I am in no way living the nomadic life of these people. I've lived in the same apartment all my life, go to the same school every day (except I guess now), take the same train, and am not on the run from the FBI (more like debt collectors). In that way, no, there isn't a connection, I cannot relate to Jeannette, Brian, or Lori. I have also never started myself or any other establishment on fire (though I have ignited pasta).
No, the way I found I related to the book was in the passage about the stars. I'm terrible at constellations. I can find Ursa Major maybe...couldn't live in the 1600s where they used the stars to navigate...YIKES (but Columbus never did get to Asia, did he?) Anyway, during the summer, I've had my fun at Mystic Seaport. A magical old gateway to the past. Set in 1876, yes, wow the same year Gore Vidal (a personal favorite) wrote his book about. They have old homes, and more importantly old ships there. The Joseph Conrad, after the author, though it was renamed that, was a training ship, turned pleasure craft until the guy went bankrupt circumnavigating the globe, and my personal favorite, the Charles W. Morgan, the last wooden whaleship in America (also on a sweatshirt I occasionally wear). For a week or two every summer, Mystic Seaport becomes my home. More specifically, the 90 degree, below decks quarters on the Conrad. It is there, that I go sailing on the Mystic River--on smaller sailboats called Dyer Dhows. Now how does this relate to constellations you might wonder? Well, every night there are all different activities, like climbing the rigging of a ship, to Breeches Buoy (ow!--an old lifesaving device for stranded vessels), and now getting to my point, the Treworgy Planetarium. It's here that the planetarium guy, Brian (another parallel haha) gives us the rundown on the stars and constellations. Orion, Aquila, Ursa Major and Minor, and so on (call me crazy, but I don't see any of the animals). In the book, Jeannette's dad tells her to pick a star, and they look up at the sky. The beautiful night sky, with millions of stars, and planets, and galaxies far far away ;) Now as a New Yorker, with my polluted sky, as the book says it, I cannot see the stars. At Mystic, and especially at the planetarium, as I would hope you could in a planetarium, I can see the stars. We try to recount where the Joseph Conrad was, using the stars, in the summer of '33. But, false stars are no better than one at all, the magic is actually seeing them. Aboard the Morgan, which smells terribly of whale oil, I find it especially magical to look up and see all the stars. That is my "Glass Castle" moment. I don't have my phone, on an old ship, dark, only at the Seaport with 30 other people, water glistening, an old 1800s town. I feel like I am living in a part of history. A time where the stars were visible, there were no distractions, and we could enjoy nature, life, especially the sea. Or in Jeannette's case, the desert. They have no distractions either, no school, just nature, and being out in the elements. So like Jeannette, I enjoyed the stars, but I didn't lay claim to any. I'm not smart enough to know their names.
Now I wrote a lot, and might've tried to be a little funny. I'm 150% sure this is more than 350 words (checked, more like 600, sorry!) but I'm listening to some good music, and when that happens, I like to reminisce, and write a lot.
I am relieved to learn that you are not on the run from the Feds or from debt collectors, Harry! This was fun to read, and I enjoyed the humorous recollections!
1) Write about something that intrigues, impresses, amuses, shocks, puzzles, disturbs, repulses or aggravates you in the reading.
What is amusing is that the parents of this impoverished family have some strange beliefs. Rex Walls, a former member of the US air force, doesn’t believe in modern medicine. For example on page 8, he says, “Your mother should have taken you to that witch doctor the day you got burned . . . not to these headsuptheirasses medschool quacks." You would think that a former member of the air force would appreciate modern medicine, but no you would be wrong. This man also knows binary and believes it to be superior. For example, on page 35, the author writes, “I tried to explain to her about binary numbers, and how they were the system that computers used and how Dad said they were far superior to other numeric systems.” The mother is a woman who believes that she carried her children in her womb for more than 9 months. On page 26, the mother states, "I always carry children longer than most women. . . Lori was in my womb for fourteen months.” This woman is convinced that her children are in her womb longer than the usual amount of nine months and believes she and her children are special due to her belief that she carries children in her womb longer than nine months. The mother of the family is a strong believer of letting your children do whatever they want like a laissez faire capitalist dealing with the economy. She believes that letting your children go whatever they want strengthens them as they will make mistakes and learn from those mistakes made. On page 36 the author writes, “She felt it was good for kids to do what they wanted because they learned a lot from their mistakes. Mom was not one of those fussy mothers who got upset when you came home dirty or played in the mud or fell and cut yourself. She said people should get things like that out of their systems when they were young.” The children essentially take care of themselves and go through their day mostly without parental supervision.
I agree, Khang, that Rex and Rosemary's beliefs range from strange to beyond the pale. I am curious to know what you think of Rose Mary's parenting philosophy.
This book is quite different from the others that we have read so far this year. It gives deep descriptions of the narrator’s life similar to “What is the What.” But as they say, different is good, and this book is, so far, great. One part of the book that I liked was how it went from the present day to the past to explain what had been happening in the author’s life. The first chapter which was very brief showed the author’s mother digging through trash. This had aggravated me because Jeannette was embarrassed by her parents being homeless. The author was in the car and slid down her seat so she wouldn’t be able to see her. This feels like a tense relationship because Jeannette didn’t want to ruin her status in society. It became worse, because she went back home and put on vivaldi like nothing really happened. On page four of the book it states, “I put some Vivaldi on, hoping the music would calm me down” and it later states, “I could never enjoy the room without worrying about Mom and Dad … I was embarrassed by them.” A person should treat their parents with respect and shouldn’t be shameful because of who they are. Other than that, the rest of the plot was okay. The second chapter shows the relationship between the different family members, especially the mother and father. A common pattern shown in the book is stability and instability. Every other part there is a problem occuring in the book. At first, Jeannette is on fire and is brought to the hospital where her dad does not like it at all, he almost starts a fight with the doctor causing security to come in and escort the family out. The Mom and Dad somewhat have a problem with arguing. One major scene is on page 42, where the mother starts arguing with the dad about how long she carries children. “I always carry children longer than most women,” the Dad proceeds to say bull___, and then they go one and afterwards the mother runs out the car and away in the desert. Other instabilities include the Father on the run from the cops as well as losing his job multiple times. An area of the book containing stability is when the family sits together to make fun of those who believe in Santa, which on page 41 it states, “We laughed at all the kids who believed in Santa.” 56 pages in, this book provides thrills and sort of sadness with the adventures of Jeannette and her family.
Muhammad, I agree that it is not a good thing for children, even grown ones, to feel embarrassed by their parents. But I think that as you keep reading, you will develop more understanding of why Jeannette felt this way.
I completely agree Muhammad that people should treat their parents with respect and not look down upon them for who they are. When reading the beginning of the book I felt the exact same way about how she reacted to her parents. I do not understand where she gets this from, growing up the same way as her parents and we are shown that she does indeed enjoy this type of lifestyle. I think maybe it is just the class gap that is between her and her parents that makes her feel this way, but I do believe that she should not feel this way at all. This also shows how she has changed from her past self.
I find the whole family in the book amusing and entertaining to read. I am amused by their adventures and intrigued by how they live. Although they are not wealthy and always on the move, they find ways to be happy as a family and enjoy themselves. I also find the narrator’s and her siblings close calls with serious injuries, such as when she got burned cooking hot dogs or when they fell out of their U-Haul. I also enjoy reading about Rex Walls, their father, as he shows his love and affection for his children and an entertaining man. When he discharges his family members for them and thinks that hospitals are a scam. The parents, although controversial, care about their children a lot. Rex Walls tells them ridiculous stories about him and his past and ambitious goals he has, as a way to keep his children occupied and distracted from the poverty they live in. Their way of convincing the children that the kids who celebrate Christmas and Santa Claus and get presents every Christmas are brainwashed. They do it so the kids do not feel excluded and jealous of the kids who receive gifts. One thing that surprised me was Rex Walls and how the family functions when they receive a sum of money. At the casinos at Las Vegas, Rex Walls won out big, and instead of saving that money, he took them out to eat, which is understandable, but surprised me as the family did not make smarter financial choices. But all in all, I really enjoyed reading about the family and their wild adventures.
I find it interesting and extremely concerning that Jeannette’s parents continued to make irrational decisions without consideration of their children’s well-being. Their incompetence is shown many times throughout the book, the most prevalent example being the constant movement and homelessness. For example, on page 18 Jeannette asks her father where they will be going, and his response is , “ Wherever we end up,” That seems to be his plan throughout the book. Another issue in their parenting is the fact that the father is an alcoholic and abusive while under the influence. It’s so normalized in the family that the mother on page 23 explains what he is like and the different stages of his inebriation. She explains that the father goes through a “beer phase”, where he is just “slightly” more reckless than usual. Then, when he had the “hard stuff”, he would “ turn into an angry-eyed stranger who threw around furniture and threatened to beat up Mom or anyone else who got in his way.” This amount of instability can have detrimental effects on children, and they end up learning these behaviors and thinking that it is normal. It also doesn’t help that the mother doesn’t pay attention to the children and the parents aren’t nurturing at all. On page 9, Jeannette is three years old and cooking over hot dogs unsupervised over a stove. The mother was in another room working on a painting when Jeannette catches on fire and has to go to the hospital so her burns can be treated. This could have been avoided if the mother was in the room watching her. Later on, just a few days after Jeannette comes back from the hospital, she is left unattended near an open fire again. On page 15, the mother says, “You’ve got to get right back in the saddle. You can’t live in fear of something so basic.” Considering the fact that her daughter could have set their home on fire or died the last time she was unsupervised, it would be wise to assume she wouldn’t make the same mistake again. However, she did because she doesn’t really care about her children.
