"The Glass Castle" by Jeanette Walls is a memoir dealing with the
authors early life. As a child, Jeanette deals with a self- involved, art-
obsessed mother an alcoholic father and three other siblings. Throughout her
childhood, she faced many hardships and difficulties, many of which had to do
with her families constant moving and her parent's irresponsibility. The use of
setting details in the story is extremely relevant and important.
In the “Glass Castle”, the desert is one of the most important
settings. In the book, the desert is where the walls kids spent most of their
childhood. The dessert was paradise for the family. One example of this is, “On
Christmas Eve, Dad took each one of us kids out into the desert night one by
one.” This shows how on one of the families most important days of the year,
they decided to make it special by going out to the desert.
In the
“Glass Castle”, the families cars are also very important. I think this because
the cars are what carry the family around the country. This shows the type of
lifestyle the walls family leads. An example of this is when Walls’s first car
the blue goose breaks down and the family gets another car, the green caboose,
the kids have a special connection with their vehicles because of how much time
is spent in them.
In the
memoir “The Glass Castle”, Jeanette walls and her family lead a rough life,
however they seem to be able to get over many of these hardships. So far in the
memoir, Jeanette’s adolescence is what mainly gets her through these issues. In
the book, one of the only things the walls family enjoys together, is spending
time in nature and in the outdoors which really gives a certain level of
emotion to the book.
