...Alcohol causes many problems such as brain damage. Binge drinking can cause blackouts, memory loss and anxiety. Long term drinking also results in a variety of health problems like liver and pancreatic cancer, but worst of all it’s the effect it has on children. Most children of alcoholic parents become perfectionist to avoid criticism. Others fall short on their attempt to be “ideal” so they give up and decide to become irresponsible. Since the parent(s) are emotionally unstable so are the children. Alcoholism is a severe problem for Jeannette’s dad, Rex Walls in The Glass Castle. “He came home in such a drunken furry that mom usually hid while we kids tried to calm him down. He broke windows and smashed dishes and furniture until he’d...
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...reading Jeannette Walls’ memoir, “The Glass Castle”, it became clear that there were many repetitive factors that shaped the Walls family’s lives. There are numerous accounts of sexual abuse, parental alcoholism, evidence of mental illness and finally poverty in the form of homelessness. For even when the children prospered the parents choose to be homeless. The question is, are these factors relative? Can it be that childhood sexual abuse can inflict mental illness or alcoholism in adulthood? Does mental illness and alcoholism affect the chances of being homeless? The focus of this essay is to provide evidence that the events in Walls own life, documented in her memoir, have a butterfly effect in the outcome of their parent’s lives. In Her memoir Walls documents several cases of sexual abuse during her and her sibling’s childhood. She writes of her own experiences with Billy Deel, although he is only a minor as well, he sexually assaults her during a game of hide and seek. PAGE 85-87 Afterward Jeanette was reluctant to tell her father, “I had a feeling it would cause problems” (Walls 87) The second assault Walls documents, was when she was nine years old. “I was awakened by someone running his hands over my private parts.” “‘I just want to play a game with you’ a man’s voice said.” The next day when they told their father, “he said he was going to kill that low life…” Although, no serious action was taken to find him or prevent it from happening again. (Walls 103) The third...
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...The Walls family throughout The Glass Castle faced a wide variety of problems that helped establish the ominous, problematic, and somber tone of the story. First, the family faced many economic hardships which made it difficult for them to establish a stable life. Also, the two parents, Rex and Rose-Mary Walls had many unacceptable and unbreakable habits which did not help the family progress with their poverty. Finally, Jeannette Walls had many personal struggles and development in her life that helped contribute to the emotion evoked in the memoir, especially in the latter parts. As a result of the family’s poverty, the parent’s habitual issues, and Jeannette’s growth as a person overall establish the darker and depressing tone of the story....
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...Alcoholism is a very difficult and burdening disease that affects many different people all over the world. Alcoholism is a disease that not only affects the person suffering but the immediate family of the alcoholic. “Alcoholism and drug addiction affects the whole family- young, teenage, or grown-up children; wives or husbands; brothers or sister; parents or other relatives and friends.” ("Family Disease"). In the memoir, The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, her siblings and mother’s daily lives, health, and personalities were greatly affected by Jeanette's father, Rex Walls alcoholism. Some specific effects of alcoholism on families are conflict between spouses, infidelity, domestic violence, economic hardships, isolation or divorce, jealousy...
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...Although Rex is a brilliant father who can hold on to his ideals and support the family, his biggest shortcoming is his constant fall to alcoholism, which causes him to conduct poor decisions and dishonesty to his children. When his children need him, he simply drinks to wash away his problems. In the memoir, The Glass Castle, by Jeannette Walls recounts a story that begins with a young girl and her dysfunctional family traveling throughout the United States resettling from town to town. Rex’s alcoholism and selfish decisions put the family in constant lamentable poverty. Even though the family experience an occasional boost of inspiration or kindness, his actions often times do more harm than good for the family. Although Rex may appear to...
