Rex Walls (Dad)
Rex Walls is a very intelligent man with a passion for logic. He is an electrician and engineer, and often spends his spare time inventing contraptions he hopes will make the family rich. He is also an alcoholic which makes him come up short of a lot.
Rose Mary Walls (Mom)
Rose Mary Walls values self-sufficiency. She is an artist and spends much of her spare time painting or sketching although she went to college to be a teacher. She resents her children because she sees them as standing between her and her dream life of a bohemian artist but also cherishes them for their companionship. |
"... anyone who so much as laid a finger on any of Rex Walls' children was going to get their butts kicked so hard that you could read Dad's shoe size on their a-- cheeks."
Rex Walls was a very protective father toward his children. Although he fell short sometimes of his duties as a father he was always there to protect them. -Hyperbole
"We were sort of like the cactus. We ate irregularly, and when we did, we'd gorge ourselves."
Jeannette, (the narrator) explains in this quote how rare the family ate on a regular basis comparing their daily diet to the diet of a cactus. - Simile
"When Lori came out, she was mute and bald as an egg for the first three years of her life."
The narrator describes her sister as being "bald as an egg" comparing her hairless head to an egg. -Simile
"... the flames leaped up... "
While cooking hot dogs one day as a young child Jeannette Walls's dress catches on fire and she describes the fire with a characteristic of a person, leaping up. - Personification
"The Cheetah licked my palm, his tongue warm and rough, like sand paper dipped in hot water."
The narrator describes her experience at the zoo when the cheetah licks her hand as feeling like wet sand paper rubbing against her hand. - Simile
"Maybe I should have cut him some slack. With his broken wing and lifetime of eating roadkill, he probably had a lot to be ungrateful about. Too much hard luck can create a permanent meanness of spirit in any creature."
Jeannette takes the of a scavenger bird and tries to understand the struggles it faced to influence its outlook and demeanor.
"After dinner, the whole family stretched out on the benches and the floor of the depot and read, with the dictionary in the middle of the room so we kids could look up words we didn’t know. Sometimes I discussed the definitions with Dad, and if we didn’t agree with what the dictionary writers said, we sat down and wrote a letter to the publishers."
Rex Walls and Rose Mary Walls had a big intellectual influence on their children. The Walls grew up in an environment where learning was encouraged.
"She’d been reading books on how to cope with an alcoholic, and they said that drunks didn’t remember their rampages, so if you cleaned up after them, they’d think nothing had happened. ‘Your father needs to see the mess he’s making of our lives,’ Mom said. But when Dad got up, he’d act as if all the wreckage didn’t exist, and no one discussed it with him. The rest of us had to get used to stepping over broken furniture and shattered glass."
Many of the scenes in the book, The Glass Castle has relations to Rex’s problem with alcoholism and gambling which also caused other problems.
"No child is born a delinquent. They only became that way if nobody loved them when they were kids. Unloved children grow up to be serial murderers or alcoholics."
Jeannette and her siblings had each other to support each other and lean on, and they eventually became each other’s safety net as they grew up to become young adults.
"Life's too short to worry about what other people think."
Rose Mary told Jeannette not to worry about what other people thought about their life because there is more to life than what other individuals may think about her life.
Recurring Symbols
Fire Fire was a symbol that recurred several times. First when Jeannette was 3 years old a burned herself cooking hot dogs and then she became obsessed with fire and would light things on fire only to put the fire back out. Again in Tenderloin District when she woke up to smoke and flames from the curtains catching fire when her dad then burst into the room and rescued her siblings and her. Desert |
Book Review
This report is written for my AP Language teacher Mrs. Feldmann. The Glass Castle is written by Jeannette Walls. This memoir consists of 288 pages. Published in New York in the 2005, the publishers' names are Simon and Schuster. I read this book because it was a requirement of my summer assignment for my AP Language Composition class.
In the book, The Glass Castle the main characters are the members of the Walls family ; Jeanette Walls, Rex Walls and Rose Mary Walls. Jeannette Walls is the narrator and also the second oldest of her siblings. She believes that one day her family would have a better life and that they would live in The Glass Castle. Rex Walls (Dad) is the father of Jeannette and her siblings. Rex Walls is very protective of his family and promises them that they would someday live in a glass castle. Rose Mary (Mom) is the mother of Jeannette and her siblings. She went to school for teaching but has a greater passion for art.
Other characters from the book are Erma and Eric. Erma Walls is the grandmother of the children and the mother of Rex Walls. Erma is not as nice to the kids as she should be and is always is mistreating them Eric, Jeannette's first husband comes from a wealthy family and he owns a company which gets her on a higher financial level than she used to.
The Glass Castle is a memoir describing the life of Jeannette Walls growing up and becoming an adult. The setting of this story would be Nevada, New York and the United States during the 1960's through the 1970's. This book has a normal and steady pace. The book's outcome was a unexpected outcome because Jeannette Walls went to college and graduated and became a journalist.
My final thoughts on The Glass Castle is that it was a very interesting book. I enjoyed it a lot because it grabbed my attention when I first started reading and held on to it through out the book. It also made a point to me that it doesn't matter where you come from in life, what matters is where you go and what you chose to become. I would recommend this book to any and everyone even to those who don't like to read.
In the book, The Glass Castle the main characters are the members of the Walls family ; Jeanette Walls, Rex Walls and Rose Mary Walls. Jeannette Walls is the narrator and also the second oldest of her siblings. She believes that one day her family would have a better life and that they would live in The Glass Castle. Rex Walls (Dad) is the father of Jeannette and her siblings. Rex Walls is very protective of his family and promises them that they would someday live in a glass castle. Rose Mary (Mom) is the mother of Jeannette and her siblings. She went to school for teaching but has a greater passion for art.
Other characters from the book are Erma and Eric. Erma Walls is the grandmother of the children and the mother of Rex Walls. Erma is not as nice to the kids as she should be and is always is mistreating them Eric, Jeannette's first husband comes from a wealthy family and he owns a company which gets her on a higher financial level than she used to.
The Glass Castle is a memoir describing the life of Jeannette Walls growing up and becoming an adult. The setting of this story would be Nevada, New York and the United States during the 1960's through the 1970's. This book has a normal and steady pace. The book's outcome was a unexpected outcome because Jeannette Walls went to college and graduated and became a journalist.
My final thoughts on The Glass Castle is that it was a very interesting book. I enjoyed it a lot because it grabbed my attention when I first started reading and held on to it through out the book. It also made a point to me that it doesn't matter where you come from in life, what matters is where you go and what you chose to become. I would recommend this book to any and everyone even to those who don't like to read.