Sheridan, I see your point about Jeanette's parents being reckless and possibly neglectful, but I think, at least for Jeanette, that didn't matter when she was little. She knew her parents loved her, and, at least in this part, she's pretty happy around her family. Her descriptions of her childhood suggest joy and adventure, not hardship and abuse. Although there are a few harsh moments, like the dispute between her parents about how many months pregnant Jeanette's mom was, she mostly describes wonderful events that overshadow that, like getting stars for christmas, or playing in the rain. When you're a kid, you base your judgement of your experiences on your family. Your family is normal, and any differences in other families stand out. That's how it was for her. She was comfortable in her nomadic, adventurous lifestyle, and never really expressed any unhappiness or frustration about it. If her parents really didn't care about their children, they wouldn't have taught them how to read at such a young age, they wouldn't have taken them to the hospital to get them treated, they would have just left them somewhere. An event that really stood out to me was that when they moved to a new house and didn't have beds, the kids slept in cardboard boxes, which seems horrible, but when their father asked them if they wanted him to make them real beds, they told him not to, the cardboard boxes were fun, and made it seem more like an adventure. I think that event really shows that that life was their normal, and they didn't want something different.
Sheridan, I agree that the behavior of Jeanette's parents is utterly unacceptable and very irresponsible. However, I don't think this was because they did not care for their children. They had many underlying issues, like, as you mentioned, alcoholism, as well as a great amount of debt - which led to the stress that caused them to constantly be on the move and probably have mental issues. This made it hard for her parents to care for her properly - of course, there is no excuse for behavior that puts the well being of a child at stake - but they did love her. For instance, in the story about Christmas (pg. 39), Jeanette's father 'gifted' her Venus; "[she] could have any star [she] wanted." This was touching because he did his best to make her feel better about not getting material gifts like other kids due to their financial situation. I agree with Katia in that regard - Jeanette's parents were just trying to normalize their lifestyle as much they could given their situation, even if there were some bumps in the road.
What really intrigues me, is how indifferent Jeanette seems to be toward all of the horrible situations in her life. When she was burned, she didn’t cry or scream, and when she was in the hospital, in response to a nurse telling her that she would be okay, she said “but if I'm not that's okay too.” She also didn't seem to mind when her dad told the family that they had to go on the road and only take the things they needed to survive. She was accustomed to it, and the only part that bothered her was having to leave behind her doll and her cat, and even those, she seemed to forget about very quickly. It’s amazing to me how growing up with parents like Jeanetts’s will harden you, because she experiences so many things that would have more of an effect on me than they seem to have on her. A sandstorm would absolutely terrify me, but to her, it’s just another normal event that happens in everyday life. The thing that most intrigues me about Jeanette, is her fascination with fire. Instead of her parents warning her to stay away from fire, they sparked an interest in fire for her. Matches seem to fascinate her and she even wanted to watch the fire burn in the hotel they had been staying at. When the three girls from her school beat her up, she lied to her dad and told her there were six because she wanted her dad to be proud of her. On page 28 her mom said “people worried too much about their children… fussing over children who cry only encourages them.” While I mostly agree with that statement, I think they take it to a more extreme level by allowing a three year old cook for herself, or have her “confront her fear” of fire by touching the flame.
I agree that Jeanette is very indifferent to all of the horrible situations in her life, and I agree that that is because of her parents' treatment of her, how in their avoidance of "coddling" her, they hardened her, like Sophia said. I also think that part of the reason Jeannette is so indifferent to her situations is that she has no other role models in her life other than her parents. If she had spent more time around adults who led more normal lives, or even children who were more normal, she might have realized how strange and awful her life was (and she would eventually). Unfortunately, she never really spent an extended amount around other adults at all; the longest period of time she spent around adults that were not her parents was when she was in the hospital, and even then the experience was much shorter than it should have been. She is always on the road, and so she also does not spend a lot of time around kids her age, and when she does, she never really gets to know them very well. Additionally, she meets such a variety of children with a variety of experiences that in total, she does not really have a sense of "normal" other than the experiences her parents are providing for her. Essentially, Jeannette's severe lack of experience is also heavily contributing to her indifference towards dangerous situations.
One thing that intrigued me about this section of the book was how much Jeannette loved her childhood. This is my third time reading this book, so I have read over The Desert many times. I understand how love of your family can cloud your ability to judge situations, as can limited experience. Jeannette’s love for her childhood, however, was genuine. It didn’t come from not seeing the whole picture, or not understanding more complicated things. She honestly just liked the on-the-road, self-sufficient adventure lifestyle. This is clear in the numerous times she tells Lori how much she likes being on the road, but also in the care and detail she uses in her descriptions of the desert and her experiences there. Starting on page 21, there is a passage almost like a love letter to the desert, so descriptive and evocative that it made me see, for this first time, how somebody could love the desert the way Jeannette did, even though I’ve read this book so many times. It goes: “I loved the desert, too. When the sun was in the sky, the sand would be so hot that it would burn your feet if you were the kind of kid who wore shoes, but since we always went barefoot, our soles were as tough and thick as cowhide… We’d search for gold, and when we couldn’t find it, we’d collect other valuable rocks, like turquoise and garnets. There’d be a cool spell come sundown, when the mosquitoes would fly in so thick that the air would grow dark with them, then at nightfall, it turned so cold that we usually needed blankets.” And later, on page 22: “Raindrops the size of marbles came pelting out of the sky. Some parents worried that their kids might get hit by lightning, but Mom and Dad never did, and they let us go out and play in the warm, driving water. We splashed and sang and danced. Great bolts of lightning cracked from the low-hanging clouds, and thunder shook the ground. We gasped over the most spectacular bolts, as if we were all watching a fireworks show. After the storm, Dad took us to the arroyos, and we watched the flash floods come roaring through.” These passages make the desert sound like magic, an adventure, somewhere I would want to go. The best thing about these sections is that they convince me that Jeannette’s childhood was as good as she thought it was. She acknowledges that there were flaws and things she didn’t like, that her life wasn’t perfect, but out of the entire book, these are her happiest moments, even compared to the end of the book. The love that Jeannette used to craft these paragraphs and the guilt she feels when seeing her mother in the first section make me wonder if she ever misses these moments of her life.
Mia, your response got me thinking about how much fun the Walls' lifestyle would have been for a child, particularly the freedom and beauty of their nomadic existence in the desert. When I think back to my own childhood, my worst memories involve boredom, sickness and bratty kids. Certainly the Walls' lifestyle left the kids more susceptible to getting sick/injured, and Walls is open in her description of this, but it did alleviate the other 2 problems, as the siblings got along well and did not seem bratty in the least.
Response to Mia: I agree that Jeanette genuinely found her childhood extremely magical and that she loved moving around with her permissive parents. However, I don’t necessarily agree that Jeanette loved her lifestyle while understanding ‘the bigger picture’ or ‘understanding the more complicated things.’ I would argue that everything is relative--this was the only life she had ever known, and so she didn’t understand the bigger picture. She couldn’t understand because she had never had any other option, or lived any other kind of life. This is demonstrated by how her love grows for more ‘normal’ habits, once they become available to her. As an adult, we see her develop a life on Park Avenue in a nice apartment, and this is clearly the life she chooses over continuing the life she lived as a child. Therefore, although she did genuinely love her childhood, I would oppose the statement that she loved it while truly understanding all the other options (besides, she is so young at this point in the book… she still has a lot to learn about the world).
Mia, I completely agree that Jeanette loved her childhood while "seeing the whole picture." The way she reminisces about her early life suggests that, even as an adult, she is grateful for the unorthodox but beautiful and unique experiences she had. Her vivid "love letter to the desert," as you so aptly call it, illustrates how much she appreciates her parent's decision to immerse themselves in the wilderness, while at the expense of comfort and stability. As I read the book, Jeanette seems almost nostalgic for the freedom and adventure of her youth. Her childhood may seem terrible to us—her parents are erratic and unable to provide, often acting recklessly and neglecting their children, forcing them to fend for themselves—and it's easy to judge her parents as cruel and abusive. And while I definitely think they suffered from mental illness, Jeanette also emphasizes how her parents instilled important values in her and her siblings. She is, at a young age, a very responsible, self sufficient, and intelligent girl with a strong moral compass. While rarely in school, her parents do not deprive her of an education. She and her siblings are clearly precocious: her sister edits her mothers writing and the whole family spends hours reading together, looking up words they don't know. It's also clear how much her parents love their children: her father brags about them to strangers, pretends to chase off the demon under Jeanette's bed when she can't sleep (which I thought was very endearing) and, when unable to afford Christmas gifts, sits down with each of them in turn and lets them pick out a star—a moment I found especially moving. In many ways, her childhood was objectively bad and her parents behavior completely out of line. But I also think we should acknowledge that her upbringing wasn't inherently good or bad or right or wrong, and that we shouldn't judge it just because it is different from our experience. I recently read a memoir called "Educated" (I think you also read it too, Mia?) which is in many ways similar to "The Glass Castle"—a young woman escapes her radical survivalist family who live on the fringes of society to go to college. However, Tara Westover, (the author of "Educated") is much more critical of her family and upbringing. At the time she is writing her memoir, she is no longer speaking to her family members, having cut herself off completely. I thought her experience was interesting in contrast to Jeanette's—at the beginning of the book, Jeanette is still on good terms with her parents, even if she is embarrassed by them, and even more strikingly, she isn't judgmental of them. While Tara has an epiphany that her parents are toxic and abusive, Jeanette depicts her parents affectionately, though without hiding their flaws. While the two women's lives and circumstances are obviously very different, it really struck me how much more lovingly Jeanette describes her family and childhood, and how Jeanette and her siblings lead successful, stable lives while Tara struggles to overcome her emotional trauma and is often constrained by it.
