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Jeannette Walls Identity Essay

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Neumeier 1 Sam Neumeier Professor Mamary Intro to Liberal Arts 17 October 2016 Jeannette’s Identity Could the dysfunction of the Walls family have promoted the amazing resilience and strength of Jeannette through various daily challenges? It is easy to see that Rex and Rose Mary did not provide a safe and nurturing environment for Jeannette and her siblings. This forced her into a few unique situations, which resulted in her having to fight for herself, and become her own hero. This helps Jeannette generate an identity for herself. As she learned new social and survival skills in the hopeless town of Welch, Virginia.The children realize that they must govern themselves due to lack of parenting, so the children reach a sense of unity. Jeannette develops her awareness, drive, and cunning survival skills while living in Welch. Resulting in a developing sense of confidence in her ability to survive anything. This transition to acting like an adult while awful, sets the stage for her ability to leave her environment behind with little worry for future success. The heart of Jeannette Walls’ identity is courage. Jeannette throughout the book faces hardships that some will never experience, such as, challenging her school system, going against her own thoughts, and placing herself in others shoes. Throughout …show more content…

Jeannette early on in the book can be seen as an intelligent girl, but knows that to keep friends she has to stoop to the level of her peers."Don't be afraid to be smarter than they are"(Walls 14). Jeannette as the book progresses lets out her abundance of knowledge in different situations. These situations range from fighting off neighborhood kids to making mistakes and not repeating the same mistake. In a town where fights and drunks run wild, there are not many reasons to go outside of the norm. She had the courage to challenge the teachers that treated her as a special needs student, and rose to be a well known

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A time that the readers could see this was when the Walls family moved into Welch. As they were moving, Jeannette described the house as run down and her father said that,”’It ’s good we raised you

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Jeannette had a childhood of constantly moving from place to place with one personal item. In Battle Mountain, her mom had an actual job with an annual paycheck. Her family finally had a supply of food and had a smaller worry about money. She also developed many skills and life lessons in Battle Mountain that stuck with her. Jeannette learned to swim and experienced a crush.

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Rex’s method is not that of many fathers, his being “sink or swim”, providing not only the ability to swim but also a strong metaphor for the reader and Jeannette. This is a representation of not only the Walls’ teaching strategy, also for the struggle to succeed in a life the Jeannette has literally been thrown into. Jeannette takes this idea to heart even though she may not realize it, for her not to succumb to the environment in which encapsulates her, such as Welch and life on the road, she must be able to handle these hard situations and be able to stay

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The text documents the struggles and challenges that she faced from childhood and how her upbringing correlated to her doing so. In the text, Walls characterizes her father as an arrogant man that struggles to juggle parenthood and alcoholism, frequently neglects and endangers his family, and does so all while instilling his philosophy and beliefs in his

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In the memoir, The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, the Walls family is considered homeless and they are constantly moving from place to place. They constantly find themselves either with a somewhat decent amount of money or at times, no money at all. Jeannette, being one of four children always follows along with and listens to her parents and eventually notices that their family does things very differently than most other families. As Jeannette explains her childhood and how she is being raised by her parents, it is clear to see how different Rex and Rosemary’s parenting style is compared to the parenting style of other parents. Since their parenting style is so different, it seems that it affects their children in a negative way throughout their childhood, but in the end it makes Jeannette become a better and more successful person.

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They think they can bend the rules and do what they think is necessary. Jeannette is exposed to these understandings, making her the person she grew up to be. Jeanette demonstrates how she struggles with her family throughout numerous portions of the novel: “The Desert,” “Welch,” New York.” These struggles developed and defined who she came to be.

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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…”

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In the Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls, and the movie King of California both Jeanette, and Miranda make the best out of rough situations. One example when Jeanette sees the good in her dad is when she asks him to stop drinking for her birthday. "Do you think that you could maybe stop drinking"(296)? She sees the good in her dad when he decided to "keep to himself..."(297) in order to hopefully try to help him so that way he does stop drinking. Another instance when Jeanette sees the good in her dad is the stars.

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ANALYSIS Jeannette Walls, uses the rhetorical strategies of narration, description and lastly process analysis, to illustrate the idea of independence and her appreciation for the unconventional dysfunctionality of her family. Personally, my understanding of the authors take- home-idea, was how the dysfunctionality she was raised in, fostered the unconventional behavior she exuded as a child. To help with the introduction of the author take home idea of independence, she uses the rhetorical strategy of narration.

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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.

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The Glass Castle Essay Wesley Murray A3 8/28/16 In Jeannette Walls’s book The Glass Castle, there are many examples of what is called human resilience. No better quote describes human resilience better than, “No matter how much falls on us, we keep plowing ahead.

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In the memoir, Rex Walls’ internal conflict, Jeannette Walls’ conflict with Rose Mary, and Jeannette’s conflict with society push her to become the person she is today. Therefore, Jeannette Walls’ owes her success to the hardships she had as a child. To begin, Rex Walls’ internal conflict comes from his inability to provide for his family. Being a father, Rex Walls has an obligation to look after his family and to make sure everyone is looked after.

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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

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1134 Words | 5 Pages

Her and her siblings are exposed to unideal living conditions and have to learn to take care of themselves, especially due to the fact that their father, Rex walls seems to suffer from an undiagnosed mental illness. Considering Rex Walls symptoms throughout the memoir are linked to having bipolar disorder, he was unpredictable. Jeannette and her sibling’s ability to be resilient despite their father’s bipolar disorder growing up are perfect examples of Max Lerner’s quote “the turning point in the process of growing up is when you discover the core of strength within you that survives all hurt” and has let them get far in life even with everything they had to

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Jeanette’s childhood was shameful due to her parents careless way of living. Throughout The Glass Castle Jeannette hides her childhood just like she from her mother because she is ashamed of what people might think. Jeannette Walls lived a tough childhood because of her parents. They were always moving around trying to find a place to build a glass castle. They never gave any of their children a set home while they were growing up.

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