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The Glass Castle Theme Of Freedom

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In the memoir The Glass Castle, the protagonist, Jeannette Walls, tries to achieve freedom, but doesn’t fully obtain it. Jeannette Walls seeks both freedom from financial struggles, and freedom from her family, but only attains one type of freedom. As she grows up, Jeannette and her family are in and out of poverty. Jeannette realizes that living in poverty is not the way she wants to live, so she tries to free herself from it. At some points in her life, someone comes across a large sum of money, and for the short while that it lasts, her family lives more lavishly than they usually do. At the really financially hard times for her family, Jeannette and her siblings often don’t have food for school. Walls writes, “At lunchtime, when other …show more content…

From the young age of three, Jeannette is forced to be independent and take care of herself when she needs something, her parents do not pay much attention to her or care for her. The story opens up with Jeannette recalling, “I was on fire… I was three years old… I was wearing the dress to cook hotdogs… then the flames leaped up, reaching my face” (Walls, 9). At the age of three, Jeannette is already learning how to be independent. As she grows up, she lives with her negligent parents and her three siblings. In every town she lives in, someone in her family gets into trouble and they all have to skip town. Because of all their moving around, Jeannette does not have a stable childhood. Also, when they move to new houses, they always lack something important like electricity, running water, and basic furniture. Not only is she always left in these dilapidated homes, but sometimes, she is left in them alone to take care of her siblings and provide for them. Her mom occasionally gets a job but prefers to sit home and paint, leaving it to her children to get money for dinner. Her father is always out at night getting drunk, sometimes not coming home for days. When he comes home, he is always so drunk that he either just passes out or gets really mad and dangerous first, and then passes out. Her parents’ neglect for her and her family’s well-being really angers Jeannette, so she decides that she has to leave them. She tells her sister Lori about her plan to escape to New York, saying,

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In The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls is forced to take care of herself from a very young age. Her parents are mentally unstable, and her dad regularly turns to alcohol. She is forced to move when any problems arise, which is often--from Battle Mountain to Phoenix to the small town of Welch, Virginia. Despite all of this, Jeannette has a memorable childhood, riding around on bikes, petting cheetahs, and declaring ownership of stars. Throughout her whole life, she is consistently the only one that believes in her reckless father.

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