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...is in the easy way.” Throughout The Glass Castle, written by Jeannette Walls, Rex the father does not follow this advice. He is a caring yet neglectful father. He is a smart man that could have gone far in life but chose to be lazy and get in fights for the people he works for. Rex ended up becoming an alcoholic father and starting to be absent with his family because of it. He would never make the right decisions and ended up having him or his family pay for it. In this memoir, readers see that Rex Walls unrealistic dreamer that changes from a thoughtful, more caring father to being a selfish and absent one. In the memoir readers notice that Rex is a unrealistic dreamer. Rex really wants to build this big dream house called the Glass Castle. “He was telling us all the wondrous things he was going to do”. “ Like build the glass castle”(Walls, 25). This quote shows that Rex has dreams like...
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...Jeanette Walls, portrays her dysfunctional family and her difficulties growing up. Jeanette is faced with numerous barriers throughout her life. Despite the many obstacles set forth by her parents during her childhood, Jeanette develops into a successful adult later in life. One of these obstacles is that Jeanette must cope with the carelessness of her mother, Rose Mary, while also dealing with the destructive nature of her father, Rex. Jeanette Walls uses plot, characterizations, and conflicts to convey that parent’s selfishness can be detrimental to their children. As a child Jeanette’s family is constantly moving from place to place and struggling to make enough money for foods. Jeanette’s father, Rex, makes it quite difficult to live as a well-financed family because of the money he spent on alcohol. Jeanette uses characterization to demonstrate that the selfishness of her father spending all the money for him rather than for the family. When Jeanette and her siblings are sitting around in their house with no food and no money to buy food one of her sibling said, ““dad needs to start carrying his weight.” Lori said as she started into the empty refrigerator. “He spends more money than he earns on booze” Brian said.”(78) Rex Walls could not provide for his family because what salary he earn, he goes out and spends it all on alcohol, leaving Jeanette and her siblings scavenging for food. Rex’s alcoholism had cause so much chaos in the family that one night Rex had a fight...
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...Neglect or Abuse Throughout the book, The Glass Castle, Rex and Mary Walls showcased their unconventional parenting style. Jeannette Walls, the author of the book and a child of Rex and Mary, gave her opinion on her parents and showed what is was like to be a Walls child. Rex, an alcoholic, didn’t like answering to anyone and felt as though he was a great provider for his family. Mary didn’t want to do what was necessary for her family and had very selfish views of the world. The way that they parented was very neglectful, but it was not close to abuse. Rex and Mary didn’t provide for their children like they should’ve, but they taught their children important values and skills. Rex Walls was an alcoholic man that exaggerated many parts of his life to feel better about himself and impress his children. An example of this is...
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...The Glass castle is a memoir of the peculiar childhood and family of Jeanette Walls. The memoir was turned into a movie, which was released August 11, 2017. The movie was written by Destin Cretton and Andrew Lanham. Over 5 million copies of the book have been sold and the movie and the movie has grossed approximately twenty million dollars. Movies that are derived from books usually come across complications when they are compared and critiqued from the standard of the book. When movies are created from a book they have to cut scenes and important details from the book. In the article “The Trouble with Making Books We Love into Movies” by The Atlantic, says, “But any way you look at it, the movie version of a widely successful book is bound to go wrong”(Paragraph 4, Doll). This helps solidify that movies are a compromise for the masses to get a version of the book that will give them interest. Limited to a couple hours to condense an entire novel the movies. When I watched the movie I noticed the movie skips and rearranges...
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...The book The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls tells the story of Jeannette and her family. Jeannette certainly did not have the easiest life growing up, but she may have had one of the most interesting. I enjoyed the book because the experiences that Jeanette and her family went through make for a very exciting read. These experiences are out of the ordinary and don't represent how a typical American family would live. Jeannette was born into a rather peculiar family. She had a mother and father, and two older siblings, but the way that the family lived made them peculiar. Her parents were not the most cautious of her well being. They believed that their kids should be able to take care of themselves, and that too much parental intervention would lead kids into becoming too dependent. This said, one can imagine how the kids lived. Jeanette and her siblings were constantly in dangerous situations since supervision was limited. Walls even writes that her first memory is being on fire (9). She was making hot dogs over a stove and caught herself on fire. Her mother thought that it was a good idea to let her three year old daughter cook hotdogs over an open fire. She was alright other than a few burns and was hospitalized. Six weeks into her hospitalization her father comes to "check out, Rex Walls-style". He picks her up out of her bed and runs out of the hospital (14). Anecdotes like these are frequent in The Glass Castle. They are not all as tragic as this, but they are all very...
