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In The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls is forced to take care of herself from a very young age. Her parents are mentally unstable, and her dad regularly turns to alcohol. She is forced to move when any problems arise, which is often--from Battle Mountain to Phoenix to the small town of Welch, Virginia. Despite all of this, Jeannette has a memorable childhood, riding around on bikes, petting cheetahs, and declaring ownership of stars. Throughout her whole life, she is consistently the only one that believes in her reckless father.
Because of growing up observing her mother go through all of the troubles she experienced in Manzanar and how she got over them with dignity, Jeanne is a very emotionally strong and confident person by the end of her
The abuse from her uncle left emotional scars. Jean does well in high school and qualifies for a scholarship for an elite secondary school. She felt out of place since she couldn't really
She becomes friends with a white girl, Radine, and teaches her baton-twirling, but Jeanne remains better. However, she doesn’t get the same opportunities. She is not even let into the Girl Scouts, a simple and everyday thing. “‘Gee, Jeannie, no. I’m really sorry.’
As Jeannette matures her connection with her parents, particularly her father begins to diminish. Jeannette didn’t grasp that the way her parents raised them or viewed the world wasn’t normal and as she got older she recognized how selfish her parents were. Jeannette was constantly close with her father, and always showed compassion for him, but when they relocated to Welch it appeared as if her father had changed. Jeannette eventually obtained work and began to save up money so she and her siblings could survive, but her father didn’t approve and eventually sabotaged that plan. Eventually, Rex went to Jeannette and requested money from her, he did promise to pay her back.
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.
While some of these skills may have been a little too out of control and could have been harmful for their children at times, some of these skills helped them become more independent and self reliant people. Without the rough childhood that Jeannette went through, who knows if she would have been able to become the successful person that she is
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.
so she would always value the little things she got. Because of all the battles and the struggling Jeannette went through to get what she needed to live she knew that taking things for granted wasn’t okay and that she couldn’t do it anyway because she didn’t have anything that great. Every little thing she got was very special to her or she appreciated it very much. When Jeannette moved to New York City with her sister she realizes how much she had been missing out on her whole life and that there’s so many great nice things out there. For example, “Our apartment was bigger than the entire house on Little Hobart Street, and way fancier...
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…”
I see this quote as a way of implying to be more positive about a situation rather than be negative about it. Jeannette, in this part of the memoir, feels embarrassed due to the fact that her and her family is sleeping in a car that is falling apart. People are staring at them, and laughing which is not a great feeling at all. Her mom, on the other hand, has a totally different perspective on their situation. She would wave at these people like nothing was wrong; she was unfazed.
Jeannette narrowly escapes rape, but because her father exploits her in a way that makes it seem like she would consent to underage sex, she is abused. The sexual abuse Jeannette suffers results in her having more trust in her own intuition as she
She was also a drunk and a little bit racist. She could never let go of her misery and perhaps that’s why Rex is such a heavy drinker now. The people in Welch were all like Erma, they were racist, like to fight and had something to prove. The kids at school would call Jeannette and her siblings poor and “special” for having accents. They were put in special classes because teachers thought they were slow even though they were smarter than the teachers.
When Jeannette tells her mother: “I was too ashamed, Mom. I hid.” (page 5) she means this in two different ways. One being because she is ashamed to say her parents are homeless while she is not. Another is because she realizes that she felt this way during her childhood because there was a way they could have prevented it, but they chose not to.
However, her mother has no rights or abilities to teach her daughter why things are right or wrong. They all live in the house where her father is in charge of everything. Things are right when her father agrees with, and things are wrong when her father disagrees with. Also, Lucia chastises by her father too. Lucia did not voluntary wants to chaperone her sister, but her father forces her to go after her sister and report everything.