I love the book and it's a very interesting adventure of this family that faces hardships but gets through it together as a family. Somethings really popped out at me from this book. Something that stuck out to me was the type of parting that both Rex and Rosemary are to Lori, Brian, Jeanette, and Maureen. They have an unorthodox way of teaching their children and their actions are sometimes controversial. An example was when they sneak Jeanette out of the hospital after she got burned or when they snuck out Rosemary and Maureen from the hospital after she gave birth. It isn't the best way of parenting but I believe that this type of parenting fosters independence in the children. Their nomadic type of lifestyle avoids them from getting too dependent on those around them and they become independent on themselves. Another thing that stuck out to me was the fact that the Wall family can so easily come back together even after they hit hard times or when Rex starts arguing or getting drunk. However, I also noticed Rosemary's general weakness as a character and how Rex intimidates her and she can't say "no" to him. I think that her weakness in addition to the kid's unwavering belief that their parents were doing the right thing was a huge reason why they could easily come back together after a hard time or an argument. Also, what I realized after another closer look was that Jeannette's favorite toy Tinkerbell that she melted half-way and that she left when she was moving represents the lost innocence of her childhood. I think that the burns that Jeannette made on the toy show how fragile innocence can be. It also shows that even though she was burned she lived on and that serves as a reminder to Jeanette that no matter how hard it gets when you are moving around and face hard times that you can make it to the other side of the tunnel. Overall, I love this book and how it is unfolding and I still can't get over how close the family stays no matter what the problem is.
I agree that it is incredible that the family is able to stay together even though they face serious problems throughout the plot of the book. Like Hussain said, the parents get into many arguments but in the end they always come back together. This is a great thing since the children won't have to live with only one parent. But this relationship could bring a negative affect to the children. With the kids seeing how bad the Dad sometimes lives, they may think that his life is the lifestyle too stride for which would obviously be bad. There is also the way of parenting in the story that is somewhat different than what we are used to, and this different can be seen as good or bad. Hussain saw that different as being good, since the parents give more independence to the children. However, I see this as somewhat bad parenting to only a certain extent. I agree that parents should let children be more independent, but in this case they had let the little girl make hotdogs by herself. This should not be happening, because she was so little in age and could have died from the burns. She just became lucky, like the nurses had said in the book. But in the other instances in the book, there were somewhat okay, with them moving around a lot and letting the older children look after the youngsters. This book is really interesting, with many more intriguing plots to be revealed soon.
Hussain is correct when he states that the family’s nomadic lifestyle allows the children to be independent than other children. As he points out, the family can easily discard items that they formerly owed in their previous household before they moved to another location like the cat, Quixote, that the father Rex threw out the window on the grounds that anyone that wasn’t fond of traveling was not included in this adventure and Jeannette’s doll Tinkerbell. To justify this action of throwing the cat out the window of the car, Rosemary says that they could easily get another cat and that being a wild cat was much better than being a pet. Muhammad points out that these parents let their children be too indepedent and points that Jeannette is making hot dogs by herselves. He is not wrong, since they still allow her to cook hot dogs by herself even after her burns.
I read this book a long time ago and I really loved it, but I didn't pay attention at all to how crazy (for lack of a better word) it seems that Jeanette grew up in such a free, non-traditional way, yet she lives such a seemingly sterile, I daresay "vanilla" life as an adult. When I was reading it for the first time, I just shrugged it off, thinking maybe she was just tired of having such a wild and adventurous life so she just swung to a polar opposite life, from a desert, to a high-class city, and when I read the first chapter I just remembered that she led a normal life as an adult, but I guess I just skipped over how absolutely wild her life was. Especially when I'm stuck at home, reading about her childhood is just utterly captivating and I feel like I'm getting big cartoon character eyes every time she describes it in depth. (Mia's desert quote!) That is always interrupted with uniformly placed moments where her life seems absolutely terrible, like when her parents fight or when she describes her dad when he's drunk. However, as a small kid, she didn't know a lot about alcoholism or unhealthy relationships to worry about them, and at least at this time, her amazing experiences were glossing over the occasional rough jabs. She was too engrossed in the fun of finding turquoise and playing in the rain, that she didn't notice how traditionally bad her family's situation was. I also think because her parents, especially her father, really catered to her sense of wonder, she just lived in that world, and not her world of bad experiences. I also agree with Mia, she had nothing to compare her experience to. Her parents were never neglectful, and they never didn't love her, so I wonder how she was able to live such a different life. I know she's uncomfortable with it, and I do remember that sometimes her wild life was really hard, but I don't remember any sort of shift in her character from leaving the hospital Rex Walls style, to eating dinner with her mom, except that she was worried about her parents and embarrassed by them.
When reading the first 57 pages of the book, one of the things that becomes clear very quickly is that the Walls family does not live what we would consider a normal life. They move constantly, let their young children cook themselves meals, and don’t care to spend much time in the hospital, even after they sustain significant injuries. A lot of this chaos is caused by Jeannette’s father, Rex Walls, who is driven by his big dreams of finding gold with his Prospector and building a Glass Castle for his family. He acts unconventionally, and is sometimes dangerous, like when he deliberately almost hits his pregnant wife with his car. Even though Rex might not be easy to relate to or (in my opinion) very likable, he is certainly intriguing. One passage in the book that stood out to me about Rex is the one about how the Walls family spends Christmas. I really liked the story of Jeannette’s Christmas when she was 5 years old, and her father had just lost his job. Even though they could not afford a physical gift, Rex didn’t want to upset his children, so he took them each outside and let them pick a star to have as their Christmas gift. I really enjoyed reading about how the Walls family spent this Christmas, and the way they created joy out of difficult situation. The book, and specifically this passage, really portray the Walls family as a unit, and less as individuals. Even though they are all very independent, they still rely on each other and always spend time together. In their ever-changing life, family is really the only constant. I think that the Christmas passage shows this clearly, and it is a heartwarming point in the story. It also stood out to me in terms of Rex’s actions, because he is normally not sentimental, and doesn’t seem like someone who would be focused on gifts or goods. However, Rex cares about making his kids happy, and I think giving them the stars was a really nice thing. To me, it felt like a powerful display of Rex’s feelings for his family, because the stars are unreachable and so much larger than anything physical that they could have gotten. Overall, I was very drawn to this part of the story, and even now it makes me happy when I think about it.
Olivia, I agree with you that there are moments where Rex seems very attached to his children. Something interesting for me is that his attitude seems to change even with regards to his children. One thing that stood out to me as an example of Rex's shifting attitudes is when he throws Quixote the cat out the car window because he won't stop making noise. What's interesting is that this upsets his children, so it shows that he doesn't always prioritize his children's happiness. However, Rex also tells his children stories before they go to bed, and helps Jeannette feel more confident when she's convinced there's a monster under her bed; at times, he seems to really care about making them happy. Rex is a character who has a lot of different aspects and I find it very interesting to read about him.
Two things that intrigue me in this book are the Rex and his wife's beliefs and how differently Brian, Lori, Janette, and now Maureen are being raised from me and how that affects their way of thinking. Rex and his wife believe things that are quite contrary to my own personal beliefs. Personally, I have learned to trust doctors and nurses knowing that they have gone through years of training and studying the human body. However, Rex does not seem to believe that they are not trustworthy as shown on page 13 when he calls the doctors in the hospital where Jeanette is being treated "heads-up-their-asses med-school quack." This belief can also be seen when Rex takes Jeanette from the hospital without the doctor's consent and when he does the same with his wife a few pages later. Another instance in which my beliefs diverge from those of Rex and his wife was when Rex thought it was ok to throw their cat, Quixot, a poor, innocent animal out the window. His excuse for throwing Quixote out the window was that the cat complaining was an obstacle in their adventure. I do not believe that the cat was creating an obstacle in the way of their adventure and it is not even possible to know why the cat was complaining as the can could not properly communicate what was making it uncomfortable. The way Brian, Lori, Janette and Maureen are growing up is quite differentt from mine as I was not raised living a nomadic lifestyle with parents who lived paycheck to paycheck. This difference completely affected how we reacted to different situtations. If I had been in a fire like Jeanette was at the beginning of this book, I would have cried like a baby and probably thought my life was ending. Jeanette on the other hand did not cry at all and even said on page 10 that she would not have been okay with not being okay. Another way they was raised differently from me was that they were raised to not believe in Santa Claus. I was raised to believe in Santa Claus and thus had some materialistic values imprinted in my mind. However, the Walls children did not believe in Santa Clause and thus did not care for the materialistic value of presents and gifts.
