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The Glass Castle Essay

659 Words3 Pages

The Glass Castle is a perfect and stable home, a better future for the family to live in. It is a recurring dream and goal for Jeannette's father, Rex, who wants to build a grand and beautiful home for his family. However, In Jeannette Walls' memoir "The Glass Castle," the Glass Castle changes from a symbol of hope for the family and turns into a reminder of the gap between dreams and reality, eventually becoming nothing more than a faint memory, a reminder from the past of what it took to survive the hardships and dysfunction of the Walls family.
In the beginning of the book, Jeanette describes her life as a never ending adventure “with nothing but the best outlooks for her life. The Glass Castle gives her hope that things will always be …show more content…

Despite Rex's repeated promises to build the Glass Castle, the family is never able to achieve this goal, and instead they are constantly on the move, living in poverty and squalor. When the family finally settles down, they begin building the glass castle and start with digging the hole for the foundation. “But since we couldn’t afford to pay the town’s trash collection fee, our garbage was really piling up. One day dad told us to dump it in the hole.” (Walls 157) The hope given by the glass castle beginning to be build was beginning to fade into a distant dream. “‘What are we going to do about the garbage pit?” I asked “it’s almost filled up.” “Enlarge it,” Mom said.’” (Walls 158) Jeannette's father's alcoholism and her mother's neglect also add to the family's struggles. The Glass Castle becomes a broken promise. An example of the lack of action and motivation from Jeannette's …show more content…

She starts to realize that the Glass Castle is not a realistic goal, it keeps her going for her younger life and now she needs to climb out of her hardships herself. “‘I stared at the plans. “Dad,” I said, “you’ll never build the Glass Castle.” “Are you saying you don’t have faith in your old man?” “Even if you do, I’ll be gone. In less than three months, I’m leaving for New York City.’” (Walls 238) Jeanette had finally decided to give up on her false hope in her family. While she could have lived in Welch for the rest of her life, struggling to live while following the hope provided by the Glass Castle blindly, Jeanette left to make her life better, thus turning the glass castle into a memory of hope from the

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In the Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls describes her life and the constant struggles her family goes through. Within the first chapter, Jeannette is sitting in a taxi in New York city when she notices her mother digging through the trash. At first, Jeannette becomes very embarrassed since her mother is homeless. Jeannette finally decides to contact her mother's friend, who delivers messages between Jeannette and her mother, and they set up a lunch date. At the lunch date, Jeannette offers her mother money, however, her mom denies it and insists that she likes how she lives.

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Glass Castle: The “glass castle” symbolizes Rex’s; Jeanette’s father’s hope and dreams. Before Lori was born; Rex and Rose had a baby girl whom unfortunately died at nine months. This caused a spiral downfall in Rex’s life making him become bitterer, gloomy, dark, and an increasing consumption of alcohol. But even though that situation occurred he still held on to that dream of building the glass castle. One of the biggest current problem he faces in his life is alcoholism.

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The family had a lot of hard times and money problems. However, Rex had a lot of planning for his goal to ultimately build the glass castle for the family and especially for Jeannette. The metaphor of the glass castle was said throughout the book when Jeannette had faith in Rex, when she had lost her hope in Rex, and when Rex had started his hunt for the perfect place for the glass castle. The goal of building the glass castle was a way for Rex to show his love to his family, instead it gave the family

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The Glass Castle is a memoir written by Jeannette Walls. The memoir is about her journey growing up in poverty with a dysfunctional family. Jeannette is one of four siblings who all learned how to take care of themselves. Her father was an alcoholic who used the money to buy alcohol instead of caring for his family. When sober, he taught his kids about science and how to be fearless.

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The story of The Glass Castle takes you on a journey through childhood from the point of Jeanette Wells. Jeanette lived through a lot of incidents that can be tied into social psychology and how people react to the situations they are put into. While we may not relate to her life of moving and extreme poverty, we can boil down her life situations into concepts that everyone can relate to and has been through. The Glass Castle starts with Jeannette as an adult witnessing her mother rooting through a dumpster in New York City.

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The Glass Castle is the one idea that helps the family continue to grow and move forward even though the Castle has different meaning to each of the members of the family. To Jeanette and her siblings the Glass Castle is a symbol of hope, to the mother, it is a symbol of relaxation and what life would be like without responsibilities, and to dad, it symbolizes every broken promise he has made to his children, but in the Glass Castle, he has not broken a single one.

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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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“If you don't want to sink, you better figure out how to swim. ”(Walls 41)This is what the protagonist had to do for everything in her life. If she wanted to live a good life she had to be independent and figure everything out on her own without any help. The memoir The Glass Castle is based on a true story that happened to Jeannette Walls beginning in the 1960s.

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Jeannette take up the responsibility of taking care the household. She had grown up to think carefully of the way to spend the money, since most children of her age would spend money on their own needs and amusement, not on the thing they really needs and what others needs. As you can see, sometimes you can be mature and responsible at a very young age.     In conclusion, the theme for The Glass Castle is sometimes you can be mature and responsible at  a very young age.

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The Glass Castle would have solar cells on the top that would catch the sun’s rays and convert them into electricity” (Walls 25). The glass castle represents the family’s hope and dream towards the future. The castle represents Mr. Walls’s hope for an idealistic life where he could provide for his family and have a safe, stable roof above their head; the castle also represents all of Jeannette’s wonderful wishes and aspirations growing up. The glass castle is a powerful tie shared by everyone in the Walls family. “[Mr. Walls] [carries] around the blueprints for the Glass Castle wherever [he] went” (Walls 25).

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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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Once he finished the prospector and we struck it rich, he’d start work on our glass castle” (25). Walls’ innocence and optimism for the creation of the Glass Castle is indicated through her belief that Rex really is on the verge of finding gold and building the Glass Castle. In reality, he was out drinking all day, spending money that could have been used to feed Walls and her siblings. She still thinks that her father will follow through on his promises, and in doing so bring her happiness. She is unaware of his deception, which is becoming increasingly damaging to his family, as they have trouble affording food.

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In The Glass Castle Jeannette Walls faces harsh stuff through her childhood because of her parents. In the beginning of the book she finds her mother digging through trash. She feels embarrassed, so she turns around and goes home without saying hello. Jeanette then calls her mother and asks to have dinner with her. She offers her mother help because she feels guilty, but her mother rejects her help.

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It is evident that her childhood may have impacted her in a more severe psychological way. The book The Glass Castle is a very interesting narrative. The author Jeanette Walls is able to bring new light to circumstances that many people choose to ignore or overlook by writing about her own childhood. This gives the book a new perspective and allows the reader to gain insight.

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