In the novel, The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls faces many challenges that seemed impossible to overcome much like I have during my middle school years. Jeannette in her younger years had to deal with poverty and bullying that I have to imagine caused much distress and pain in her life. While my story and Jeannette’s aren’t that similar, they both are about pain and challenges that we had to overcome. In my case, my hardships began around the beginning of seventh grade. I had to deal with horrible surgery recovery and things going wrong in my body. One other thing I share in common with Jeannette from her story would be dealing with bullying and fitting in. While Jeannette was made fun of for her lifestyle and money situations, I was bullied for having seizures in class and horrible scarring on my …show more content…
I was only attending half days to begin with due to my brain still healing and not handling stimuli very well. I was given a room where I could eat lunch with my friends. My friends were glad to see I made it back okay but I knew they could tell I was different. I was definitely more quiet and in a depressed sort of state. In the first week after returning I had a seizure at school. Many people saw it and were concerned, however, some students thought it was funny and would begin rolling around on the ground to mock me. I see some of those people in my class as I type this story. I have long since forgiven them but I still remember. Other problems besides the bullying and seizures in class persisted as well. It was a constant struggle to get through every day and keep up with the work. My brain had suffered a lot of damage and my thinking process was not as good as it should have been. The shunt that had been rerouted was also beginning to act up again and my parents decided to take me to the hospital for the third time but this time to a different
It is well known that most people would consider a billionaire to be successful. On the other hand, a person impoverished would not be considered successful by most. In the memoir The Glass Castle, author Jeannette Walls tells her story of growing up with her parents Rose Mary and Rex Walls. Rose Mary and Rex Walls are not successful parents because they can’t support their children. Both parents are unsuccessful because they have trouble providing food for their children every day.
Her book describes the hardship and struggle she faced growing up in Little Rock and what it was like to be hurt and abused all throughout high school.
In the memoir, The Glass Castle, by Jeanette Walls, Jeanette and her family reference the building of the glass castle. In my opinion, the glass castle is a metaphor of hope for the Walls family that they will always be together when they plan their dream house. Even though Jeanette’s dad, Rex, knows he is not going to build the castle, he keeps referencing it to give the kids a reason to keep moving forward and to have something to be excited about in their different lives. One of the first mentions of the glass castle was on page 14 of the memoir. As Jeanette Walls claims, “When Dad wasn't telling us about all the amazing things he had already done, he was telling us about the wondrous things he was going to do.
Success: An Escape from Privation Inevitably, the conflicts people face at multiple points in their life is a determining factor in shaping individuals into the person they will eventually become. Namely, these conflicts direct people 's behavior over the course of time; contributing to a person’s ability to achieve success. In particular, Jeannette Walls’ The Glass Castle is an honest depiction of her life and the conflicts that arise throughout her state of impoverishment, as well as the success that stems from her hardships.
Nicholas Sparks once said, “I don’t know that love changes. People change. Circumstances change.” In the memoir, The Glass Castle author Jeannette Walls shows how her father Rex Walls changes with everything thrown at him as a father or four. In the beginning of being a parent Rex shares his intelligence with his children.
Witnessing my father chasing down my mother because of a pointless argument of my parents not caring about my siblings and I where abouts would be devastating to say the least. In The Glass Castle Jeannette and her siblings chose to appreciate the small things as they got older because they were not given materialistic items or a hot meal when they could afford it. Their mother made poor financial decisions and hardly ever put the kids first. For example, the mom chose to rent a piano over buying Brian a pair of male jeans. He had to suffer wearing girl clothes that did not even fit.
Most teens now face many difficulties, but through those challenges, they can find many important life lessons. The novel “Red Glass” is by Laura Resau, it is about a girl named Sophie who overcame many struggles throughout her journey. Sophie is insecure, but she’s mostly brave. She is a bit if a germaphobe to. All of these traits that Sophie has conquered led her to learn a big life lesson.
Jeannette’s Tone Change As a result of maturing and learning new things, perspectives on people usually change. This is what happened with Jeanette Walls in her novel, The Glass Castle. Her initial attitude towards her father, Rex Walls, is loving, supportive, and faithful. However, when she is able to process how many times her father has let her down, her tone in the book changes to being very critical and clinical.
Poverty and Mental Health Jeannette Walls’ memoir, The Glass Castle, demonstrates the struggles of mental health issues that generate from poverty through her family’s journeys, both mentally and physically. Jeannette Walls displays how poverty can affect an entire family’s life through her use of realism, in-depth descriptions, and imagery in her memoir, The Glass Castle. The Glass Castle focuses on the tie between mental health issues and poverty through the theme of the lasting effects of poverty. Poverty in Jeannette’s younger years is the cause of the majority of her anxiety, depression, and other mental health issues. The Walls family’s period of time in Phoenix contributed to Jeannette’s mental health issues.
“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.
Paul Ryan once said, “Every successful individual knows that his or her achievement depends on a community of persons working together.” Individuals must strive upon excellence based on the society they are placed in. Watching how others react can help one become the best they can be. Throughout The Glass Castle, Jeannette is exposed to society by her parents. Her parents, Rex and Rose Mary, see society in different means than how others perceive it.
After graduating middle school her friend lost touch with her and eventually left her life for good: “By the time she got to Welch High Dinitia changed.” Jeannette was also sexually harassed by one of her friends in Phoenix while playing hide-and-seek: “Billy smushed his face against mine… ‘Guess what?’Billy shouted. ‘I raped you’” Lastly, while going to school in Phoenix Jeannette was bullied for being smart and skinny: “The other students didn’t like me much because I was so tall and pale and skinny and always raised my hand too fast… A few days after I started school, four Mexican girls followed me home and jumped me in an alleyway…”
Every once in awhile a horrible situation occurs expecting the worst to happen when in reality something good comes out of it, such as the events in the Walls family in the Glass Castle by author Jeannette Walls. An event that would of turned terrible but went another direction was when Rex and Rose couldn’t buy christmas gifts for the kids (pg.39). During that period the Walls were pretty poor and couldn’t afford to get each other gifts during the holiday’s. The result of this could 've ended in sadness and disappointment, but to spare that Rose and Rex told the kids the truth where Santa wasn’t real. Telling the kids that Santa wasn’t real made them feel apart of a secret other kids didn’t know, which made them feel special.
While Jeannette was a junior in high school she became aware of the fact she had to get out of Welch and away from her parents. “ All through the long walk, the pain had kept me thinking, and by the time i reached the tree trunk, i had made two decisions. The first was that id had my first and last whipping. No one was ever going to do that to me again. The second was that, like Lori, I was going to get out of welch.
The story takes place in a glass castle. If you are thinking why make a castle out of glass that could come crashing down at any moment right now, then you are thinking just like the main character. Since the main character does not like the feeling of fragile glass surrounding her she stays in the stone chambers underneath. Outside of the castle though she is in the country of Adarlan which apparently is conquering the world. In the world there was also magic, but the king of Adarlan ordered all magic to be destroyed so that even people who had magic in their blood didn’t believe they had any power to use magic, and anyone who tried to use magic got executed.