Vasily, I agree with your point about how different Jeanette's upbringing and beliefs are from ours. Something that I didn't think about when I read that section of the book, was how Jeanette wasn't taught to trust the doctors in the hospital. I think that is a really interesting point because we have been raised to believe in science and medicine, and that is actually a really big difference between Jeanette's beliefs, and ours. I think an event that really shows how Jeanette's childhood was different from mine was when some girls from her school beat her up, and she told her dad that there were six girls that beat her up instead of three, and that she had been able to fight back even though she didn't. If that had happened to me, I would have told my dad about everything that had happened, and I would have been a lot more scared than she was, but because Jeanette's father always taught her to fight back and face everything head on, she felt like she had to lie to her father and hide the fact that she was as hurt as she was.
The most aggravating part of the reading for me was how severely dysfunctional Jeannette’s parents are. They consistently make irresponsible decisions and seem to put their own twisted beliefs about society in the way of their children’s well-being. An early example of this is Jeannette’s catching-on-fire episode when she is three years old. Firstly, her mother allows the toddler to cook hot dogs by herself, with no supervision whatsoever. As she recovers from her burns in the hospital, her father decides to “check out, Rex Walls-style” (14) by taking her out early and escaping without paying the bill. He lets Jeannette shoot a gun at age four and she recalls, “Dad said my sharpshooting would come in handy if the feds ever surrounded us” (21).
Rex embraces a nomadic, on-the-road lifestyle in which he can move the family to a town, stir up trouble, and move on to somewhere new, leaving behind the financial and legal obligations to his name in what he calls the “skedaddle.” His economic plan revolves around striking it rich with gold, hardly a responsible approach to providing for one’s family. His lofty hopes do not translate to real money as Rex cannot hold down a job and the family is poor. These factors combined result in a complete lack of stability or a sense of security in the future for the children, since their lives are constantly uprooted. Meanwhile, Jeannette’s mother, Rose Mary, comes off as selfish and apathetic about her children at times, like when she chooses to buy a piano rather than beds or furniture for the family. When Rex throws the pet cat out of the car window, Rose Mary tells Jeannette, “‘Don’t be so sentimental’” (18). Rex is an alcoholic. He drinks and drives with his family in the car and occasionally gets in explosive fights with his wife. Although the couple is able to instill some healthy values in their children, they go about raising them in an extremely irresponsible way which is bound to result in long-term emotional and psychological damage.
Silas, I strongly agree with your point that it was aggravating to read all those controversial actions taken by Rex and Rose Mary. Sometimes, when I was reading the parts of the story that were filled with these controversial actions, I would be amazed at their mindless decisions that Jeanette's parents made throughout the story. Again, I would like to agree with your point that not all hope was lost as the parents did instill some good into the lives of their children. Rex and Rose Mary did teach their kids math and how to read and other important pieces of knowledge that are very helpful for the kids in the real world. I believe that the most important lesson they instilled into their kids was independence. Their nomadic lifestyle taught the kids to never get too dependent on those around you and to rely on yourself for everything. At one point in the story, Jeanette says that she and her siblings met new kids but made sure not to get too close because they knew they were eventually going to leave again and most likely leave everything behind. This independence is essential at times in the real world and this is reflected by the success that Jeanette has as indicated at the begging of the story. Therefore, I agree with both your points that Rex and Rose Mary's parenting is controversial but it did instill some important lessons in the minds of their children.
Silas, I completely agree, and I think the words you use in your second paragraph say it best. "His economic plan revolves around striking it rich with gold, hardly a responsible approach to providing for one’s family. His lofty hopes do not translate to real money as Rex cannot hold down a job and the family is poor. These factors combined result in a complete lack of stability or a sense of security in the future for the children, since their lives are constantly uprooted." There's nothing wrong with being an eccentric person who doesn't follow the typical rules of society, but when your behavior is to the detriment of others, especially your children -- who you have legal and moral obligations to protect and nurture -- you simply cannot live that way. Hussain argues that the kids have learned skills from the nomadic lifestyle. This may be true, but learning survival skills can be accomplished in many ways, including those that don't require you to pretend that you are on the run from federal law enforcement. Hussain's quote of Jeanette's learned behavior to not get too attached to anyone they meet is not something that I would be consider to be a skill. Sure, you should learn to move on in life, but frequent drastic change in a child's social life is more of a source of psychological distress than a skill to be learned.
3. Choose a passage from the reading that you think is just outstanding writing. Include the passage and articulate why you find this selection so powerful.
"When the rains finally came, the skies darkened and the air became heavy. Raindrops the size of marbles came pelting out of the sky. Some parents worried that their kids might get hit by lightning, but Mom and Dad never did, and they let us go out and play in the warm, driving water. We splashed and sang and danced. Great bolts of lightning cracked from the low hanging clouds, and thunder shook the ground. We gasped over the most spectacular bolts, as if we were all watching a fireworks show. After the storm, Dad took us to the arroyos, and we watched the flash floods come roaring through. The next day the saguaros and prickly pears were fat from drinking as much as they could, because they knew it might be a long, long time until the next rain."
I really like the descriptions in this passage. First, the description of the air as heavy, right before a storm. I'm not sure why it strikes me but I completely get what the author means - it's the same feeling I get when it's really humid out. Somehow, once you notice how the air feels heavy, it won't go away. I also like the description of the plants "drinking" up the rainwater.
1. Write about something that intrigues, impresses, amuses, shocks, puzzles, disturbs, repulses or aggravates you in the reading.
I really, really, really don't like the author's parents. I completely understand not wanting to live a "highbrow" lifestyle, but the level to which they reject any reasonable standard of living is not demonstrative of them being progressive thinkers. It just makes me think they're mentally ill. This idea is furthered by their distrust of modern medicine, how they take their injured daughter and flee out of a hospital, being on the run from the "FBI", the constant moving. If you have personal opinions about living one way or another, that's perfectly fine. But a child is not to be subject to the random wishes and wants of their parents, especially if those wishes and wants have a destructive, dangerous, and unhealthy flourish to them. I'm sure they care about their children deep down, and clearly with the Christmas story they do, but I don't understand how any sane person could subject their children to that kind of life and not feel at least somewhat guilty. If you want to live out in the middle of nowhere, moving around every day, that's perfectly fine. But children are entitled to a reasonable upbringing.
Sam makes an interesting point that Jeannette’s parents are neglectful, and despite the parent’s good intentions, that neglectfulness is harmful to Jeannette and her siblings' upbringing. I completely agree with his point and the book does well in expanding on this idea.
The second chapter, I found to be one of the most representative of how Jeannette’s parents’ neglectfulness is ultimately harmful to Jeannette and her siblings. In this chapter Jeannette suffered large burns as a consequence of being left unsupervised while she boiled hot dogs at the age of three. Jeannette’s mother believed Jeannette to be “mature of her age” and therefore allowed Jeannette to cook for herself on many occasions. Jeannette’s mother’s extreme trust in Jeannette might seem great (why shouldn’t parents trust their own children, after all?) However the ultimate impact of this trust—that being Jeannette’s extensive burns that resulted in a long hospital stay— certainly goes to show that despite her parent’s good intentions, Jeannette has suffered damage from what is most certainly a form of neglect.
Furthermore, the incident Jeannette suffered on page 30 well exemplifies Sam’s idea. Jeannette fell out of the family car, the Green Caboose, and had to wait some stretch of time before her parents noticed she had fallen out. This, in itself, is neglectful on the part of the parents as neither of them thought it necessary to make sure their kids put on a seatbelt; however, what happens next really goes to show the true extent of Jeannette’s parents’ neglect. After finally coming to retrieve Jeannette, Jeannette’s father tends to her wounds as best as he can and remarks, “Damn honey, you busted your snot locker pretty good.” In saying this Jeannette’s father reveals that he believed the incident to have been Jeannette’s fault. Instead of apologizing for his obvious neglect, Jeannette’s father both doesn’t take her to the hospital and tells Jeannette that she was the one to bust her nose. This remark is shocking as Jeannette should have never been in that situation if her parents were more attentive to the needs of their young children.
In my opinion, I think the narrator's parents are good parents and I enjoy them. Although you can argue that they are careless and irresponsible, they give their children a lot of love and I feel sometimes the parents adventurous side can benefit the children in the long term. Also although they do not have a lot of money, the parents still try to treat the children once in a while like at the casinos or taking them to restaurants and I think thats an example of them saying that they are sorry to their children and an attempt to make it up to them. They are funny, caring and I think that is all you need as a parent and that genuine love makes up for the carelessness and immaturity they show sometimes.
