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The Glass Castle By Jeannette Walls And Homer Hickam

890 Words4 Pages

Taylor Grayson
English Honors
Period 1
Peller
Task # 1: The Glass Castle
Throughout their lives, every member of the Walls family experienced hardships. Though Jeannette and her three other siblings endured abuse both physically and mentally throughout their childhood, the peculiar ways in which both her mentally unstable parents showed their love and guidance ultimately helped to form these children and shape them into the individuals they are today. While Rex Walls, Jeannette’s alcoholic yet genius father, promised that he would one day create a house for the family made out of glass, his skills in mathematics and science unfortunately were not enough to battle his issues with alcohol and his inability to provide for his family. In the early …show more content…

Jeannette’s parents, while on the mentally unstable side, were always against being even somewhat normal. Though the younger Jeannette, at times, wished that their family could be like everyone else instead of constantly doing the “skee-daddle”, it wasn’t until she grew up that she knew her parents strange ways taught her to be an independent, unique individual. When Rex, Jeannette’s father, threw her in a sulfur spring in attempts to teach her how to swim, Jeannette got extremely upset at him for seemingly trying to drown her. Although his way of teaching her was a bit cruel, she discovered he was only trying to help her. “If you don’t want to sink, you better figure out how to swim,” he told her (Walls 66). Sonny, as well as Coalwood, also came to love the idea of not conforming to society. Since his entire town had never seen or heard of a teenaged boy building rockets, they all rejected his plans. But, he repeatedly went against them, having his rockets built and launched on the mining’s company property. Eventually, he was able to win first place in a national science fair, and become an engineer for NASA. As a newspaper article reported, “There is no more inspiring sight than that of a sleek, silvery BCMA rocket blasting off…” (Hickam 357). Walls, Hickam and Coalwood were ultimately able to identify that there were surprising benefits to

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The Glass Castle Summary The Glass Castle is an autobiographical story written by Jeannette Walls about her crazy, dysfunctional family. It is 288 pages long and was published by Simon and Schuster published in March 2005. Most of the characters fall into multiple categories of character types. Rex Walls, for example, is a protagonist when he gets money for his daughter to stay in college, but is an antagonist when he steals their New York money.

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Sonny felt limited by what Coalwood had to offer to him, and wanted to venture out of the dull town. Along with the town, Sonny’s father thought they were wasting their time with their rockets. At first, Sonny could not see himself going anywhere past Coalwood in the future. But after, Sonny sees the people’s future lives in Coalwood and negative comments, this motivated him to do greater and better things, rather than working in a mine for the rest of his life. Because of Sonny’s relationship with the town and most the people saying he and his friends could not build rockets, Sonny strived to prove their point wrong by making rockets.

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The Walls family lived a very out of the ordinary life compared to most families. They lived all over the West side of America from Phoenix to San Francisco. Yet, one of the most important areas they lived in was Battle Mountain. Jeannette spent a huge chunck of her childhood here. Battle Mountain was where she started to grow up, experiencing learning to swim to kissing a boy.

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lIn the book “The Glass Castle” there are examples of many different Family Developmental periods, however I will discuss one that stuck out to me the most. Family development according to the textbook “Family Theories: Foundations and Application” by Katherine R. Allen and Angela C. Henderson is “a longitudinal process of going through a hierarchical system of age and stage related changes” (Allen & Henderson, 84). This means that as a family there are various stages at different ages that result in different changes. For example, this can be seen within the book The Glass Castle in many ways. One way that stuck out to me the most was when Lori and Jeannette are making plans to transition into adulthood.

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Rose Mary Excitement Addict How are the parents affect their kids? In the book of “Glass Castle” the author jeannette and her siblings Lori, Brain, Maurine, her dad Rex and her mom Mary. Their life was arduous, both parents are addicted, Rex in alcohol and Mary is excitement addicted. Mary and Rex are lazy parents they don't like to go work

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Forgiveness is the theme of the Glass Castle because although Jeannette Walls was neglected, betrayed, and even belittled by her parents she doesn’t hold any negative feelings towards them. She exemplifies the theme of forgiveness by never blaming her parents for neglecting them, when her mother and father both squander her money on themselves, or when her parents allowed Erma to treat them as horribly as she did. Jeannette knows who her parents are, accepts and forgives, to the point that she can have a Thanksgiving dinner with Lori, Brian, and Mom reminiscing about the days of past.

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In this world, there’s learning things the hard way and the easy way; in Jeannette Wall’s world, there’s only learning things the hard way. The Glass Castle is an adventurous story that reveals the painfully miserable story of Jeannette Walls. A selfish mother, a careless father, and terrible social encounters- these are some of the elements of a harsh reality Rex and Rose Mary Walls failed to shield their children from. Growing up poor was already difficult, but growing up with a selfish parent, specifically an unfeeling mom, made life hell for the Walls children. The family barely had one source of income from Rex Walls, and instead of helping out with the family’s finance issues, Rose Mary spent her days at home painting.

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The Glass Castle is the life story of a girl, Jeannette Walls, and her siblings who grew up in poverty unnecessarily because of their parents’ irresponsibility. One of its themes is that strength and perseverance can significantly improve your chance at success and your future. The Walls children did not allow their childhood struggles prevent them from creating better and brighter futures for themselves. They all grew up impressively sane considering their living conditions.

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