Poverty and skedaddling
Jeannette Walls’s memoir, The Glass Castle, talks about the adversities and the challenges that she and her family had to suffer from because of the limited amount of food and cash. As a result, they had to constantly move from places to places such as Battle Mountain in Nevada, Phoenix in Arizona, Welch in West Virginia, New York City and so on in the search of the survival. Some places provided the better quality of life while some worsen it. Thus, the author and her family were living under the condition of the poverty, where they had to struggle for the basic needs such as food, clothing, and shelter because of not getting adequate resources to support the minimum level of their physical health.
There …show more content…
She would say, “We were sort of like the cactus. We ate irregularly, and when we did, we’d gorge ourselves“ (Walls, 12). For instance, when a truck filled with cantaloupes jumped the track, they had plenty of cantaloupes to eat and so all they had for the breakfast, lunch, and dinner was “fresh cantaloupe, stewed cantaloupe, even fried cantaloupe“ (Walls, 12). In addition, her dad’s job was also not stable and so sometimes they would eat less or no food at all. “We kid usually kept our hunger to ourselves, but we were always thinking of food and how to get our hands on it“ (Walls, 41), she said. She would sometimes slip back in the classroom and try to steal the food from her classmate’s lunch box or would sneak into a friend’s house, pretending to go the bathroom and would quickly eat something from the kitchen. “When I started sixth grade, the other kids made fun of Brian and me because we were so skinny“ (Walls, 107).Thus, this implies how the author was not getting enough food and had to constantly struggle to satisfy her …show more content…
After separating from her parents, she establishes her own identity. When she moved to her sister Lori’s apartment, she was happy to learn that her apartment had running hot water that was attached to the toilet and a bathtub (Walls, 165). Later, she gets a job and buys her own grand apartment at the park avenue in the New York City, which consists of bronze and silver vases, Persian rugs, Georgian maps, the overstuffed leather armchair and other lavish things. She herself wears pearls, diamonds, and expensive heels, which she never got to wear when she was a kid as she did not even have enough clean clothes to wear. On the contrary, her childhood was spent in the ghetto and not very advanced places, struggling for the basic necessities every day. However, as an adult, she had enough money to buy beyond her basic necessities such as cars, expensive house, jewelry and so on. As one can see her childhood and adulthood contradict each other. One was indulged in the poverty, whereas the other one is indulged in the lavish and wealthy lifestyle. Overall, The Glass Castle talks about how poverty can bring the worst situation to deal with in the life with the lack of the adequate resources and all sort of obstacles in the way. It talks about the journey of the author from the childhood spent in the poverty to adulthood spend in a lavish
Jeannette Walls’s memoir, The Glass Castle, talks about the adversities and the challenges that she and her family had to suffer from because of the limited amount of food and cash. As a result, they had to constantly move from places to places such as Battle Mountain in Nevada, Phoenix in Arizona, Welch in West Virginia, New York City and so on in the search of the survival. Some places provided the better quality of life while some worsen it. Thus, the author and her family were living under the condition of the poverty, where they had to struggle for the basic needs such as food, clothing, and shelter because of not getting adequate resources to support the minimum level of their physical health.
There …show more content…
She would say, “We were sort of like the cactus. We ate irregularly, and when we did, we’d gorge ourselves“ (Walls, 12). For instance, when a truck filled with cantaloupes jumped the track, they had plenty of cantaloupes to eat and so all they had for the breakfast, lunch, and dinner was “fresh cantaloupe, stewed cantaloupe, even fried cantaloupe“ (Walls, 12). In addition, her dad’s job was also not stable and so sometimes they would eat less or no food at all. “We kid usually kept our hunger to ourselves, but we were always thinking of food and how to get our hands on it“ (Walls, 41), she said. She would sometimes slip back in the classroom and try to steal the food from her classmate’s lunch box or would sneak into a friend’s house, pretending to go the bathroom and would quickly eat something from the kitchen. “When I started sixth grade, the other kids made fun of Brian and me because we were so skinny“ (Walls, 107).Thus, this implies how the author was not getting enough food and had to constantly struggle to satisfy her …show more content…
After separating from her parents, she establishes her own identity. When she moved to her sister Lori’s apartment, she was happy to learn that her apartment had running hot water that was attached to the toilet and a bathtub (Walls, 165). Later, she gets a job and buys her own grand apartment at the park avenue in the New York City, which consists of bronze and silver vases, Persian rugs, Georgian maps, the overstuffed leather armchair and other lavish things. She herself wears pearls, diamonds, and expensive heels, which she never got to wear when she was a kid as she did not even have enough clean clothes to wear. On the contrary, her childhood was spent in the ghetto and not very advanced places, struggling for the basic necessities every day. However, as an adult, she had enough money to buy beyond her basic necessities such as cars, expensive house, jewelry and so on. As one can see her childhood and adulthood contradict each other. One was indulged in the poverty, whereas the other one is indulged in the lavish and wealthy lifestyle. Overall, The Glass Castle talks about how poverty can bring the worst situation to deal with in the life with the lack of the adequate resources and all sort of obstacles in the way. It talks about the journey of the author from the childhood spent in the poverty to adulthood spend in a lavish