Picture This

Jeannette Walls, who wrote the Glass Castle, struggled continually through the book with her parents insane ways of life, and the fact that she didn't have the typical things needed for survival. She finally gets away from her parents in Welch (and by the way, I was cheering in my head for her will to get out) and goes to the Big Apple - New York City. She is trying to be successful on her own,"I landed a job at a hamburger joint on Fourteenth Street. After taxes and social security, I'd be taking home over eighty dollars a week. I had spent a lot of time imagining what New York would be like, but the one thing that had never occurred to me that opportunities would come so easily" (Walls 384). Jeannette is able to get away from her alcoholic (probably bipolar) dad, and her slacker mother whom's selfish was apparent throughout the entirity of the novel.

In my drawing, I have shown a flower which is prospering. At first glance, you see it has roots, soil, water, and sunlight, which we all learned in fourth grade science class is what a plant needs to survive. Each of these resources are labelled. To start, the sun was 'dad'. But, at later inspection, is actually a job. Jeannette is not able to rely on her father, so she must find alternate ways of survival. She needs money to feed herself and her siblings, as well as pay the bills, so she gets a job. A plant next needs water, and this is 'mom'. Jeannette's mother is only focused on her art, and couldn't care less that her children were starving, so again Jeannette replaced this usual neccessity with self reliance. A plant needs roots to get nutrients from the soil, and these roots represent home. Through the duration of the book, the Walls move constantly, until they finally settle in Welch, Jeannette's dad's hometown. (I would argue that the even in Welch they weren't truly home because it was such a poor environment that she had to learn to survive in.) She must get a home for herself, since her parents can't provide her with one. In order to do this, she must find a way to pay for a house/ apartment, and she does so by succeeding in the career she chooses- Journalism. Finally, Jeannette often went without food as a child, writing that she dug food out of the trash cans at school once lunch had concluded. She had to cope with this lack of food by having faith that someday she would be able to buy her own food, and not dig it out of the trash. Jeannette is no typical girl, and she had to find ways to survive the treacherous conditions she grew up in.