The Glass Castle Symbolism Essay “She loved the dry, crackling heat, the way the sky at the sunset looked like a sheet of fire, and the overwhelming emptiness and severity of all that open land that had once been a huge ocean bed.”(pg.21) In the Novel The Glass Castle, Jannette Walls presents fire in order to identify the theme of comfort in cruelty, ultimately illustrating that one of the most dangerous things in the world, can bring even the slightest amount of comfort to someone. In the beginning of the novel, Walls introduces fire in order to set the bases of how she feels about fires.On page 9, Walls said, “I screamed. I smelled the burning and heard a horrible crackling as the fire singed my hair and eyelashes.” This implies that Jannette …show more content…
On page 34, Walls said, “I wondered if the fire had been out to get me. I wondered if all fire was related, like Dad said all humans were related, if the fire that had burned me that day while I cooked hot dogs was somehow connected to the fire I had flushed down the toilet and the fire burning at the hotel. I didn’t have the answers to those questions, what I did know was that at any moment could erupt into fire.” This illustrates that as a child, she was told that all humans were related by her abusive dad and so she’s now relating that to fire. On page 36, Walls said, “And did it have pointed ears and evil eyes with fire in ‘em, and did it stare at you all wicked-like?” This implies that this beast is known to have “fire in its eyes” which means that it is full of emotion/anger. In contrast, these two quotes both relate back to her and her fathers conversations and adventures. These quotes help fire relate back to comfort in cruelty because her father was an abusive guy and so the little conversations and good interactions they had, meant a lot to Jannette and helped her overlook how she was being treated by her