The Glass Castle By Jeannette Walls

American journalist, writer, and magazine editor David Remnick once said, “The world is a crazy, beautiful, ugly complicated place, and it keeps moving on from crisis to strangeness to beauty to weirdness to tragedy.” In the memoir, The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls the main character and author of the book tells of her crazy and adventurous life she experienced with her not so ordinary family. This quote relates to The Glass Castle, because like it states, life is full of both tragedies and beauty which is exactly what Jeannette experienced growing up with her free spirited and non-conformative parents. Walls is able to express her main purpose of the book that life is a mix of good and bad times through imagery, tone, and pathos.

Perseverance is steadfastness in doing something despite difficulty or delay in achieving success. In The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls illustrates the beneficial effects of perseverance through the use of figurative language, symbolism, and imagery. The Glass Castle is a memoir written about the dysfunctional family of Jeannette Walls. Being that her family situation was one of neglect, irresponsibility, and poverty, Walls had to endure many hardships which shaped her as a person.

Colson Whitehead once said, “Let the broken glass be broken glass, let it splinter into smaller pieces and dust and scatter. Let the cracks between things widen until they are no longer cracks but the new places for things”. In the memoir “The Glass Castle,” author Jeannette Walls faces despair and turmoil as a result of her impoverished and dysfunctional upbringing. As Jeannette grows up, she watches her father Rex fail to reach his full potential and his dream to build a Glass Castle shatter as his alcoholism takes control. Aware of the devastation her father was causing, she begins to slowly lose faith in him but doesn’t fail to escape her destructive household and pursue her dreams of becoming a journalist. Due to her parent’s lack of parenting and being forced to fend for herself, Jeannette developed a sense of responsibility to care for others and make amends to improve the family’s lifestyle. Despite the turbulence and destruction her parents had caused over the years, unlike her father, Jeannette was able to find the strength to overcome obstacles, developing characteristics that ultimately lead her to achieving her dream, thus illustrating that adversity has the power to shape one’s identity.

What is the source of your success? My own definition of success is about overcoming my obstacles and hardships. If I can’t overcome the obstacles and hardships along the way, then I will try again so that I am more prepared and have the right knowledge. I want to meet obstacles and hardships because I want to feel the pleasure of success when I overcome them. In order for me to overcome and embrace hardships, I need to find the missing link, have the right knowledge, and practice effective time management.

The Glass Castle, by Jeannette Walls, describes the unfortunate struggles of Jeanette and her family throughout her childhood. Often times, the hardships in one 's life can shape their future and how they develop as a person. Jeanette went through so many hardships that seem unbelievable to me. Her struggles and life experiences are much more extreme than mine will ever be. Her hardships have helped shape her personality and her career. She has made the best out of her childhood, and everyone should take a tip from Jeanette, including myself. I have not had many giant hardships in my life to this date. Jeanette is a role model to people everywhere. She showed that it doesn’t matter where or how you grow up, the only thing that matters is

The father cared more about where he was going to get his next drink or his next pack of smokes verses holding down a steady job to provide food or a non-leaking roof over their heads. Instead of paying bills he would just leave or live without power etc. Rose Mary was educated and had the certification to teach, yet she hates working and only wanted to be a famous artist. She did work when she had too but instead of using her money to provide food for these kids she would buy a little here and there. But she mainly used her income to buy more art supplies.

As human beings, we live by our morals, outlining our ethical principles in distinguishing what is right from what is wrong. Our morals define who we are as a person, how we behave, how we communicate, and how we manage challenging situations. As stated by President John F. Kennedy, “a man does what he must – in spite of personal consequences, in spite of obstacles and dangers and pressures – and that is the basis of all human morality” (225). In order to achieve and portray one’s morals and ethical principles regardless of the circumstances, a person must portray courage. As Ernest Hemingway defined it, “Grace under pressure (Kennedy 1).” According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, courage is the “mental or moral strength to venture, persevere, and withstand danger, fear or difficulty.” In the Pulitzer Prize winning book Profiles in Courage, written on 1957 by John F. Kennedy, some of the greatest deeds of political courage in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries are discussed through the accounts of the historical events that inspired such acts and the consequences of those brave enough to carry them out. The author of the award winning memoir The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls, could not be considered a candidate for John F. Kennedy’s Profile in Courage Award because of the failure to fulfill of the requirements of the award, the type of courage portrayed, and the limited sphere of influence.

