her childhood may have impacted her in a more severe psychological way. The book The Glass Castle is a very interesting narrative. The author Jeanette Walls is able to bring new light to circumstances that many people choose to ignore or overlook by writing about her own childhood. This gives the book a new perspective and allows the reader to gain insight.
Jeannette Walls also uses the symbol of the Glass Castle, which develops throughout the memoir to show how she slowly loses trust in her father as she realises that she can not depend upon him or anyone else for happiness. The symbolism evolves throughout the memoir as Walls evolves as a person. In the beginning of the memoir, her description of the Glass Castle is naive and hopeful. Her naivety is most apparent when Walls writes, “All of Dad’s engineering skills and mathematical genius were coming together in one special project: a great big house he was going to build for us in the desert… All we had to do was find gold, Dad said, and we were on the verge of that. Once he finished the prospector and we struck it rich, he’d start work on our glass castle” (25).
The abuse Jeannette faces as an adolescent, shapes a woman later affected by her events, that are created by her parents' selfishness. Jeannette experiences neglect from her own parents, physical abuse from her distraught father, and sexual abuse from strangers, all before she turns eighteen. The most common form of abuse Jeannette faces during her childhood is neglect, which is forced upon her by both Rex and Rose Mary. Neglect can be defined as refusing to intentionally or unintentionally care for a child and his or her needs. According to a study conducted by