Symbolism In The Glass Castle By Jeannette Walls

Symbols in literature aren’t simply one-sided. When looked at briefly, symbols may seem to be just another simple element in a story. Although when one takes the time to really understand the symbol, it becomes another whole component. In the novel, The Glass Castle, by Jeannette Walls, the Glass Castle is one of the biggest symbol. Whenever Jeannette’s father, Rex, couldn’t seem to support his family in an adequate way, he brought up the Glass Castle as a promise to his children. “He’d say he was going to get her a ring even fancier than the one he pawned. That was why we had to find gold. To get mom a new wedding ring. That and so we could build the Glass Castle” (Walls 49). Rex knew that he couldn’t live up to what he was pledging to his

In the book, Rocket Boys, by Homer H. Hickam Jr, the town of Coalwood helped to define and is itself a character. It created strong impacts and changed the way some thought and looked at life. “I went back to the telescope and tried to use it to look at Coalwook, but discovered I couldn’t focus it close enough. I thought how ironic it was that Jake’s telescope could see stars a million light-years away, but not the town it was in. Maybe I was that way myself. I had a clear vision of my future in space, but the life I lead in Coalwood sometimes seemed to blur” (Hickam 137). Many of the people in Coalwood believed strongly in mine work or assumed that they knew exactly what their futures held for them and their acquaintances. To Sonny, Coalwood was only a helping hand in getting him to where he wanted to be in the future. Despite the town having a poor reputation, Sonny managed to change the way people generally saw it for the better by winning the science fair. Sonny and the town both had a significant effect on one another. Coalwood influenced Sonny’s thinking and outlook on life as Sonny influenced other peoples’ opinions, assumptions, and judgments on the little West Virginian

They allow one to take and experience life to the fullest. In both memoirs, The Glass Castle, by Jeannette Walls and Rocket Boys, by Homer H. Hickam Jr, Jeannette and Sonny learned what their identities really meant to them and their peer. They both were told how and what to believe. “I’d never known what was going on in the world, except for the skewed versions of events we got from Mom and Dad…” (Walls 321). When Jeannette’s parents consistently attempted to shape her beliefs to their bias lives, she eventually pulled back and pursued her lifelong dream though discovering her identity. “ ‘I was born to lead men in the profession of mining coal. Maybe you were too’ ” (Hickam 175). As Sonny’s father tried to convince him to become what he didn’t want to be, he began to realize that he needed to show him otherwise. To do that, Sunny built rockets until he found his identity and proved to his father that, “Nobody ever launched a better rocket…” (Hickam 362). Jeannette and Sonny’s parents at times stood in the way of their children’s own desires and tried to persuade them into what they thought their kids would or should be, rather than having their children evolve into their own