The Glass Castle is the story of Jeannette Walls, the main character and author, and her upbringing in a dysfunctional family ravaged by poverty. The book gives the readers insight to the life of the less fortunate in a chilling and capturing way. Throughout the book, they’re many underlying themes yet only one resonated throughout the text and captured the essence of what the glass castle is truly about: the importance of hope in burdensome situations. Through the struggle of the Wall’s family, the author is able to highlight hope as a significant factor in their survival even at a subconscious level. Be it through the mother, Rose Mary Walls, refusal to give up the farm land due to her long-held family beliefs; or the father's, Rex Walls,

Have you ever heard of a family nowadays that are constantly on the move, frequently traveling throughout our country, stopping to live in one place for a couple months, then leaving for another place for a similar amount of time and doing that constantly? The Walls are a family that does do that. In the entertaining book The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, a young girl named Jeannette Walls learns how to become successful in life through constantly being on the move. She lived with her with her parents and her siblings. Her parents, Rex and Rose Mary would be in a huge fight one minute, then would be hugging each other the next, which made it hard for the kids to grow up. Throughout Jeannette’s unusual childhood, she learned to have acceptance

In the vivid, personal memoir The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, she painstakingly recalls her “story” and how it affected and made her who she is today. She grew up in an environment that most children typically do not. Her father was an alcoholic, and her mother was a selfish woman who put herself first. You could say their way of parenting was not your average “cookie cutter” household. One main social issue in The Glass Castle, is the impact on child neglect in a family and how that affects the way the child turns out. Although, Jeannette Walls ended up as a successful writer along with her siblings Lori and Brian, her other sister Maureen took a route which many neglected children face. What set apart these siblings and how the

“Be who makes the impossible possible,” my grandmother loves to say. In life dreaming big is the idealistic state of mind. Dreaming big is what gives one hope to becoming who they aspire to be and reach their goals.

Jeannette Walls is an American writer in journalist who found success in New York City, most notably writing a gossip column for MSNBC in which she details the effects of gossip in politics. She published her memoir, The Glass Castle, in 2005. The book spent 261 weeks on the New York Times Best Seller list. In it, Walls recounts her childhood while growing up in an unstable family with her father and mother, Rex and Rose Mary Walls, her older sister Lori, and her younger brother and sister, Brian and Maureen. Rex and Rose Mary could not settle down and constantly uprooted their family of six to different locations in the southwest region of America. Neither parent could keep a job and struggled to feed and put a roof over their heads. In the novel, Walls views her parents as irresponsible because it rarely seems as though Rex and Rose Mary genuinely want to work and make money to support the family. They thrive off their sense of adventure, as they drive all over the country in a rundown car, looking for their latest shack to pile their family into, usually without running water, heat, or indoor plumbing. Walls will tell the story of her childhood through a series of pivotal moments that ultimately shape her opinion of her parents and lead her to a successful career in New York City.

Their children, Lori, Jeannette, and Brian, want to move to New York City to have a life of their own. But, Rex and Rose Mary decide to follow them there. They are poor and homeless, living on the streets of this overwhelming city.

“The Glass Castle” by Jeanette Walls is an extremely captivating novel that really kept my attention throughout the entire story. It’s a fascinating story of growing up in circumstances that kept me shaking my head as I turned the pages. The Walls family is unquestionably one unlike any I’ve ever come across. The lessons and experiences that the children learned and endured were ones that molded their lives and established who they are today. Jeanette Walls goes through many descriptions of situations that she faced that people normally should not face. For most of her childhood, her family traveled from town to town because her parents always thought that they would hit it big, unfortunately her father was never ever to find a

The spacious house that Red’s father built for someone else has always been home to Red, Abby and their children. As the health of the elder Whitshanks fails, the family must figure out what to do about both the Whitshank house and living arrangements for Red and Abby. When the grown children get together to make plans, old grievances resurface: Amanda is too bossy, Jeannie too sensitive, Denny is just plain unreliable and Stem isn’t even a real Whitshank. And, secrets unravel.