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...The Glass Castle has been a great memoir to allow readers to make sense of what Jeannette Walls had gone through as little girl on the many journeys with her family and with herself. It addresses the many social issues such as: neglect, sexual abuse, homelessness, unsanitary conditions, and alcohol abuse. In this memoir we are able to see a glimpse of how Rex and Rosemary Walls choose to educate their children to see the better side of their daily hardships. To show that no matter what nature throws at us we can handle it. Rex and Rosemary Walls may not have been the best parents however they were able to turn their children into well-educated adults. They were able to accomplish this by ensuring them that they loved them and would never fail them. Also by finding creative ways to teach them important life lessons. Like to learn how to face your fears and what doesn’t kill you will make you stronger. Although many people would not necessarily agree with the manner these parents educated their children we can certainly accept the fact that most of the children gained exceptional values that otherwise may have not been learned. The positive effects of the Walls parents parenting skills were; their children learned important values, they learned what it means to stand by each other, and they gained the importance of having something to inspire them to a great future. The Walls children learned important values like humility, loyalty, forgiveness, and appreciation. These young...
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...siblings. I think based on her parent’s socioeconomic status and her father Rex's alcoholism; this only made the situation for her as a child growing up in rural poverty worse. She really should have just left her parents as they do not really want to change and based on her current upper middle class lifestyle as an adult; she really wants to help her parents out. They do not seem to want the help though and her mother will ask for ridiculous requests that she ultimately does not need! Why did she keep talking to her parents even though she does not want anyone to know who her parents are as she hides from them all the time out of embarrassment? This is what the plan is to discuss in my essay on the Glass Castle. I will talk about how Jeanette moved out of poverty from the hands of her two abusive parents, and how she feels about her parents current socioeconomic situation! Jeannette constantly had to move around in different small rural towns, located in the boonies of Nevada and a few other desert states. This would affect most children in a lot of ways; first you can have many mental health defects that will start to drain on a child’s overall mental and psychiatric...
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...The Glass Castle is a book by Jeanette Walls that details her life and family as she grows up. Jeannette Walls has some interesting characters in the book but the most compelling out of them all is her mother, Rose Mary. She is married to Rex, Jeanette’s father, and is a self described artist who is qualified to be a teacher. Also, she is a free spirit woman like her husband and very optimistic. Rose Mary is intriguing because of how she deals with problems, her mentality, and how she is as a parent. Not much is said in the story about Rose Mary’s past or mental illness, which contributes to much curiosity and theories surrounding her. It does not take a genius to see that Rose Mary has not mentally matured. Not much is revealed about her...
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...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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...This problem could be related to many reasons, especially the style in which the perspective parents were raised. This could lead to an unfortunate and bad home for children, which could result in the child being taken away or having a loss of self-worth or low self-esteem. Resulting in the child growing up to be a bad parent, and the cycle starts over again. This can be seen in the book when the kids are relating Erma trying to molest Brian to the way Rex acts and is. "Do you think Erma ever [molested] dad?... It would make a lot of sense to his [alcoholism and anger]"(Wall). This proves that if a child has parents who don't know how to be good parents. The child could end up in a world of anger, frustration, depression and or coping mechanisms such as alcoholism. To prevent this sort of behavior, there should be parental licensing. People may wonder how to get this particular type of license. All perspective parents should go to a...
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