Imperfect origins Essay

Davila, Andrew
Zeledon
English 1A (78027)
5 July, 13
Imperfect Origins Jeanette Walls daunting memoir The Glass Castle is a deplorable story of a family’s triumph against all odds. Jeanette Walls grew up with parents who were care free and unsuited to raise children. Throughout her story Jeanette explains how her parents, are irresponsible and the actions her and her siblings had to endure to make a successful life for themselves. Jeanette’s parents, Rex and Rose Mary Walls, never had any explanations to why they acted as they did. They may have had a difficult interpretation of The American dream or the way they chose to raise their children not to be products of the environment. It could have been that they felt content with their lives or the way they had conflicted with themselves as parents and maybe the way they acted, made them depressed. These factors rectify the behavior that Mr. and Mrs. Walls portray throughout The Glass Castle. Rex and Rose Mary Walls had their own point of view of The American Dream. Rex’s dream was to be rich and build a house made of glass for him and his family to reside in. “ when dad wasn’t telling us about all the amazing things he had already done, he was telling us about the wondrous things he was going to do. Like build The Glass Castle” (Walls 32). Rex Walls talks a lot about getting rich. He plans on striking gold one day with is invention “ The Prospector.” He tends to make broken promises to his children and they later realize that he was full of it. Rex’s interpretation of the America dream of being rich led the family to despair. He would spend any money they had on his booze and the prospector. Rose Mary’s dream was to be an artist. Her parenting as a mother was not what most people would consider a good mother. Rose Mary was submissive towards her husband Rex and felt because of her religion she could not leave him. Rose Mary knew her kids would be starving but she mostly cared about her art. When she confronted Rex about the kids starving they got into a big argument. It seemed as if Mr. and Mrs. Walls mostly cared about their own dreams then to care about their children. Rex and Rose Mary’s dreams of the American dream meant they had to rebel against society and behave the way they did to achieve their own goals. Mr. and Mrs. Walls had issues with people telling them how to raise their children and live their lives. This caused them to act out trying to prove those people wrong. Parenting has often been construed, as a multidimensional construct comprised of distinct but mutually interrelated skills played out during parent-child interaction. The set of parenting skills defining this construct is likely to differ by child age, but in any case requires a multimethod and informant approach to measure (Patterson, Reid, & Dishion, 1992). Rose Mary felt she always had to prove her mother wrong. Grandma Smith would always tell Rose Mary to leave Rex because he was a bum. “Grandma would yell at mom not to let that worthless horses ass take her grandchildren. Mom would shrug and say there’s nothing she could do about it, he was her husband” (Walls 26). Rex and Rose Mary were pretty stubborn when it came to caring for their children. When Rex could not provide for his children he would leave and avoid his issues at home. Rose Mary on the other hand would have nowhere to go and had to deal with the children, and her way of with them was to let them provide for themselves. Rex acted as a good father to the children early in the story. Jeanette tells how he teaches them how to survive in the desert and that nothing was going to be handed to them. At one point Jeanette has to go looking for her father at a bar. When she finds him, he is wasted drunk and a gentleman at the bar offers to drive her home. Jeanette agrees, and on the drive home he asks her about school and Jeanette starts explaining about her future plans to be a veterinarian or geologist. The man tells Jeanette “

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