Abstract “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 …show more content…
In addition, the children managed to grow up with a high tolerance for hard times and bravery that is incomparable. The limited supervision and parental neglect led to may disheartening situations for the three children, which no child should ultimately have to bare. Vygotsky’s Cognitive Development Theory The tightness of a parents’ grip upon their children can reflect the way we function for the rest of our lives. Too tight, and we desire freedom and indulge in rebellion. Too loose, we become lost souls, hopelessly searching for that one constant comfort in a sea of dissatisfaction and loneliness. Lev Vygotsky theorized that a person 's psychological development is formed by his/her past and social environment. Vygotsky focused on the social interactions during the learning process and claimed there is a deep interrelationship between social and cognitive development. He believed that children are curious and actively involved in their own learning. They discover and development new understandings about the world by observing those who are in their immediate surroundings. During this process, children discover how people around them think and these social activities evolve into internal mental activities, also known as internalization. Vygotsky also discussed how children begin
The Glass Castle's Themes Everybody has someone who has raised them, and the results of how someone was raised whether it be good or bad can result in how the child ends up as an adult. In The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls has to deal with a lot of things growing up such as Peculiar Parenting Styles, alcoholism, and living in poverty. Because of the things she had to go through growing up, it made her self-reliant and very independent. Sometimes though, many kids dealing with such harsh living conditions may have an opposite effect on people such as Jeanette's sister, Maureen.
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.
Vygotsky proposed that children’s development is affected by their culture and social interaction. He also suggested that children are not born with knowledge but they gain it through their social interactions with peers and adults; he does not rule out the importance of biological processes but proposes an interdependent relationship between biological development alongside social activity and cultural interaction.
Reading The Glass Castle, by Jeannette Walls was a journey in itself. As I dived deeper into the book everyday, I started feeling like I was apart of the Walls family, going through everything that they were experiencing. Reading about all their crazy experiences from one of the daughter's point of views, was incredibly intriguing. It is a personal memoir of her years of growing up with her alcoholic father, delusional mother, and three siblings. The book is full of hardships. The family continually suffers especially the children as they grow up. The amazing part of the book is how the kids, especially Jeanette, made good lives for themselves even when throughout their childhood they had just about nothing. Jeanette took all her struggles
As a problem presents itself, children will verbally work through the steps to solve it. This ‘private speech’ is a vital part to cognitive development, according to Vygotsky. This private speech gradually progresses into thinking as children become more proficient. He was also a proponent for scaffolding which is a process in which a new task is given and direct instruction is given then gradually taken away as the child learns. Both psychologists believed that children learn and develop through action but in different ways; Piaget felt it was through personal, self action while Vygotsky felt is was through social interaction, internalization and vocalization. Vygotsky and Piaget realized that social factors play a part in cognitive development but in different ways; According Piaget, self processing within a child leads to social processing while Vygotsky felt the opposite- social processing leads to self processing. Lastly, both came to the conclusion that by internalizing information, children transform it into knowledge and mental growth.
The Glass Castle is a memoir written by Jeannette Walls and it tells a story the life of Jeannette Walls and her family. Towards the beginning of the novel, the family made a pitstop at a casino in Las Vegas where the parents decided to gamble hoping they will earn extra cash. On their way home, the doors flew open, and Jeannette suddenly falls out of the car and rolls down a hill after the car took a sharp turn. The accident left her with a blood nose, multiple scrapes, and pebbles stuck on her skin. After a long wait, she began to panic that her parents decided to desert her. Eventually the car returned, and Jeannette accuses her family for leaving her behind and even refuses to hug her dad. This occurrence ends with her family calling her
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
In the memoir, The Glass Castle, by Jeannette Walls the author depicts her poverty-stricken past along with her eccentric morals, and dysfunctional parents as they traveled around the country avoiding debt-collectors, while handling unruly situations. The author lives with her three siblings: Brian, Lori, and Maureen Walls; and her two parents: Rex, and Mary Walls. The mother a struggling artist, and the father a jack-of-all-trades with an alcohol addiction. Together they move from town to town, and state to state avoiding the clutches of the ‘FBI’ a nickname Jeannette 's father gave to the debt collectors that were constantly chasing after them. Along the way they struggle with cases of sexual harassment, bullying, and
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.
In the book “The Glass Castle” by Jeanette Walls, Jeanette’s life has gone through many ups and down’s, all the way from her childhood to her adulthood. As Jeanette’s growing up she sees her Parent’s hopes and dreams slowly starting to elude away into reality. From the start of the book Jeanette’s parents, Rex and Rosemary have strong hopes of being rich from mining and sifting up gold in the dessert, through rexes “new Invention’s” to help detect the gold. But as time tells, Jeannette’s feelings and faith in her parents start to diminish away. Jeannette also starts to realize that her father is causing the problem. Towards the end of the story, Jeannette says to her mom, “Mom, you have to leave dad” (wells 188), and Jeanette’s mom is astonished of what she had said and asks why she suggested that, and Jeannette simply states that “He will bring all of us down” suggesting that they need to be on welfare. When Brian and Lori Begin digging the foundation for the glass castle that Rex had designed and promised them they were going to make, the idea quickly diminished into a fantasy once the hole started to fill with old rusty beer cans.
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
“If you don't want to sink, you better figure out how to swim”(66). Jeannette Walls, the author of The Glass Castle, became the best swimmer in all types of water, rough, deep, shallow, calm, and stormy. The book The Glass Castle is an autobiography about Jeanette’s, traumatic life growing up in an alcoholic and abusive household. Rose Mary and Rex Walls raised their children with tough love and never spoonfed them. Jeanette, the second oldest child, ended up facing multiple deathly and scarring situations during her childhood. Through all the adversity, Jeannette Walls learns that forgiveness and self sufficiency are key for success, which demonstrates, which demonstrates the power of independence and mental strength’s ability to create life-changing
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.