I agree with Sam´s second response. The way that the parents think, and the way that they impose their thoughts on their kids is unacceptable. To make their kids think that the FBI is chasing after them is just plain cruel, and the kids should not have to go through their childhood the way they currently are. Also, I agree with the idea that Jeanette´s parents might have some sort of mental illness. The idea that one would blatantly tell lies to their kids, pull them out of the hospital when Jeanette is injured, ship them around the country whenever they want, and not send their kids to school is insane. To add on to this, it is explained in the text that the father likes to drink. That idea certainly does not help his case. Having a drinking problem clouds one´s judgement and makes them prone to doing irresponsible things. Sound familiar? Furthermore, I agree with the point that the parents are being horrible parents and that the kids deserve a better life than the one they have now. The idea that the father just doesn't want to hold a stable job shows he is royally unqualified to be a father. Being a father comes with responsibility, and he and his wife should realize that in order to be good parents, they should put down roots, and get stable, permanent jobs that allow the kids to have a normal childhood, not the childhood that they have been subjected to.
10. Which characters remind you of friends or family members?
Jeannette’s dad reminds me in many ways and reminds me a lot of my own. As shown throughout the beginning of the book, he is a man dictated by logic. In the book he is a highly skilled engineer and the way that we see Jeannette being bullied for being smart when she goes to school shows that he is also a very good teacher. My dad is maybe one of the smartest men I know as well, him being a psychiatrist. Also his demanding presence he has in the book, of always thinking he is right based on what he knows also applies for my dad. The dad in the book isn’t the most reasonable guy though. Believing in a bunch of conspiracies about the government or when he basically steals Jeannette from the hospital and says that, “ You don’t have to worry anymore, baby… You're safe now.” By doing this he is showing that he doesn’t trust medicine and that he knows how to heal her better than actual doctors. Now in this regard, my dad differs greatly from Rex. My dad actually getting a medical degree believes in the sciences heavily. He also is not one to believe a conspiracy theory, needing proof for things he cannot see. But what really struck me while reading the book was when he was letting them pick out stars as a present, She picked a planet, but this really reminded me of my dad in a lot of ways because as he is a person deeply rooted in logic, he has an almost irrational love for his family. Just like how Rex can’t actually give the stars to his kids as presents.
I really enjoyed your comparison/contrast between Rex and your dad. One point to consider: I think Rex was motivated less by his contempt for "quack" doctors and more by the need to escape being billed. While his morals are lacking, he certainly comes up with wild and entertaining ways of dodging his responsibilities.
What I find particularly striking about the book is how Jeanette Walls tells the story of her extraordinary childhood without judgement. The opening scene—Jeanette is headed to a party and sees her mother rooting through a dumpster out of her taxi window—is powerful. We can understand her embarrassment at the sight of her mother and are immediately intrigued by the gulf between them. She is able to connect us readers—who can more easily relate to her privileged life on Park Avenue—to the crazy circumstances of her childhood and the unbelievable lives of her parents. We see how normal her life is now compared to her unconventional upbringing. But as Jeanette begins to tell the story of her childhood, she doesn't criticize her mother and father's parenting, she isn't accusatory, she doesn't even seem to regret a single moment, emphasizing her parents affection as much as their erratic behavior and their inability to provide. It is clear from the get-go how much she loves and respects her parents, despite their stubborn rejection of an orthodox life. I find this really interesting because in her situation I think it would be easy to resent the insane parents who deprived her of a stable life, dragging her as they "skedaddle" from town to town, often homeless, with little to eat. Her account is honest. She doesn't hide her families flaws, she exposes everything: her father's drinking and gambling problems, her parent's paranoia surrounding the government and general mental instability, her father's rages, her mother's tough, almost indifferent, attitude, the family's struggle to get by. But she also seems to truly admire them and their values. Her parents believe in family, love, education, respect, resilience, innovation, creativity, spirit, etc, and impart their values onto their children. Jeanette seems to feel that her parents taught her harsh but important lessons that perhaps more privileged children would not have learned. While most children are protected and censored, the Walls family push their children to face reality, to appreciate its cruelty and beauty. And, while recognizing how unconventional and concerning her childhood is to the average reader, Jeanette paints it not as a harrowing experience but a fantastical adventure. She writes affectionately of her father's intelligence, his dreams, his resourcefulness, as well as her mother's wit and creativity. She is able to explore her parents worldview without judgement, she humanizes them to the extent where I forget how insane they are and find myself growing fond of them. Rereading this book, I once again find myself rooting for her father a misunderstood genius (yes, I am aware that he is a subpar father and junkie who is probably bipolar), her mother, an eccentric, spirited artist, and the outcast family fed up with civilization, struggling to live the free, adventurous life they want to in the confines of society.
Isabel, I also found Jeannette’s perspective on her childhood to be particularly intriguing. It is interesting how she is able to speak about her past with the same perspective as the present. In a way, it seems like she is more connected to her past, and the crazy adventures that she had with her family growing up. For me, the opening scene came off as slightly uncomfortable (Jeannette seeing her mother and being so embarrassed that she went straight home) where as the rest of the story feels natural and honest. While reading about Jeannette’s childhood, I was able to let go of my judgements about her life because she was letting go of the judgements about her life. I agree that the opening scene allows us to connect to Jeannette, and I think that this connection helps us to accept and understand Jeannette’s upbringing. Because she can appreciate her parents, even with their major flaws, the reader is also able to accept her parents. As much as I can judge Rex and Rose Mary because of their parenting downfalls (the drinking, the distrust, the lack of attention to their kids’ safety at times, etc.), I am also able to acknowledge their intelligence, creativity, and the love that they have for Jeannette and her siblings. From a young age, Jeannette is able to develop courage and independence that someone living a sedentary and more “normal” lifestyle probably wouldn’t be able to (I speak from experience), so there are some advantages to the lifestyle that the Walls family leads. In the book so far, I think that although unorthodox, the Walls family lifestyle hasn’t caused any long term problems for Jeannette or any of her siblings. For example, I at first found myself intensely judging Rex Walls for just taking his family members out of the hospital with no warning. However, looking back on it, Jeannette and her mother seem to be fine, so there were no real consequences. Because of Jeannette’s perspective on her childhood, I have realized that I have to let go of some of my judgements and recognize the many positives to the unorthodox and adventurous lifestyle of the Walls family.
14. This part of the book is controversial because...
I feel that this part of the book is controversial
I feel that this part of the book is controversial because it depicts a way of life that is morally wrong in so many ways. The parents, especially the father, seem to have a distrust for modern society and a normal way of life, and while everyone is entitled to their beliefs, it is morally wrong to end up hurting their children while exercising that belief. Furthermore, the idea to not send their children to school and teach them what the parents think is necessary instead of a conventional education that will better prepare them for the real world is just preposterous, and in doing this, are going to give their kids a permanent setback that will negatively affect them for the rest of their lives. To add on to this, the idea that a father would pull their daughter out of a hospital before they were healthy is wrong on so many levels. It does not occur to me how any sane person would distrust medicine, and exercise their distrust by pulling their badly injured daughter out of the hospital, which could have ended up really hurting Jeanette. Finally, while I am not opposed to teaching your child (of a reasonable age) how to shoot a gun, I think that any sane person would realize that giving your four year old daughter a gun and teaching her how to shoot it is irresponsible, immature, and very dangerous. I am of the opinion that the parents are not fit to be responsible guardians of their children because of the unsafe and awful lifestyle that they are forcing innocent children to live, and I think that the children are deserving of a safe, normal, healthy life.
Perhaps the most enjoyable element of this book so far is how the author manages to use symbols and themes to bring depth and intrigue to Jeannette’s story.
The symbol of fire is one present throughout most of the book. The second chapter recounts the story about how Jeannette caught fire boiling hot dogs at the age of three. The fire resulted in her needing reconstructive skin grafts to patch up some of her more damaged areas. This whole chapter, however, lacked any real description of the damage Jeannette suffered other than the description of some scars. This interesting choice left me believing that the fire’s damage must have not been severe. This element of Jeannette’s life was later recontextualized when, on page 16, Jeannette’s favorite doll, Tinkerbell, suffered similar burns. Jeannette witnessed first hand this once beautiful doll’s features melt. The doll’s nose was completely burned off and her mouth was left disfigured. This was the author’s first real description of what burns do visually to your body and as such this scene serves to recontextualize the severity of Jeannette’s burns. Suddenly my perspective was changed, Jeannette hadn’t simply escaped unhurt by the fire, as I had previously believed, she had instead only thought she had. In reality, I now assumed Jeannette left just as disfigured as her doll.
Similarly, the theme of abandonment present throughout the story helps to contextualize events to come. On page 17, both Tinkerbell and Quixote, the family cat, were abandoned when the family was moving. Quixote was thrown out of the car by Jeannette's father. This act shocks Jeannette and she even cries. Jeannette's mother tried to comfort her by saying “Quixote was going to be a wild cat, which is way more fun than being a house cat.” This painted not only the father as heartless for throwing out a cat after a single outburst, but also painted the mother as callous because she tried to give Quixote’s abandonment a silver lining. This event on its face seems relatively unimportant in the grand scheme of things. However, when Jeannette falls out of the family car when they are driving on page 30, Quixote’s abandonment gives the impression that there is a real possibility that Jeannette’s parents aren’t going to come back to her. Even Jeannette worries about this remarking that “like Quixote, I was a bother and burden they could do without.” Despite her family eventually picking her up, in the moment Quixote’s fate serves to bring suspense to the plot as Jeannette wouldn’t be the only close family member abandoned on the road.
