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The Struggle In The Glass Castle By Jeannette Walls

732 Words3 Pages

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. While struggling to life in Welch, Rose Mary quit her teaching job before it started. She proclaimed she was an artist, not a teacher: “She intended to quit her teaching job and devote herself to her art… ‘It’s time I did something for myself …show more content…

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…” These situation taught Jeannette the harsh reality of outsiders. Not everyone will like you; some will seem like they like you and fake it and even good friends come and

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245 Words | 1 Pages

Jeannette’s father described life’s plan as easy as 1,2,3. First: find gold; Second, get rich; Third: Build the Glass Castle and live happily ever after. Reality was quite different though. In the book memoir The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls shares her memories of her dysfunctional family life’s sorrows and pains. Walls describes undergoing through hunger, instability, homelessness, abuse, molestation, and being told she was a replacement child.

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1284 Words | 6 Pages

She attends Bernard, lives in her own apartment and makes her own money, and eventually makes her own friends and relationships. But one major character change in Jeannette at this point of the book is how she speaks about her parents and how she looks back on her life before. When she attended parties she mainly tried to avoid the mention of her parents but when she couldn't avoid it anymore she often would lie about where they were living and what they were doing. (INSERT QUOTE HERE) I believe she did this because now that she had her fresh start she wanted to make it seem like that's how she always lived even though it was all a lie.

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1248 Words | 5 Pages

At this point, Jeannette was living in Welch and started experiencing physical bullying at school. Her mother’s belief in peace and Jeannette’s fear of his dad “ show[ing] up at school snockered and mak[ing] things worse”, convinced her to do nothing about the situation and accepted the kicks and punches from the other girls. Before seeing the dog and the kid, Jeannette at times hoped to befriend Dinitia, the school bully leader. She believed that behind all of Dinitia’s actions there was a child that had “some good”. Jeannette never acted belligerent towards the bullies, instead she would answer with Martin Luther King’s reference.

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779 Words | 4 Pages

She becomes friends with a white girl, Radine, and teaches her baton-twirling, but Jeanne remains better. However, she doesn’t get the same opportunities. She is not even let into the Girl Scouts, a simple and everyday thing. “‘Gee, Jeannie, no. I’m really sorry.’

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761 Words | 4 Pages

Jeannette's memoir begins at three years old. She is cooking hot dogs on the stove, with no parental supervision. Jeannette sets herself on fire and is rushed to the hospital, where she undergoes several skin grafts. To get around paying the hospital, Rex breaks her out of the recovery ward in the quiet of the night, and the family moves

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980 Words | 4 Pages

A balance between a enriching intellectual environment and comfortable living conditions is what all families, especially parents want. This is a constant struggle in the Glass Castle because of the Walls poor living condition, but eagerness to explore and adventure the world. Rex and Rosemary Walls, parents of Lori, Jeannette, Brian, and Maureen, obviously take an exploratory and learning environment over a comforting living space. Although living in rough conditions, which leads to bullying, poverty, I believe that it was more important that the Walls created circumstances for most of the children to explore and enjoy learning. Jeannette Walls, the author and the narrator throughout the book, tells a story about her life from when she was

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937 Words | 4 Pages

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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758 Words | 4 Pages

They think they can bend the rules and do what they think is necessary. Jeannette is exposed to these understandings, making her the person she grew up to be. Jeanette demonstrates how she struggles with her family throughout numerous portions of the novel: “The Desert,” “Welch,” New York.” These struggles developed and defined who she came to be.

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1218 Words | 5 Pages

Does an individual's role in self-perception play a role in seeking to reconcile the conflict between illusion and reality? In Jeannette Walls "The Glass Castle," Rex displays hidden trauma from when he was a child, which leads him to create a false reality to shield them. In doing this, the false reality will lead them to struggle to find the difference between what is real and what is an illusion. As an adult, Rex displays minimal remorse for anyone in his life when they are harassed. This is most prominently displayed after Rex's mother touches Brian, and when Rex gets back to hear about this, instead of taking his own son's side, he instead tells his kids "Brian's a man, he can take it".

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515 Words | 3 Pages

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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1211 Words | 5 Pages

As a child, Jeannette Walls moves around constantly with her family. The Walls family would move to different desert towns and settle as long as Mr. Walls can hold a job. When sober, Mr. Walls represents a charismatic father who loves his children and teaches them important life skills. He encourages imagination inside of the Walls kids and often captures their dream and creativity. Together, the family had planned to build a glass castle that contains all of the family’s hope and inspiration.

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808 Words | 4 Pages

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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799 Words | 4 Pages

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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1320 Words | 6 Pages

Jeannette described that this experience made her feel used by her father and gave her a sense of self-worthlessness. Rex knew that Jeannette had a soft spot for him and he took advantage of this. Jeannette has a psychological scar from this for the rest of her life, and it produced long-term effects of distrust and diminished self-worth. As a child she had been through more than most adults, and in one case she even wakes up in the middle of the night with a child molester in her bed. “One night when I was almost ten, I was awakened by someone running his hands over my private parts” (Walls 103).

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611 Words | 3 Pages

When Jeannette tells her mother: “I was too ashamed, Mom. I hid.” (page 5) she means this in two different ways. One being because she is ashamed to say her parents are homeless while she is not. Another is because she realizes that she felt this way during her childhood because there was a way they could have prevented it, but they chose not to.

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