Maturity In The Glass Castle By Jeannette Walls

We are often exposed to face daily obstacles in our lifetime, however as much as these obstacles seem to have an appearance of bad luck, they can sometimes be turned out to help us in our advantage. These impediments often help us find another solution for complications that we have no power over, like my mother always said, “When life gives you lemons, you make lemonade.” Therefore, whenever I am involved in a specific hurdle I tend to make the best out of whatever I can. I believe that by having these certain complications in your life, you are taught to overpower these difficulties, become a stronger individual, and also to become independent.

Success is determined by the actions a person takes, a person that’s making moral decisions can be successful. The memoir The Glass Castle, by Jeannette Walls, tells a story about Jeannette’s life and the influences her parents, Rose Mary and Rex Walls, had on the person she is now. Rose Mary and Rex Walls are not successful parents because their relationship is unstable and they can’t manage their finances.

One of the many arguments that The Glass Castle makes is that age does not always define maturity. Maturity can be defined as “fully developed”. Most people attribute this to physical appearance but I think of it as being more of a mental state of mind. The book opens up describing Jeanette’s elegant, wealthy lifestyle in comparison to her mom being homeless (3-5). It then goes on to describe Jeannette’s first memory of when she was three years old and on fire because of a cooking accident (9). At this point, it is already apparent to the readers that Jeannette is mature beyond her age and her parents are not. Throughout the rest of the book there are many recurring examples of this theme.

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.

Her father later told her that she was a special girl, that not many little girls can cook or boil water all on their own. Jeannette realizes that she is special just by this happening and later learned to laugh at her crisis. All of her life, decisions affected her life growing up. She decides that she will be the person she wants to be. Jeannette has had a rough life, but as soon as she faced a crisis, she learned something new about herself.

In this response to The Glass castle by Jeannette Walls, I am going to talk about the selfishness and the neglect Rose Mary & Rex Walls put upon these poor children.

The Glass Castle shows an infinite amount of themes; however, there are 5 themes that stand out the most. Coming of age, home, possessions, non-conformity, and Turbulence and order. Coming of Age is when a character starts out with little knowledge or maturity and by the end of the novel becomes mature and has moral values. In The Glass Castle Jeanette experiences coming of age. For example, Lori asks Jeanette if she likes moving. Walls writes, “Do you like always moving around?’ Lori asked me. ‘Of course I do!’ I said. ‘Don’t you?’ “Sure’ She said… ‘What do you think would happen if we weren’t always moving around?’ I asked. ‘We’d get caught’” (Walls, 29). In the beginning of the book Jeanette views her life in poverty as an adventure and

Furthermore, they also had many moments where they cared for their kids. In the memoir, “The Glass Castle” by Jeannette Walls, many sweet and caring moments are shared between Jeanette and her father

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

This summer I read the memoir “The Glass Castle” by Jeannette Walls. This is the first book that I have read of hers, although I would be interested in reading one of her other books such as “The Silver Star” or “Half Broke Horses”. The memoir takes place in many different cities and states. The novel starts out in New York City when the author is an adult and married, but then it flashes all the way back to when Jeannette, the main character, was three and living in southern Arizona. Jeannette was home alone and she was making herself food when she caught on fire and was taken to the hospital. After six weeks of being in the hospital, her dad, Rex Walls, decided that the nurses and doctors were not trustworthy and was uncomfortable with hospitals, so he snuck her out without being discharged. Soon after, the family “did the skedaddle” as Jeannette called it, and moved to Las Vegas. On the way to their destination, at night, the kids asked their dad to tell them a bedtime story. He told them mostly stories about himself and in the stories he was always the hero. In this particular story, however, the author’s dad describes the plans that he has for the future. This plan consisted of building the Glass Castle, which he has been planning for a very long time. The castle would be a large house for the whole family in the middle of the desert and it would have a glass ceiling, thick glass walls, and a glass staircase. For electricity, there would be solar cells on the

“The Glass Castle” by Jeannette Walls is a memoir of a family that is frequently homeless and living in very poor conditions. Despite all this, the protagonist Jeannette Walls does not lose faith but, but does the exact opposite. She does everything in her power to earn money and get an education so she can escape her current life and move to a place with better opportunities, which is New York (Walls 2005) This book intrigued me because of the way Walls tells her story. She does not have a trouble-free life, but she is a brave woman for telling her story to others. Walls admitted in her interview with Oprah as well as in her book, that she is so embarrassed of her parents in the streets. While she lives in her warm and comfortable home, her parents are in the street looking through garbage cans for food. Jeannette Walls’s approach to life is astounding, and the way she tells her story with such emotion but at the same time some parts are relatable to many others. Walls uses many rhetorical techniques in her writing that absorbs the reader not only to enjoy her book but also to empathize for her.

Even with those disadvantages Jeannette ensures that she excels in all that she does and puts all possible effort into what she wants to become. Even at a young age she makes sure that she joined a newspaper club at her school and though she is treated poorly and it judged harshly by those around her, she works her way up to becoming the editor and key writer if her high school newspaper. Jeannette works hard to become the editor of her high school newspaper and proves herself that she is a capable writer. Over the years Jeannette continues to ensure that she strives for what she wants without any inhibitions from the life she has lived. Long after high school success when she finally moves to New York, Jeannette sees that she again is doing what will help her achieve her desire while also proving that she can have success even after living such a peculiar life. She is even able to get a job for The Phoenix. “I’ve never been happier in my life.” (Walls, 248) Jeanette 's displays exuberance at having achieved what she desires and continues to achieve more as she climbs the ladder to reach her final goals. Jeannette is bringing herself up from the rubble of a life that she has lived to achieve her goals. With hard work and a steely determination Jeannette proves that no matter what you’ve come

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.

     Throughout the story there are several aspects of the Protagonist’s character that play a major role in the shaping of her future. During her childhood she