Ultimately I really value how this author manages to create suspense and intrigue through their use of symbols and themes.
Peter, I completely agree with you that fire and abandonment are recurring aspects of this book. When I read the book, I hadn't realized that there was no description of Jeanette's wounds after the fire. However, once I finished the chapter with her in the hospital I realized that the wounds must have been quite bad as her whole right side was covered in bandages and the doctors were telling her that she was lucky to be alive. I do see the parallels between the Tinker Bell doll incident and Jeanette's hot dog fire incident and I agree that the Tinker Bell doll incident was a realization for both the reader and Jeanette herself. I think that this incident was also a realization for Jeanette that it was ok for someone to have burns. The very last line of the chapter was "Even though her face was melted, she still was my favorite toy."(16) This shows that even through such burns, Jeanette still loved Tinker Bell as much as she had before. On the next page, when she forgot Tinker Bell behind, she wrote that she "hoped whoever found Tinker Bell would love her despite her melted face."(17) On the topic of abandonment, there is quite a difference in the way that Rex treats the abandonment of Tinker Bell in comparison to the abandonment of Quixote. When Jeanette left Tinker Bell behind, Rex reassured her that Tinker Bell would be ok and could survive on her own. Yet when Quixote was abandoned on the side of the road, Rex did not reassure Jeanette and tell her that Quixote would be able to survive on her own. Even when her mother tried reassuring her, she was not telling Jeanette that Quixote would survive just that life would be more fun for Quixote now that he was a wild cat. I agree with you that Rex's actions and his wife's reaction paint them a heartless father and a callous mother. I also agree that there was a connection between the abandonment of Quixote and the abandonment of Jeanette. Had they not abandoned Quixote then I do not think Jeanette would have thought that they would abandon her.
Dear Peter, I'm often not the greatest at analyzing books. I don't see things that other people might see, so I enjoyed your bringing to light of the parallels between Jeannette's "hotdog incident" and how we as readers are shown that, through Tinkerbell, her injuries were actually serious. I was wondering while I was reading if the burns were still there, or how bad they were, but my wondering was diminished when the book failed to talk more about it. Your response now makes me think more deeply about the book and the subtle details and symbols in it. One thing that I did get, and appreciate out of the passage with the fire is how her parents have taught her, either a blessing or curse, that she shouldn't be afraid of it, even after being burned. She goes right back to the fire when many of us would be afraid of it. Though I don't agree with their parenting style (who lets THREE-YEAR-OLDS cook on an OPEN FLAME?), I do respect that she's not afraid of the fire. With the cat, Quixote, I thought your ideas about the themes, and what was through Jeanette's brain when she fell out of the car, are completely accurate, and I also was in suspense hoping that her parents would pick her up. I was pretty sure they would though, because of the passage about how distraught her father was over losing a child. All in all, I agree with what you've said, and am glad you brought to light something I didn't notice.
So far, I really like this book and I think it’s very interesting. A character that I really liked reading about – although I’m not sure if I like him as a person – was Rex, the father. Sometimes, he did things that I found kind or funny. For example, when the family didn’t have enough money for Christmas gifts, he decided to give all his kids a star – whichever one in the sky they liked the best. I thought this was a very sweet thing to do and showed how much he cared for his kids. He also used it as an opportunity to teach his kids, telling Jeannette that “planets glowed because reflected light was constant” after she picked Venus (pg. 40). Rex also, though, did things that made me uncomfortable or upset. When Rosemary jumped out of the car, he didn’t try to reason with her; instead he chased after her with the car, cursing and coming dangerously close to hitting her. The kids were obviously afraid, but he ignored them and kept being aggressive. I was genuinely worried that he would hurt Rosemary, and I think that he acted overly cruel both to his wife and his kids in this situation. Overall, I really like reading about Rex because he acts in such an interesting way and clearly isn’t a one-dimensional character, but I’m also not comfortable with everything he does. I also thought the way the kids were raised and educated was very interesting. On the one hand, Jeannette knew how to fire a gun and “could hit five out of six beer bottles at thirty paces” by age four (pg. 21). Teaching a four-year-old how to fire a gun isn’t a very typical thing that parents do, to say the least. I felt that this showed Jeannette’s parents were overconfident in their kids’ abilities or irresponsible or perhaps a little bit of both, since teaching such a young child to handle such a dangerous weapon is not very safe. On the other hand, though, Jeannette’s parents seem like they’ve done something right – by age three, Jeannette could cook hot dogs and the nurses tell her she could read “as well as a six-year-old” (pg. 11). While it might not be a good idea to have a three-year-old cooking hot dogs, this and her reading ability do show that Jeannette’s parents are doing a good job teaching responsibility and life skills. I think that there’s a debate to be had over this parenting style, which, while not seen as socially acceptable, does appear to have some benefit. Also, from the current point in the story, Jeannette seems happy with her life and looks up to her parents – so it’s very interesting that in the beginning chapter she said she was embarrassed of them. I’m curious to see her outlook on their lifestyle change.
Zoe, I totally agree with you that Rex is a really interesting character to read about even though I don’t really like him as a person. I also don’t really get why sometimes he could be such a kind, caring father while other times he could be so irresponsible and do such foolish things. An event that made a really big impression on me that made me feel like Rex was a really good father in some ways was the time he took Jeanette with him to chase the old demon that he clearly knows doesn’t exist just because Jeanette was afraid. In the end he told her, “‘ All you have to do, Mountain Goat, is show old Demon that you’re not afraid.’” (pg 17)That part and particularly that quote really moved me. Most parents would not waste their time helping their child chase away an imaginary terror, but he did. He could also be seen as a really good parent for teaching his kids things like facing their fears which many parents overlook in their children’s upbringing. Then there are times that he does things that really disturbs me, like the time he just took Jeanette from the hospital and ran when she hasn't fully recovered yet. That section also talked about how he didn’t bring Brian to the hospital when he cracked his head open and how he took Lori to a Navajo witch doctor when she was stung by a scorpion.(pg 13) These decisions sound really dangerous and irresponsible, contradictory to Rex’s intelligence, and really aggravates me. I also agree with you that Jeanette’s parents are irresponsible and a bit overconfident. However, I think that this parenting style is more detrimental than beneficial in total. Although it’s true Jeanette was able to read and cook well at such a young age, I don’t think it’s really necessary to have these skills at such a young age. Childhood is the time to have fun and be carefree. This parenting style is moreover very dangerous, as shown in the time Jeanette burned herself, and I think it’s overall not right.
Something I noticed was that the style of writing definitely reflected the author's way of thinking as a toddler. It was sophisticated, but curious and gave me an air of a person who still had so much to learn from the world - in many senses. This added to my reading of the passage and enhanced my understanding of the author's personal experience as a young child. With this, though, it was even more jarring to learn about the events the author went through at this age. Her cat was thrown out of a car, she was burned, she herself flew out of a car, and she moved from home to home in an endless cycle with no say at all in the matter. This, of course, is disturbing enough on its own, but what particularly struck me was the fact that the author wrote as if all this was perfectly normal. It's sickening and heartbreaking to acknowledge that there are children who think that this type of improper care by their parents is okay, because they don't have the knowledge of what 'normal' is. It really stuck with me when the author's dad asked her, "Don't I always take care of you?" and she responded with, "Course you do," without a second thought (page 17). It's so messed up that she was neglected and mistreated in different ways and could do nothing about it. With all this though, I wonder about the psychological effects of such an upbringing on the author now. She was stuck in the back of a truck with her siblings for way too long of a time, was constantly on the run, lived with parents who didn't treat her or their other children right, and surely experienced countless other hardships. This would most definitely have affected her in the long run and I'm curious to see if this is discussed or to learn more about this as the book continues.
I agree, Ari, that as a toddler going through such an erratic upbringing, Jeannette accepted her life and saw it as completely normal if only because it was the only thing she knew. This dynamic is surely present in children who make excuses for abusive parents without realizing that their actions are not acceptable no matter what. Jeannette is definitely more forgiving of her father's actions than is healthy, such as when she immediately stops being angry at him after she falls out of the car when he calls her nose a "snot locker" (31). She sees him as a figure who can do no wrong in her life. I'm also interested in seeing how her childhood had longterm psychological effects on her. However, I feel your observation about the writing style of the memoir during her early years is more a reflection of Jeannette's skill as an author than a true portrayal of how she thought as a child. She fuses sophisticated writing with the innocence of a little girl to represent her younger self in a way that is entertaining, informative, and probably pretty close to her real attitudes at the time.
This is Michelle's post. This website is not being nice to her, so I'm posting for her.
