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The Glass Castle Fire Analysis

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What is a symbol of a story? A symbol is something that stands for something else. Also it can contain several layers of meanings that stand for, or represent, something else. Symbol is using an object or action that has a deeper meaning for something more than its literal meaning. The story The Glass Castle contains a lot of different types of symbolic meanings. The symbolic item that I think has a deeper meaning from others is fire. Fire can mean so many different meanings but in the book fire symbolizes chaos, fear and destruction. First, of all like I have mentioned in the beginning fire can stand for an infinite amount of reasons. But one of the meanings of fire is fear, which in the story when Jeanette Walls was three years old that …show more content…

Chaos is a state of extreme confusion and disorder. Which is what most of Jeanette’s life is throughout the story. In The Glass Castle Desert Section 15 Jeanette finds herself in another confrontation with her mortal enemy fire. Jeanette has gotten into a situation with fire that she couldn’t handle on her own. Jeanette and her brother Brian were in a shack that they called their laboratory. They both started mixing random chemicals in a jar but when she lit a match, throw it in there she basically created her own chaos. “Brian and I were knocked to our feet. When we stood up, one of the walls was on fire. I yelled to Brian that we had to get out of there, but he was throwing sand at the fire, saying that we had to put it out or we'd get in trouble”. This scene shows how much chaos that was created by Jeanette in the story which dragged her little brother in it. In conclusion fire is represented and mentioned a lot in The Glass Castle. Fire symbolizes fear, chaos and destruction. In her life Jeannette has been through a lot of trials dealing with fires. She concurred being homeless, having to starve and being abused. In the story like her dad said she already fought the fire once and

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In the novel, The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, the author uses the fire motif to assert that attempts to control the uncontrollable will leave scars. For example, when cooking hot dogs Jeannette “Watched the yellow-white flames make a ragged brown line up the pink fabric on my skirt and climb my stomach”(11). The fire grows bigger and bigger with Jeannette stunned until Rose Mary puts it out showing that Jeannette is not scared of fire but in awe of it leaving her in a state of shock. Although because of this Jeannette will carry scars wherever she goes reminding her of what happened when she tried to control fire. After Jeannette asks herself about her experience with fire she thinks “I didn’t have the answers to those questions, but I did know that I lived in a world that at any moment could erupt into fire”(34).

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Throughout the play, The Magic Fire always surrounds them, much like a curtain. Groag uses the fire to symbolize how the family shields themselves from the reality of the world they now live in. They moved from one part of the world to hide from cruelty, to end up in another part, where cruelty is still present, they can just hide from it now. They hide in the pleasures, such as art, and attending opera, and novels. They use these forms of art to hide from what is happening outside their very window.

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The Glass Castle: Memoir Book Review 1. What did you like best about the person you read about? Why? I admire how strong and fearless Jeannette is and was as a child.

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Alcoholism has affected both his life and his family’s lives as well; even though he knows how badly it’s affecting him, dreaming of building that glass castle can be implied as his hope of one day overcoming his drinking problem. Just like the glass castle itself Rex’s hope and dreams are fragile and can be easily shattered however by never giving up on his dream it shows that he still has hope that one day he will build a better and happy life in the future for himself and his family. Fire: Fire is a reoccurring symbols that affects Jeanette’s life. As a young child, Jeanette had a traumatic experience when she was at a ripe age of 3 years old and she caught herself on fire while cooking hot dogs all by herself.

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In the novel Out of the Dust by Karen Hesse, main character Billie Jo faces several challenging obstacles throughout her lifetime. Getting through these obstacles is the only way Billie Jo can learn to forgive her father as well as herself for their mistakes. Once she learns to stop feeling resentful, and let go, Billie Jo will be able to grow up. The first major challenge Billie Jo faces is when a fire breaks out in her home. The fire ignites when Billie Jo’s mother mistakes a pail of kerosene for water, where,“instead of making coffee, Ma [makes] a rope of fire”(87).

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Also a symbol can mean something in real life. Could be a person or an object. In this story there were a lot of different symbols with different

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In the book Lord Of the Flies by William Golding good is the idea of a civilized society using law and order, while bad or chaos is savagery or primitive ideas. primitive by the fact that their is no repercussions for your actions. Fire doesn't change depending on who’s using it, the person with the tool of fire chooses how to use it. In the story the idea of law and order in a civilization changes to primitive actions without repercussions.

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The scene from The Glass Castle that presented a universal topic was when Jeanette's dad would come to the home drunk and Jeannette would try to clean up after him. In the scene, the father would come home drunk and have a rampage destroying the home. Once he was asleep she would try to clean the mess he had left but her mom would insist because he wouldn't see the mess he caused. A quote to prove this, “He came home in such a drunken fury that Mom usually hid while we kids tried to calm him down. He broke windows and smashed dishes and furniture until he'd spent all his anger; then he'd look around at the mess and at us kids standing there.

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Janet shows renewal in a positive way through fire when she is working with Mrs Hutchence and the bees. The fire is shown when the bees cover Janet’s body, like “little flames. She had remained cool inside, and when the

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