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The Glass Castle Jeannette's Success

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The Success of a Child The Glass Castle is a thrilling novel chock full of adventure, crisis, and experiences. A family moves around the country, with their highly intelligent father, who turns into a dangerous brute when he is drunk, a dysfunctional mother and three kids who must rely on one and other to survive. Watch as the children, particularly Jeannette, leave their chaotic life behind and build successful lives in New York. Unable to detach themselves from their children, the parents eventually follow them to New York. The success that Jeannette achieved was mostly due to her childhood, because her childhood taught her how to be determined, gave her strength, and made her fearless. These attributes were key to Jeannette’s success, …show more content…

She faces many dangers, from school bullies to rapists. While these experiences are negative, they helped her develop a sense of what's wrong, and what's right. They also helped her develop mental and physical strength. For example: “The bullying continued every day for weeks. The tall girl, whose name was Dinitia Hewitt, watched me with her smile while we all waited on the asphalt playground for classes to start... I walked outside trying to hold my head high, and Dinitia and her gang surrounded me and it began.” (Walls 140) This quote shows the constant torment that Jeannette always faced. This kind of bullying happened on more than one occasion. Another occurrence of this is on page forty-five when the Mexican girls jump her. As these struggles continued, she became stronger and stronger, until she eventually became strong enough to leave Welch and her family behind. This resiliency she developed also helped Jeannette in New York. “Once, as I was getting on the train, some guy tried to grab my purse, but I jerked it back and the strap broke. He fell empty handed to the platform floor, and as the train pulled out.” (Walls 248) This quote shows how Jeannette uses strength gathered throughout her childhood to not only take back her purse, but also stand up to a criminal, and not worry if he had a weapon or not. Strength played a huge role in Jeannette’s success, but it was not the largest reason for her success. That title goes to her

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It was getting harder. ”(169) Jeannette’s trust and love in her father is getting very small, because of the way he abuses alcohol and lets her down. When Jeanette tells us that she believes she is a fool for believing in Rex, it shows a change in her town to be unbelieving and critical. Throughout The Glass Castle, Jeanette’s tone of Rex Walls goes from very trusting to very disbelieving.

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In the memoir, The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, the Walls family is considered homeless and they are constantly moving from place to place. They constantly find themselves either with a somewhat decent amount of money or at times, no money at all. Jeannette, being one of four children always follows along with and listens to her parents and eventually notices that their family does things very differently than most other families. As Jeannette explains her childhood and how she is being raised by her parents, it is clear to see how different Rex and Rosemary’s parenting style is compared to the parenting style of other parents. Since their parenting style is so different, it seems that it affects their children in a negative way throughout their childhood, but in the end it makes Jeannette become a better and more successful person.

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Most teens now face many difficulties, but through those challenges, they can find many important life lessons. The novel “Red Glass” is by Laura Resau, it is about a girl named Sophie who overcame many struggles throughout her journey. Sophie is insecure, but she’s mostly brave. She is a bit if a germaphobe to. All of these traits that Sophie has conquered led her to learn a big life lesson.

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She proved that one must depend on others and their outside surroundings in order to successfully find their individuality and unaccompanied personality from the inside. Jeannette became an independent woman through her unintentional battles becoming an

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“Believe in miracles…. Hope is never lost” (Elder Jeffrey R. Holland). Believing that the worst is behind them and that they will come upon a better life is the only way that Jeanette Wall’s family is able to stay afloat. In Jeannette Walls’ memoir The Glass Castle, the symbol of hope is portrayed through a Glass Castle: a real home in which everyone is important and loved.

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After graduating middle school her friend lost touch with her and eventually left her life for good: “By the time she got to Welch High Dinitia changed.” Jeannette was also sexually harassed by one of her friends in Phoenix while playing hide-and-seek: “Billy smushed his face against mine… ‘Guess what?’Billy shouted. ‘I raped you’” Lastly, while going to school in Phoenix Jeannette was bullied for being smart and skinny: “The other students didn’t like me much because I was so tall and pale and skinny and always raised my hand too fast… A few days after I started school, four Mexican girls followed me home and jumped me in an alleyway…”

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Parental Influence Parents are the biggest influence upon their children. From the time a child is born to the time they leave the household, the values that the parents hold are instilled into their children. Parents are required to make crucial decisions about how to raise their children in order to guide them through the inevitable obstacles and hardships of life. In The Glass Castle, many would argue the lack of care and responsibility the Walls had for their children. The author, Jeannette Walls, uses Rex and Mary Walls to demonstrate that their strong traits of non-conformity, self-sufficiency and perseverance are passed on to their children, allowing them to develop to their full potential.

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While Jeannette was a junior in high school she became aware of the fact she had to get out of Welch and away from her parents. “ All through the long walk, the pain had kept me thinking, and by the time i reached the tree trunk, i had made two decisions. The first was that id had my first and last whipping. No one was ever going to do that to me again. The second was that, like Lori, I was going to get out of welch.

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That’s the only way to keep the roads clear.” Which was said by Greg Kincaid. This point is very emphasized in the book in most of its plot points from the burning of Jeannette’s body from the hot dog accident to finally running away to New York from her irresponsible parents. The first scene where human resilience is demonstrated is when Jeannette is cooking hot dogs and lights herself on fire.

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However, he spirals into alcoholism; recklessly spending money on liquor rather than on provisions that would help sustain his family. His compulsive spending on alcohol is, unfortunately, a major factor keeping the Walls family in a continuous cycle of impoverishment. As a result, Jeannette Walls is forced into a life of responsibility; having to be the one who looks after her siblings, as well as being the one to regulate what little money the Walls family had; this eventually drives her to head to New

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Witnessing my father chasing down my mother because of a pointless argument of my parents not caring about my siblings and I where abouts would be devastating to say the least. In The Glass Castle Jeannette and her siblings chose to appreciate the small things as they got older because they were not given materialistic items or a hot meal when they could afford it. Their mother made poor financial decisions and hardly ever put the kids first. For example, the mom chose to rent a piano over buying Brian a pair of male jeans. He had to suffer wearing girl clothes that did not even fit.

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Jeannette narrowly escapes rape, but because her father exploits her in a way that makes it seem like she would consent to underage sex, she is abused. The sexual abuse Jeannette suffers results in her having more trust in her own intuition as she

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Jeannette Walls also uses the symbol of the Glass Castle, which develops throughout the memoir to show how she slowly loses trust in her father as she realises that she can not depend upon him or anyone else for happiness. The symbolism evolves throughout the memoir as Walls evolves as a person. In the beginning of the memoir, her description of the Glass Castle is naive and hopeful. Her naivety is most apparent when Walls writes, “All of Dad’s engineering skills and mathematical genius were coming together in one special project: a great big house he was going to build for us in the desert… All we had to do was find gold, Dad said, and we were on the verge of that.

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Nicholas Sparks once said, “I don’t know that love changes. People change. Circumstances change.” In the memoir, The Glass Castle author Jeannette Walls shows how her father Rex Walls changes with everything thrown at him as a father or four. In the beginning of being a parent Rex shares his intelligence with his children.

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Jeanette’s childhood was shameful due to her parents careless way of living. Throughout The Glass Castle Jeannette hides her childhood just like she from her mother because she is ashamed of what people might think. Jeannette Walls lived a tough childhood because of her parents. They were always moving around trying to find a place to build a glass castle. They never gave any of their children a set home while they were growing up.

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