The book, The Glass Castle is a memoir of Jeanette Walls, focusing on the kind of life their family went through and the hardships they experienced. He also informs us about how tough they survived at school with the financial crisis that had rocked the family together with the harsh treatments they received from their neighbours’ and their friends and school. She also shares about their family makeup, their migration from place to place as a way of trying to find a very suitable place to live. Though the family is stricken with poverty, she is very intelligent and determined to end the poverty she went through as a child.
The book develops various feelings and emotions in a reader, one of them being pity and feeling sorry for them. The family from the start lives in a poor home which is surrounded by even poor neighbours’ who happen to mistreat them. The family loses their second-born barely a few years after her birth, with survival in extreme poverty where the children are forced to steal from their friends or even look for left over’s in dust bins. Considering the way Mary and Rex take care of their family, one becomes very angry with them because they have a large farm in Texas which, when sold, can help the family overcome poverty, but Mary insists on preserving it, yet she does nothing on it.
Their father is brought out as somebody who runs away from his responsibilities by engaging in drinking and smoking, yet the family resides in abandoned houses that resemble shanties. The feeling of hope is clearly brought out by the author herself when in several instances, she tries hard to secure some jobs in order to support her parents and siblings at an early age while still in school. Her hope of leaving poverty and living by her dreams comes true by her move to New York City, where the whole family moves to. All the events in the book are connected to the author herself and their entire family and those who happen to be born in poor backgrounds, whereby she is after informing the reader on the effects of poverty or being born in a poor family and what one can do to overcome it. This, she shows clearly that it is achieved through self-determination and hard work and that it’s human beings themselves who allow poverty to take control of their lives, just as seen with her parents. Another good connection is on those who like taking advantage of the poor to fulfil their immoral desires, that they should have respect for others.
The book dates back to the early years when parents valued material things more, especially land, just like Mary does, and with the rise of the young and determined generation, the world will be transformed through them. The language used by the author is quite useful as it engages the reader to start thinking and creating in their mind the kind of lifestyle lived by the Walls family, the father Rex talks of building a glass castle, yet he makes no effort. It also makes the reader start thinking about some of the ways they can do in order to alleviate poverty among people and live a happy and successful life, looking at the way the siblings struggled hard to succeed in education.
An element of shock and dismay occurs to the reader when he or she reads the book looking at the way the father handles the family, more so when he takes the daughter to a bar as to dance with men so that he can make some money, what is a total disgrace. The book develops in the reader the urge to try and change people’s minds on how they view life and their friends. We should be ready to accept change of events in our lives and that pupils or students ought to respect their fellow classmates and help them when in need instead of being violent and laughing at them because of their social life. Another thing that occurs is the idea that people should not use the state of poverty to engage in immorality but should work hard to achieve their potential in life.
Work Cited
Walls, Jeannette. The Glass Castle: A Memoir. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2009. Print.