I read this book in 6th grade, but rereading it again, there are many parts of the book that still shocks me. On page 9 it states, "I was on fire. It's my earliest memory. I was three years old..." I have forgotten that Jeanette was only 3 when this happened, and I'm still extremely shocked and puzzled about why her parents think it was okay for a three year old to cook by herself. It really aggravates me that after she came back from the hospital her parents continued to let her cook by herself with no supervision. I wonder how could they have not learned the lesson of the danger of it yet? Her parents did seem to love her but their irresponsible actions like these always confuses me. It is really intriguing how Jeanette did not become afraid of the fire afterward but rather became fascinated by it though. Most people would have been afraid of fire if not scarred for life if they had been burned as badly as Jeanette but she didn't even become more cautious of fire. Instead she played with fire and then put them out. Through this it was like she became their master. Page 33 states, "I was torturing the fire, giving it life, and snuffing it out." It was like she felt that she had overcome fire once and will always do so. I feel that this really demonstrates Jeanette's brave, strong, and persistent personality since the time she was such a small child. Later on however, you find out that her experience being burned was not completely ineffective on her. Page 33 also supports, “I tried to scream to warn them but nothing came out of my throat. I wanted to reach over and shake them awake, but I couldn’t move. The fire was growing bigger, stronger, and angrier.” Although on the surface Jeanette didn’t seem afraid of fire after she was burned, her reaction to this fire shows that a big fire actually would freeze her with fear. This sheds light to the insecure part of Jeanette's personality that is not as visible as her other characteristics. We can learn that although she is mostly a brave girl, there are moments when insecurities and fears swallow her up. continues in next post
After all these years, I could understand Jeanette’s parents a tiny bit better, but they're still extremely puzzling to me. Both of them seem to be educated and really intelligent at times while acting like fools and making stupid decisions at others. Her mother taught all her kids to read pictureless books by the time they were five. Page 57 states, “Mom read everything: Charles Dickens, William Faulkner, Henry Miller, …” From the name of these Authors you could tell that she probably received a pretty high level of education. She writes her own novels and even occasionally makes deep statements like “ It’s the Joshua tree’s struggle that gives it its beauty.” However, sometimes she would do many puzzling things that seem stupid. For example, letting Jeanettte cook by herself at three. The text states on page 28, “Suffering when your young is good for you, she said. It immunized your body and your soul, and that was why she ignored us kids when we cried.” This explains her way of raising her kids, and although the statement makes a bit of sense, it doesn’t fit the situation. It’s especially irresponsible to not care about young children crying, something serious might be happening to them but they don’t know how to voice it yet. You would think that with her intelligence she would have these common sense but she doesn’t. This is demonstrated again when she climbed out of the car and ran away when she was many months pregnant just because her husband won’t believe she was 10 months pregnant and carried all her children for more than 10 month. She should know that was impossible and running around with a pregnant stomach seemed a bit dangerous. This whole incident made me realize that Jeanette’s mom probably had sort of a romanticist type personality. I think it’s not that she doesn’t know these common sense but she chooses not to believe in them. This would explain everything, including the reason that she chooses to follow her husband and let her childrens starve sometimes instead of making the family stay with her wealthy mother. That is one of the things that really aggravates me though. I don’t get how could you let your kids live such a life of instability and poverty when there's an easy alternative? Jeanette’s dad is similar to and even more confusing than her mom. However, I still haven’t really figured out why there is such a drastic contrast in his intelligence and actions.
This is Lily's post. The website is not giving her a break....
I think something that this reading has taught me is how far people will go to guard and honor their belief system and pride, even if it does not improve their life in any way, and is sometimes harmful. We see the author's parents repeatedly stick to their opinions, superstitions, and judgements without any grounds for these beliefs. They are often blind to, or just don't care about how their behavior may affect their children. I don’t think this necessarily makes them bad people, just stubborn people stuck in their ways. We see this at every stage of their lives, from when Walls is a toddler to when she is an adult, juggling a successful professional life while trying to help her parents. When she gets badly burned and must go to the hospital, her parents don’t trust the doctors - they wanted to get her out of the “antiseptic joint” with it’s “med-school quacks” as soon as possible. Her father nearly gets in a fistfight with her doctor, refusing to believe he was wrong about what should be done to treat her burns. Both parents seem dogmatic to a fault, which sometimes ends up possibly endangering their children - like when Brian cracks his head open and they don’t take him to the hospital. Another instance of when the father’s preconceived notions of how the world works overshadows logic is when he smokes cigarettes from the wrong end to throw the “FBI Agents” off his trail. Later in their lives, the parents choose to be homeless despite their daughter’s best efforts to help them out. They deny needing help, believing that the way they live their lives is the way to go. Her mother insists that her daughter is “the one who needs help.” She seems to be holding on so tightly to her perception of how life should be that she refuses the help that her daughter offers her to bring her out of poverty. It isn’t clear to me yet whether her parents are aware of their stubborness, or if they have become so merged with their refusal to change their beliefs that they don’t realize it. They are willing to put themselves and their family in difficult situations just to guard their superstitions and ideology, which I think is true for many people, even if it isn't this extreme.
9. Connection of the book to my own life.
ReplyDeleteI am in no way living the nomadic life of these people. I've lived in the same apartment all my life, go to the same school every day (except I guess now), take the same train, and am not on the run from the FBI (more like debt collectors). In that way, no, there isn't a connection, I cannot relate to Jeannette, Brian, or Lori. I have also never started myself or any other establishment on fire (though I have ignited pasta).
No, the way I found I related to the book was in the passage about the stars. I'm terrible at constellations. I can find Ursa Major maybe...couldn't live in the 1600s where they used the stars to navigate...YIKES (but Columbus never did get to Asia, did he?) Anyway, during the summer, I've had my fun at Mystic Seaport. A magical old gateway to the past. Set in 1876, yes, wow the same year Gore Vidal (a personal favorite) wrote his book about. They have old homes, and more importantly old ships there. The Joseph Conrad, after the author, though it was renamed that, was a training ship, turned pleasure craft until the guy went bankrupt circumnavigating the globe, and my personal favorite, the Charles W. Morgan, the last wooden whaleship in America (also on a sweatshirt I occasionally wear). For a week or two every summer, Mystic Seaport becomes my home. More specifically, the 90 degree, below decks quarters on the Conrad. It is there, that I go sailing on the Mystic River--on smaller sailboats called Dyer Dhows. Now how does this relate to constellations you might wonder? Well, every night there are all different activities, like climbing the rigging of a ship, to Breeches Buoy (ow!--an old lifesaving device for stranded vessels), and now getting to my point, the Treworgy Planetarium. It's here that the planetarium guy, Brian (another parallel haha) gives us the rundown on the stars and constellations. Orion, Aquila, Ursa Major and Minor, and so on (call me crazy, but I don't see any of the animals). In the book, Jeannette's dad tells her to pick a star, and they look up at the sky. The beautiful night sky, with millions of stars, and planets, and galaxies far far away ;) Now as a New Yorker, with my polluted sky, as the book says it, I cannot see the stars. At Mystic, and especially at the planetarium, as I would hope you could in a planetarium, I can see the stars. We try to recount where the Joseph Conrad was, using the stars, in the summer of '33. But, false stars are no better than one at all, the magic is actually seeing them. Aboard the Morgan, which smells terribly of whale oil, I find it especially magical to look up and see all the stars. That is my "Glass Castle" moment. I don't have my phone, on an old ship, dark, only at the Seaport with 30 other people, water glistening, an old 1800s town. I feel like I am living in a part of history. A time where the stars were visible, there were no distractions, and we could enjoy nature, life, especially the sea. Or in Jeannette's case, the desert. They have no distractions either, no school, just nature, and being out in the elements. So like Jeannette, I enjoyed the stars, but I didn't lay claim to any. I'm not smart enough to know their names.
Now I wrote a lot, and might've tried to be a little funny. I'm 150% sure this is more than 350 words (checked, more like 600, sorry!) but I'm listening to some good music, and when that happens, I like to reminisce, and write a lot.
I am relieved to learn that you are not on the run from the Feds or from debt collectors, Harry! This was fun to read, and I enjoyed the humorous recollections!
Delete1) Write about something that intrigues, impresses, amuses, shocks, puzzles, disturbs,
ReplyDeleterepulses or aggravates you in the reading.
What is amusing is that the parents of this impoverished family have some strange beliefs. Rex Walls, a former member of the US air force, doesn’t believe in modern medicine. For example on page 8, he says, “Your mother should have taken you to that witch doctor the day you got burned . . . not to these headsuptheirasses medschool quacks." You would think that a former member of the air force would appreciate modern medicine, but no you would be wrong. This man also knows binary and believes it to be superior. For example, on page 35, the author writes, “I tried to explain to her about binary numbers, and how they were the system that computers used and how Dad said they were far superior to other numeric systems.” The mother is a woman who believes that she carried her children in her womb for more than 9 months. On page 26, the mother states, "I always carry children longer than most women. . . Lori was in my womb for fourteen months.” This woman is convinced that her children are in her womb longer than the usual amount of nine months and believes she and her children are special due to her belief that she carries children in her womb longer than nine months. The mother of the family is a strong believer of letting your children do whatever they want like a laissez faire capitalist dealing with the economy. She believes that letting your children go whatever they want strengthens them as they will make mistakes and learn from those mistakes made. On page 36 the author writes, “She felt it was good for kids to do what they wanted because they learned a lot from their mistakes. Mom was not one of those fussy mothers who got upset when you came home dirty or played in the mud or fell and cut yourself. She said people should get things like that out of their systems when they were young.” The children essentially take care of themselves and go through their day mostly without parental supervision.
