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