Analysis Of The Glass Castle By Jeannette Walls

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The Glass Castle is a novel written by Jeannette Walls, which chronicles her childhood. The purpose of her autobiographical memoir is to confront the effects of substandard parenting, and how it impacts children’s relationships and their own self-regard. It is to also combat injustice in and out of the home, and how to live with it and grow past it afterwards. The novel begins with Jeannette as an adult, sitting in a taxi when she sees her mom digging through trash. She realizes her shame for her parents, then begins to tell her tale. She starts off her as a three-year-old, making hot dogs when she catches on fire and getting badly burned. She spends a sizable amount of her time as a kid with her little sister and older brother and sister in the desert, where their dad can pick up odd jobs. However, their dad, Rex Walls, is an alcoholic who must lead their family and they end up moving constantly. Their mom later inherited a house in …show more content…
One of the first instances of Jeannette learning how to be self-sufficient, when Rex tried to teach her to swim, but declares, “if you don’t want to sink, you better figure out how to swim”(66). This strategy represents their parents rigid approach on life. They refuse to coddle their children, they instead bitterly challenge them. This causes their children later in life to be more independent than most people. After the whole incident at the bar when Jeannette escaped from the man who attacked her, the author used parallel structure when Rex mentions “‘It was like that time I threw you into the sulfur spring to teach you to swim,’ he said. ‘You might have been convinced you were going to drown, but I knew you'd do just fine’(213). In an over-protective environment, Jeannette may have not to been able to defend herself as well, and grows up more quickly. The price for her self-sufficiency was an unenjoyable
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