Fire Motif In The Glass Castle By Jeannette Walls

The Glass Castle, by Jeannette Walls, tells a story about a dysfunctional family and the hardships they faced in what we call the journey of life. Throughout the book, Jeannette Walls re-encounters her favorite childhood memories spent with her father, Rex Walls, in spite of Rex's recklessness and destruction onto different parts of her life. Rex is a skilled electrician whose alcoholism often gets to the best of him and his decisions. His profusion of alcohol led his family to poverty because instead of paying off bills and buying necessities for survival, he spends most of their income on liquor. Therefore, his children lacked the simplest things such as food and clothing.

Near the beginning of Jeannette Wall’s memoir The Glass Castle, she recalls how she was taught to swim. Her family already struggled with money, moving around constantly, and she had grown to be independent. As she learns to swim, her father employs a concerning strategy: letting her sink and nearly drown before saving her for just a moment, then throwing her back into the water. Jeannette eventually catches on, realizing it’s more harmful to let him save her: “And so, rather than reaching for Dad’s hands, I tried to get away from them…and finally, I was able to propel myself beyond his grasp.”

She has also been struggling with her family's divorce and is conflicted about who to choose to live with. Lastly, she has being struggling with her sickness causing her to get nauseous and faint. This has been causing her a lot of stress on top of everything else she is struggling with. Rex has been struggling with the guilt of his mother dying and how it had affected him and his father's relationship, his father shows no attention to him, and Rex has started to think it's his fault.

There are times in summer in which a student wonder’s around doing nothing. Giving a rising senior a book such as The Glass Castle, by Jeannette Walls will give them an academic activity during their summer break. The vocabulary in The Glass Castle, presents an opportunity for rising seniors to be actively learning in the summer. The words in the book will make the reader engage to new vocabulary. Together with a great plot of rags to riches, Jeannette Walls will captivate any reader not only rising seniors.

The Invisible Chapter It is hard to believe that a girl whose background is rooted in poverty has been able to become a successful writer after graduating from not just a college but from one of the Ivy League colleges. Living with an erratic and alcoholic dad and a distant and irresponsible mom - both of whom, even into her adulthood, have not changed for the better – compounded this girl’s difficulty of living in poverty. This scenario may sound alien in nature to the common middle class person, but was a reality for Jeannette Walls. Based on this description, it is easy and reasonable to believe that Walls is ashamed of her parents, Rex and Rose Mary, as well as her past when initially reading her memoir The Glass Castle.

The best-selling memoir, The Glass castle by Jeannette Walls was recently made into a movie. It was released in the spring of 2017. The movie did an amazing job representing the memoir and its characters. The character Rex whose describe as a tough, hard headed man and intelligent was played by Woody Harrelson.

The role of fire in books such as Lord of the Flies and Fahrenheit 451 usually symbolizes hope and rebirth. In the book Night by Elie Wiesel, fire takes a different turn by specially representing the destruction of hope. On page 34, Wiesel is faced with his first night at a concentration camp and says, “Never shall I forget those flames that consumed my faith forever” (Wiesel 34). This quote conveys that before Wiesel was taken away from his home, fire represented comfort and warmth. Now, while he is sleeping at the concentration camp, fire constitutes the destruction of his faith.

The JFK Profile in Courage Award was created by the Kennedy family in 1989 to honor President John F. Kennedy and recognize the quality of political courage which he admired the most. The award recognizes a public official who demonstrates the qualities mentioned by President Kennedy in his, Profiles in Courage. In order to win this award one must be a living person who are or were elected officials, must stand strong in their beliefs that are for the good of the country, risk their career, and risk getting re-elected. Many people like Daniel Webster, Thomas Hart Benton, Sam Houston, and every other character named in JFK’s book portrayed the acts of political courage which is to have the courage to stand up for what they believe is right no matter the consequences. However, when asked if Jeannette Walls could or could not be a candidate for this award the three requisites must be taken into consideration.

Mud brown bricks are splattered with fresh red blood. Clean windows become cloudy as the souls of the departed try to escape through them. A home that served as a safe haven quickly fills with thoughts of death and everything that has been lost. What was once a place full of comfort and happy memories is now a quiet, empty house, surrounded by loneliness and despair. In Forgotten Fire by Adam Bagdasarian, main character Vahan Kenderian must endure a shift of lifestyle in which he goes from being a wealthy, privileged young man, into a pursued and lonely beggar.

Rex held his dead daughter in his arms, screaming in disbelief, no one he could go to. The 9-month-old daughter that resembled Rex through her charcoal black hair, and chocolate brown eyes, Mary Charlene was gone. Rex had nothing to reach out to for support because Rose Mary decided to push the pain and thought to the back of her mind, letting go by forgetting; page 27 shares the response of Rose Mary explaining that Jeanette was to replace Mary Charlene; only as a way to cover the pain with a thin coating. The pain Rex received was beyond temporary or a replacement, all he could do was mask the pain through alcohol. The pain Dad held in his heart never released, he temporarily hid the pain through alcohol.

"(page. 50) and continue to talk to Mildred “There must be something in books, things we can't imagine, to make a woman stay in a burning house; there must be something there.” (page. 51) without consciously noticing his different perspective towards fire from the first encounter with Faber before the novel. These quotes represent that he rejected the idea of being a fireman by questioning himself and the cause of the incidents occurred on that day.

In The Glass Castle, I think the significance of Jeanette's fascination with fire is that she no longer fears it. After her incident, she was afraid of fire. On page 15, her mother said, "You've got to get right back in the saddle. You can't live in fear of something as basic as fire." Also, on page 15, her father told her that she should come face to face with her enemy.

Government organizations often use symbols to portray their power or military strength. Writers also use symbols to convey a message to the reader. In his novel Lord of the Flies, William Golding uses symbols to help readers track the loss of civility of the boys. The fire is both a symbol of hope and the reckless behavior of the boys.

The story “A Wall of Fire Rising” written by Edwidge Danticat has many similarities to the short story “Volar” written by Judith Ortiz Cofer. In “A Wall of Fire Rising” a poor Hattian family struggles to make ends meet on a daily basis. The father who is named Guy dreams of flying away in a hot air balloon to a better place where he can provide more for his family. Guy wants a better life, and his only escape of reality is through his son’s line recital for a play. Feeling hopeless, Guy makes an ultimate choice to escape reality by committing suicide by jumping off a hot air balloon in midair.

The most influential novel that I read this year is The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls. Walls’s memoir had moving themes of strength, perseverance and forgiveness. It also caused me to have passionate reactions. Finally, The Glass Castle impacted me the most because it forced me to reconsider my opinion of homeless people. This novel was a beneficial reading experience.