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Coming Of Age In The Glass Castle, And Never Let Me Go

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The term “Coming of age” displays the personal and intellectual growth and development of a character in a story. It usually starts when the protagonist shows growth from childhood to adulthood. This is the core theme of the semester, seen throughout the novels we read in class. I believe there should be no changes made to the required reading list. The reading list should stay the same because in each individual text, at least one character overcomes a new change and understanding of the world around them. One thing I did question is, “Does coming of age necessarily have to be a good change or can be bad as well?” This question almost challenges what it means to come of age. For example, in Never Let Me Go, it’s almost hard for the characters …show more content…

Coming of age can be considered a good or bad transformation simply based on the circumstances the character is in. Tommy’s transition might be seen as a minor change because he still releases anger, but this can be interpreted as coming to terms of the truth and reality. Moving on from the truth of false hope with a positive mindset demonstrates “coming of age” which Tommy possessed. In the other texts on the list, most of them primarily show exactly the transition from adolescent to adulthood. The novels The Glass Castle, The Ocean at the End of the Lane, and Fun Home, the protagonist or main character looks back into their childhood and reflects on their transformation. Jeanette Walls in The Glass Castle grew up in an abnormal, unstable environment that she didn’t realize was odd until she was exposed more to the real world. What I love the most is that she told “her truth”. Not only did she do what’s best for her, but Jeannette came to an understanding of where her parents wanted to be. What makes me intrigued about these particular texts is that “coming of age” can have many different aspects and …show more content…

From reading these texts over the course of the semester, I would say the most important characteristics of the “coming of age” theme is confrontation with the adult world, acceptance of reality, awareness of self, and

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The Glass Castle is a best selling memoir about author Jeannette Walls childhood and what it was like growing up in a poverty struck family of six. It is not the happiest book out there, with all the sad moments you read about Jeannette having to experience, but it is an inspirational one. Jeanette's childhood is not the happiest one. When you read about what she had to go through, you can not help but think about how you could help other children going through what she did. It also makes you think about how lucky the majority of us are to have not only loving parents that would do anything for us, but parents that are going to do anything to provide for us.

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The story of The Glass Castle takes you on a journey through childhood from the point of Jeanette Wells. Jeanette lived through a lot of incidents that can be tied into social psychology and how people react to the situations they are put into. While we may not relate to her life of moving and extreme poverty, we can boil down her life situations into concepts that everyone can relate to and has been through. The Glass Castle starts with Jeannette as an adult witnessing her mother rooting through a dumpster in New York City.

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Jeannette was neglected, beaten, and starved all throughout her childhood. She lived without a home, money, and enough food to get by and also managed, against all odds, to fight for her ambitions. The Glass Castle, a memoir by Jeannette Walls, depicts the hardships of her upbringing by her nomadic, undependable parents, yet also her ability to persevere into a successful and aspiring young woman. As a young girl, Jeannette was always travelling due to her unstable parents and living on edge in fear of her parents’ outbursts. When she was the tender age of five, she actually recalls thinking fondly of her dad, always being his little “mountain goat”.

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In The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, it tells about how the Walls family move to different desert towns, settling in for as long as their father, Rex, can hold a job. However, his perspective of the state and society, and his alcoholism led them to move frequently. The children - Lori, Jeannette, Brian, and little Maureen- experiences unusual childhood, where they travel like nomads to find new money source. This lead to the theme, sometimes you can be mature and responsible at a very young age. The theme is developed by how Jeannette learns how to take care of herself and her younger siblings, and the way her parent taught her.

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As verbalized by the diarist Anne Frank herself, “‘Parents can only give good advice or put them on the right paths, but the final forming of a person's character lies in their own hands’” (Goodreads 1). Coming of age is a process depicted through movies and novels through the Bildungsroman plot line. The protagonist, in this form of a plot line, has to face society and its difficulties. The protagonist inclines to have an emotional loss, which triggers the commencement of the journey itself.

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