Argumentative Essay On The Glass Castle

The pure tenacity that seeps from the pages of Jeannette Walls’ The Glass Castle is mesmerizing enough in its own right to merit the praise that has been heaped upon the memoir; these pages expose their readers to the scorching heat of deserts’ sundance-yellow sands and the blackened clothing and miners’ pails of a soot-and-work boots America, before finally getting lost in the metropolis that is New York. As the novel ends, Walls describes a Thanksgiving dinner, saying that the candles on the table “danced along the border between turbulence and order,” taunting the readers to determine for themselves the barbarity of her childhood. “Life with your father,” as Rose Mary Walls put it, “was never boring” (288). This type of philosophy, however,
One can say, for instance, that it is unfair to retroactively judge the Walls' based on today's standards for neglect, that there were neither laws established nor detailed studies that then existed to document its effects. This is highlighted in the memoir by the government’s lax response to the possibility of child neglect. The lack of persistence by child protective services—only once showing up at the Walls residence and leaving without conversing with any adults—can be seen as a testament to the infancy of anti-abuse measures in the United States. Nonetheless, there is a stark difference between an occasional lack of supervision and neglect. The Glass Castle is a stark rebuttal to an overabundance of safety precautions in society, and Rose’s approach to life can be summarized as follows: “Why spend the afternoon making a meal that will be gone in an hour…when in the same amount of time, I can do a painting that will last forever?" (56). This declaration evokes images of Jeannette scavenging for food at school, with Brian’s well-being and hunger at the forefront of her worries. The parents fail to lend themselves effectively to ameliorating the majority of tribulations that arise in their household
What if Rose had just been able to keep that one job? Or, what if, as Jeannette had once suggested, Rose had really left her husband? The Walls siblings understand better than anyone else that their lives were not those of luxury. Their childhoods were, for the most part, brutal and unforgiving, constantly leading them from one struggle from the next. Escaping from one mining town, they would often find themselves in the middle of another, and begin chipping away at their fortunes there. It’s never quite possible to wholly escape your past, as evidenced by how Jeanette eventually undertakes a job reporting gossip for MSNBC, thus turning the tables on her past and giving her control over others—for once. As opposed to the past, where others had indiscriminately spread rumors about her—one of the most stinging aspects of her childhood—she now wields the power to control the narrative. In the infancy of the Walls’ adventure, they encounter a Joshua tree spiraling into itself, guarding the border between mountain and desert. When Jeannette looks at the tree, she sees “torture,” a creature “so beaten down by the whipping wind” (35). Later, when innocent believing broad-minded open-minded what it could be, as opposed to what it is.
Mom frowned at me. “You’d be destroying what makes it special,” she said. “It’s the Joshua tree’s struggle that gives it