The Glass Castle Essay

Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls is a captivating memoir about the early life of Jeannette Walls and her family. It demonstrates the darker side of the American dream as they struggle with poverty, homelessness, bullying, hunger, and as far as the children's neglectful treatment from their parents. “The American Dream is a national ethos of the United States, the set of ideals (democracy, rights, liberty, opportunity and equality) in which freedom includes the opportunity for prosperity and success, as well as an upward social mobility for the family and children, achieved through hard work in a society with few barriers.” (cited https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Dream) We see multiple instances of poverty, homelessness, discrimination,

It's Rex and Rose Mary not being able to provide food for their children and or them blatantly using the money they have on non essential items like alcohol and paint supplies. We see this in the first couple pages of the book when Jeannette, age 3, gets sent to the hospital after her dress caught on fire when she was cooking her own hot dogs on the stove. While being in the hospital she says “That was the thing about hospitals, you never had to worry about running out of food.” (12) for Jeannette to think about this at such a young age and early in the book shows its prominence in her life as we read. Jeanette's relationship with food throughout the book is very eye opening to the American dream. When Jeannette gets to Welch she rummages through the school trash to eat the one meal she gets a day as her parents spend the money they have on nonessentials. Then the times they would get food it would be moldy or have maggots in it. Jeannette never seems to be negative toward this thought. We see as she gets older she feels more of a resentment toward her parents and starts to save money instead of spending it. It's a sad but true reality for most

Free range, no restrictions, and no rules. Throughout the book Rex and Rosemary show how truly educated they are, teaching their kids about different languages, math and sciences. We see how smart the children are once they get to Blythe when the children start going through public school and Jeannette comments that she already knows what she is learning. The reaction the school kids and teachers have looking at Jeannette who came to this school with no birth certificate and no past records is very negative. Resulted in bullying, fighting and an attempted sexual assault by a school boy. In a specific situation Jeannette got bored on her homework and started doing binary code and scripture then turned it in and the teacher reacted in a negative way, saying “this wasn't the assignment.” Once Jeannette and her family arrived , she and her sibling went to the same public school. Jeannette had learned from her “mistakes'' and says this once she gets there “since I wanted the other kids to like me, I didn't raise my hand all the time like I had in Blythe” (58) her self confidence has been depleted by the kids and teachers from her previous school. Being embarrassed to know information and wanting to know information is common in today's society. Personally have felt embarrassed being on the opposite end of the spectrum of not being able to comprehend information as easly of