Summary Of The Glass Castle By Jeannette Walls

Jeannette Walls is able to create humour and shed light on her very difficult childhood described in her memoir The Glass Castle. Her life was filled with constant movement, and with each new environment came details vivid enough to completely engross the reader in the story. The story begins with an evocative description of her seeing her parents present time, rummaging through the garbage. She never once condemns them for these actions and is understanding throughout the whole story, being sympathetic towards their efforts. The memoir is split into 4 sections, showing her progression from her hard life to a promising one in New York City, with a husband and an apartment of her own. Her optimism through every situation was refreshing, seeing

Wall’s main purpose appears to come off as encouraging people to not let their past hold them back from achieving their dreams. It stresses that the past can shape people, yet it does not define them. Jeanette’s parents were selfish and chose to live a hard life rather than a sufficient one for the kids. However, her dream of being a journalist was kept intact, and she worked every angle to get better. She worked at her school’s newspaper The Wave “as the only 7th grader...started out as a proof-reader” (Walls 203) all the way up to journalist for The Phoenix on Park Avenue. New York City had always been her goal and even when people doubted her, saying, “for the daughter of the town’s drunk, you sure do got big plans”(Walls 183), she made it her job to prove him wrong. She would follow in her parents footsteps, but she never resented them for it. She only knew she did not want to live that way, but optimism kept her going in her younger years. The title of the memoir also plays a big role in the theme. Her father tried to get her to stay by bringing up the plans for the glass castle one more time, to which she is persistent that she is leaving, “i'll walk if i have too. Go ahead and build the glass castle, but don't do it for me” (Walls 238). First, he needed to strike it rich in gold and live minimalistically his whole life to live lavishly, which was unrealistic and unfair. He always referred to the glass castle as his ultimate goal, and “carried the blueprints

I thoroughly enjoyed The Glass Castle and highly recommend. It tells the story of how a girl’s perseverance allowed her to become what she always wanted and to create a better life than the one she was given. It is inspiring to see what a hard childhood she came from and where she is now, leaving no excuse for anyone to complain. The way it was written made me forget it was a memoir, rather than a story with her ability to turn her life into a compelling adventure changing day-to-day, from page to page. Everyone puts up the fallacy that they are happy and have always been, but she remarks that “no one had a perfect life...people who seemed to have it all had their secrets” (Walls 270). The realness of her tone made the book more relatable and therefore enjoyable. She had a hard past, but never tells anyone for pity, showing the genuinity of Walls and her experiences. You go from hating the parents for their selfish ways, but then there are moments that seem to argue that they actually care for them. Their father was a drunk, who consistently took the money supposed to be spent on food for his own binge drinking episodes. He even took money out of the piggy bank savings for college. He even tried to lie about it, which angered me. Yet there are times where he showed love, and when money was tight around christmas “he gave me Venus” (Walls 40). My personal favorite moment of the book was when Jeanette was short one thousand dollars of her tuition for college, which