...Book Report on Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls 1 Book Report on Jeannette Wall’s Glass Castle Book Report on Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls 2 Jeannette Walls's story is one that gives the reader an idea of what it is like to grow up in a very complex and often self-destructive family system. Jeannette Walls's memoir Glass Castle begins with her riding in a taxi through contemporary New York City on her way to a party. As she looks out the taxi window, Jeannette sees her mother digging through a dumpster. Even though her mother had been homeless for years, Jeannette was all of a sudden filled with shame and gloom about her mother's life. Jeannette then begins to reflect on her childhood and how her Mom and Dad's choices affected her. The story then transitions to a three-year-old Jeannette and her story of catching her dress on fire while cooking her dinner. After a few days in the hospital, Jeannette's father shows up, lifts Jeannette out of bed, and leaves the hospital without paying the bill. The memoir continues with the family moving town to town in the American Southwest. Only staying in one place until Jeannette's father could no longer hold a job, or her mother demanding they spontaneously uproot and start again. Jeannette's father's paranoia about the state and organized society, coupled with his alcoholism, leads them to move more and more frequently. Finally, they settle down in a small mining town, Battle Mountain, Nevada, for a few months; where Jeannette enjoys...
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...The Glass Castle In The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, the author reflects on her childhood growing up in an unstable household. The theme of Walls’ memoir reveals that a lifestyle change results in the ability to rely on oneself. Throughout the The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls’ actions, dialogue, and thoughts in response to events in her dysfunctional childhood shows that an unstable childhood does not have to negatively impact an individual. In the rising action, Jeannette’s actions during the period of time that her father is not around, conveys an essential moment of her acquiring a role of responsibility in her own life. The author writes, “We couldn’t afford wood any more than we could afford coal, and Dad wasn’t around to chop and split any, which meant it was up to us kids to gather dead branches and logs from the forest” (pg. 175). Jeannette Walls is trying to explain her childhood with a father that is an...
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...always similar or identical to their parents behaviour? The memoir The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls is a piece of literature that one can study and relate to this philosophy. Children are influenced to become who they are by their parents’ positive and negative actions. Jeannette’s creativity is derived from her parents. Her mother, Rose Mary Walls, has possessed artistic abilities since she was a child. Throughout The Glass Castle, Rose Mary is always painting. When she is stressed or has spare time, she grabs a brush and a canvas and lets the paint flow. Jeannette’s father, Rex Walls has a big imagination and...
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...in everyday life, there are things that people are naturally inclined to defend such as family, friends, or the way in which someone chooses to live their life. Maybe their choices or actions aren’t exactly admirable or necessarily considered “right”, but nevertheless they defend them if anyone were to ever challenge them about their legitimacy. In Jeannette Walls captivating memoir, The Glass Castle, the reader becomes enthralled with Jeannette’s constant battle between defending her family and the greatness she hopes the Walls will amount to, and settling for the fact that her family is based off of false hope and senseless lies with her incredible story telling techniques. The time the Walls spent living in Welch, Virginia serves as a major transition period for everyone in the family. While Lori, Jeannette, Brian, and Maureen were all growing up and trying to discover their identity, Rex and Rose Mary Walls were still struggling to discover the identities they always longed for but never could make a reality. Before the Walls move to Virginia, it was clear that just picking up and moving wasn’t as easy as it always had been, and the idea of a “great adventure” meant nothing more than a long car ride with only one...
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...For her entire life, Jeannette Walls struggles to find the delicate balance existing between the turbulence wrought by her homelife and the order of society so despised by her father. Growing up, Walls was subjected to her father’s alcohol problems and thus poverty ensued. Exhibiting unwavering loyalty towards her incompetent father, Walls would vigorously defend him against familial and outside antagonizers. Yet after this alliance shattered, she rejects her father’s precepts feeling ashamed of her upbringing and soon after moved to New York. When Jeannette asks her mother about what she should do when people ask about her parents’ situation or her past, her mom said “Just tell the truth” (5). In her memoir The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls...
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...Jeannette Wall’s memoir portrayed in The Glass Castle, depicts the impact of education in a person’s life. Rex and Rose Mary Walls raise their children (Lori, Jeannette, Brian and Maureen), in an unusual parenting way that involve giving the children infinite independence. Even though this independence brought a lot of misfortune to the children, in terms of starving and Rex stealing their money to drink, this independence introduced a unique style of educating the children. This unique style involved not going to school for the first years of the children’s life, spending their majority of their time reading books and taught them everything they needed to know about the “world” and technology. Rex trained the children by teaching them variety...
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...Being blind to the toxicity of somone’s own household can shape the future that awaits them. In Jeannette Walls’ book, The Glass Castle, she reveals the saga of her troubling, adventurous, and at times, dangerous childhood. With scarce resources available for her family, she and her siblings rely on intangible forms of stability. Hope, frequently represented in a profound use of symbolism throughout the memoir, is one of the many ways the Walls children are able to overcome their adversities. Furthermore, Jeannette Walls’ use of this figurative language adds a complex aspect to her influential narration of how hope helped her and her siblings escape their troubling household. For example, Jeannette uses a piggy bank to represent their strong...
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...“I wanted to let the world know that no one had a perfect life, that even the people who seemed to have it all had their secrets” the Glass Castle. We all feel the stress eventually. The only real difference people have growing up is that some people have the luxury of living in a better setting. I am definitely one of those people. When looking in on my life it may seem quite easy going. You would be right for the most part, but as I mentioned before, nobody's life is as easy as it may seem. I am not proclaiming my life to be unbearably difficult, but I do struggle with a certain hardship. That hardship is my relationship with my father, much like Jeannette with her father in the Glass Castle. Sadly, Jeannette Walls, was not the only person to grow up in that type of situation. My father was born in Buffalo, New York. His family managed to travel to three different states in his eighteen years living with them. Along the whole way they were dirt poor. He does not speak of his childhood much, but from what I have heard there were many nights he would not eat. Sometimes he would have to wait till midnight when his father got off of a late shift to eat. He slept on...
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...How much does parenting really affect the upbringing of a child? In the memoir “The Glass Castle” by Jeannette Walls, Jeannette shares her story of her childhood. Jeannette's parents wanted to live an unpredictable life and were always looking for adventure. The walls family never stayed in one place too long and were constantly moving. Jeannette's parents, Rex and Rosemary, wanted their children to be strong and able to do things on their own. Rex and Rosemary's harsh parenting made their children independent, tough, and unattached. The Walls children became independent because they grew up doing everything for themselves. When Jeannete was in the hospital, the nurses asked her “What [she] was doing cooking hot dogs by [herself] at the age...
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