My First Experience in College

Glass Castle The Glass Castle was written by the author, Jeanette Walls and she is also the protagonist of the book. The book tells the story of Jeanette Walls and her family life. It shows how they basically struggled day in and out like being short on food and money, they always moved around the country just to find a place to settle in. Jeanette Walls and her family mostly lived in various mining towns on the west coast of America.

As Jeannette grew up in the desert, she enchanted by the limitless bounds of nature and the fantasies her father dreams up for her and her siblings. When Jeanette lived in the desert with her brother (Brian), she usually stacked up a rock collection and explored the natural and man-made features of the environment. Due to Rex Alcoholism, life in the desert ended because the family ran out of funds. So from the desert, they decided to relocate to Welch where Rex grew up.

One thing I mostly knew about the Walls family was that their parents were both addicted to substances that could kill, their father was addicted to alcohol while their mum was so addicted to sugar and it lead to them not paying attention to their children. On my academic research, the article I researched was on alcoholism and it basically said alcohol consumption, particularly heavier drinking is an important risk factor many health problems and, thus, is a major contributor to the global burden of disease.

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When it comes to Rex, the head of the Walls family, he tends to focus more drinking than his family which led to him being terribly poor. However, life in Welch, West Virginia is completely different than the life the Walls led in the desert on the West coast. Most notably, Welch has a winter season which brings new challenges to the Walls family. From their arrival, the Wells children are itching to leave Welch and return to the desert. But eventually circumstances become so bad that they realize they must move away from their parents in order to achieve stable lives.

Lori and Jeannette set their sights on New York and begin saving money to move out of Welch once and for all. Moreover, Walls describes in fascinating detail what it was to be a child in this family, from the embarrassing (wearing shoes held together with safety pins; using markers to color her skin in an effort to camouflage holes in her pants) to the horrific (being told, after a creepy uncle pleasured himself in close proximity, that sexual assault is a crime of perception; and being pimped by er father at a bar). Though Walls has well earned the right to complain, at no point does she play the victim. In fact, Walls’ removed, nonjudgmental stance is initially startling, since many of the circumstances she describes could be categorized as abusive (and unquestioningly neglectful). But on the contrary, Walls respects her parents’ knack for making hardships feel like adventures and her love for them–despite their overwhelming self-absorption–resonates from cover to cover.

Eventually the siblings all end up relocating from Welch to New York in an attempt to be liberated from the stifling environment in Welch. For a time everyone is settled and living independently until Rex and Rose Mary show up in Manhattan in a van. After just a short while, the couple ends up poor and homeless once again and despite their efforts, the children are unable to take on the burden of hosting their parents anymore.

Consequently, Rose Mary and Rex become squatters in abandoned apartments until Rex dies after having a heart attack. To Conclude, Jeannette has finally reconciled her past and present and no longer feels the need to hide behind lies or half-truths. In my perspective, I feel Glass Castle has thought me a lesson and that is to take life serious not for a mere joke and that is why Rex died through ignoring the clean aspect of life. The memoir liberates her and allows her to do what she enjoys most about writing; communicate with the world.

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