I agree, Khang, that Rex and Rosemary's beliefs range from strange to beyond the pale. I am curious to know what you think of Rose Mary's parenting philosophy.
DeleteThis book is quite different from the others that we have read so far this year. It gives deep descriptions of the narrator’s life similar to “What is the What.” But as they say, different is good, and this book is, so far, great.
ReplyDeleteOne part of the book that I liked was how it went from the present day to the past to explain what had been happening in the author’s life. The first chapter which was very brief showed the author’s mother digging through trash. This had aggravated me because Jeannette was embarrassed by her parents being homeless. The author was in the car and slid down her seat so she wouldn’t be able to see her. This feels like a tense relationship because Jeannette didn’t want to ruin her status in society. It became worse, because she went back home and put on vivaldi like nothing really happened. On page four of the book it states, “I put some Vivaldi on, hoping the music would calm me down” and it later states, “I could never enjoy the room without worrying about Mom and Dad … I was embarrassed by them.” A person should treat their parents with respect and shouldn’t be shameful because of who they are.
Other than that, the rest of the plot was okay. The second chapter shows the relationship between the different family members, especially the mother and father. A common pattern shown in the book is stability and instability. Every other part there is a problem occuring in the book. At first, Jeannette is on fire and is brought to the hospital where her dad does not like it at all, he almost starts a fight with the doctor causing security to come in and escort the family out. The Mom and Dad somewhat have a problem with arguing. One major scene is on page 42, where the mother starts arguing with the dad about how long she carries children. “I always carry children longer than most women,” the Dad proceeds to say bull___, and then they go one and afterwards the mother runs out the car and away in the desert. Other instabilities include the Father on the run from the cops as well as losing his job multiple times. An area of the book containing stability is when the family sits together to make fun of those who believe in Santa, which on page 41 it states, “We laughed at all the kids who believed in Santa.” 56 pages in, this book provides thrills and sort of sadness with the adventures of Jeannette and her family.
Muhammad, I agree that it is not a good thing for children, even grown ones, to feel embarrassed by their parents. But I think that as you keep reading, you will develop more understanding of why Jeannette felt this way.
DeleteI completely agree Muhammad that people should treat their parents with respect and not look down upon them for who they are. When reading the beginning of the book I felt the exact same way about how she reacted to her parents. I do not understand where she gets this from, growing up the same way as her parents and we are shown that she does indeed enjoy this type of lifestyle. I think maybe it is just the class gap that is between her and her parents that makes her feel this way, but I do believe that she should not feel this way at all. This also shows how she has changed from her past self.
DeleteI find the whole family in the book amusing and entertaining to read. I am amused by their adventures and intrigued by how they live. Although they are not wealthy and always on the move, they find ways to be happy as a family and enjoy themselves. I also find the narrator’s and her siblings close calls with serious injuries, such as when she got burned cooking hot dogs or when they fell out of their U-Haul. I also enjoy reading about Rex Walls, their father, as he shows his love and affection for his children and an entertaining man. When he discharges his family members for them and thinks that hospitals are a scam. The parents, although controversial, care about their children a lot. Rex Walls tells them ridiculous stories about him and his past and ambitious goals he has, as a way to keep his children occupied and distracted from the poverty they live in. Their way of convincing the children that the kids who celebrate Christmas and Santa Claus and get presents every Christmas are brainwashed. They do it so the kids do not feel excluded and jealous of the kids who receive gifts. One thing that surprised me was Rex Walls and how the family functions when they receive a sum of money. At the casinos at Las Vegas, Rex Walls won out big, and instead of saving that money, he took them out to eat, which is understandable, but surprised me as the family did not make smarter financial choices. But all in all, I really enjoyed reading about the family and their wild adventures.
ReplyDeleteI find it interesting and extremely concerning that Jeannette’s parents continued to make irrational decisions without consideration of their children’s well-being. Their incompetence is shown many times throughout the book, the most prevalent example being the constant movement and homelessness. For example, on page 18 Jeannette asks her father where they will be going, and his response is , “ Wherever we end up,” That seems to be his plan throughout the book. Another issue in their parenting is the fact that the father is an alcoholic and abusive while under the influence. It’s so normalized in the family that the mother on page 23 explains what he is like and the different stages of his inebriation. She explains that the father goes through a “beer phase”, where he is just “slightly” more reckless than usual. Then, when he had the “hard stuff”, he would “ turn into an angry-eyed stranger who threw around furniture and threatened to beat up Mom or anyone else who got in his way.” This amount of instability can have detrimental effects on children, and they end up learning these behaviors and thinking that it is normal. It also doesn’t help that the mother doesn’t pay attention to the children and the parents aren’t nurturing at all. On page 9, Jeannette is three years old and cooking over hot dogs unsupervised over a stove. The mother was in another room working on a painting when Jeannette catches on fire and has to go to the hospital so her burns can be treated. This could have been avoided if the mother was in the room watching her. Later on, just a few days after Jeannette comes back from the hospital, she is left unattended near an open fire again. On page 15, the mother says, “You’ve got to get right back in the saddle. You can’t live in fear of something so basic.” Considering the fact that her daughter could have set their home on fire or died the last time she was unsupervised, it would be wise to assume she wouldn’t make the same mistake again. However, she did because she doesn’t really care about her children.
ReplyDeleteSheridan, I see your point about Jeanette's parents being reckless and possibly neglectful, but I think, at least for Jeanette, that didn't matter when she was little. She knew her parents loved her, and, at least in this part, she's pretty happy around her family. Her descriptions of her childhood suggest joy and adventure, not hardship and abuse. Although there are a few harsh moments, like the dispute between her parents about how many months pregnant Jeanette's mom was, she mostly describes wonderful events that overshadow that, like getting stars for christmas, or playing in the rain. When you're a kid, you base your judgement of your experiences on your family. Your family is normal, and any differences in other families stand out. That's how it was for her. She was comfortable in her nomadic, adventurous lifestyle, and never really expressed any unhappiness or frustration about it. If her parents really didn't care about their children, they wouldn't have taught them how to read at such a young age, they wouldn't have taken them to the hospital to get them treated, they would have just left them somewhere. An event that really stood out to me was that when they moved to a new house and didn't have beds, the kids slept in cardboard boxes, which seems horrible, but when their father asked them if they wanted him to make them real beds, they told him not to, the cardboard boxes were fun, and made it seem more like an adventure. I think that event really shows that that life was their normal, and they didn't want something different.
DeleteSheridan, I agree that the behavior of Jeanette's parents is utterly unacceptable and very irresponsible. However, I don't think this was because they did not care for their children. They had many underlying issues, like, as you mentioned, alcoholism, as well as a great amount of debt - which led to the stress that caused them to constantly be on the move and probably have mental issues. This made it hard for her parents to care for her properly - of course, there is no excuse for behavior that puts the well being of a child at stake - but they did love her. For instance, in the story about Christmas (pg. 39), Jeanette's father 'gifted' her Venus; "[she] could have any star [she] wanted." This was touching because he did his best to make her feel better about not getting material gifts like other kids due to their financial situation. I agree with Katia in that regard - Jeanette's parents were just trying to normalize their lifestyle as much they could given their situation, even if there were some bumps in the road.
DeleteWhat really intrigues me, is how indifferent Jeanette seems to be toward all of the horrible situations in her life. When she was burned, she didn’t cry or scream, and when she was in the hospital, in response to a nurse telling her that she would be okay, she said “but if I'm not that's okay too.” She also didn't seem to mind when her dad told the family that they had to go on the road and only take the things they needed to survive. She was accustomed to it, and the only part that bothered her was having to leave behind her doll and her cat, and even those, she seemed to forget about very quickly. It’s amazing to me how growing up with parents like Jeanetts’s will harden you, because she experiences so many things that would have more of an effect on me than they seem to have on her. A sandstorm would absolutely terrify me, but to her, it’s just another normal event that happens in everyday life. The thing that most intrigues me about Jeanette, is her fascination with fire. Instead of her parents warning her to stay away from fire, they sparked an interest in fire for her. Matches seem to fascinate her and she even wanted to watch the fire burn in the hotel they had been staying at. When the three girls from her school beat her up, she lied to her dad and told her there were six because she wanted her dad to be proud of her. On page 28 her mom said “people worried too much about their children… fussing over children who cry only encourages them.” While I mostly agree with that statement, I think they take it to a more extreme level by allowing a three year old cook for herself, or have her “confront her fear” of fire by touching the flame.
ReplyDeleteI agree that Jeanette is very indifferent to all of the horrible situations in her life, and I agree that that is because of her parents' treatment of her, how in their avoidance of "coddling" her, they hardened her, like Sophia said. I also think that part of the reason Jeannette is so indifferent to her situations is that she has no other role models in her life other than her parents. If she had spent more time around adults who led more normal lives, or even children who were more normal, she might have realized how strange and awful her life was (and she would eventually). Unfortunately, she never really spent an extended amount around other adults at all; the longest period of time she spent around adults that were not her parents was when she was in the hospital, and even then the experience was much shorter than it should have been. She is always on the road, and so she also does not spend a lot of time around kids her age, and when she does, she never really gets to know them very well. Additionally, she meets such a variety of children with a variety of experiences that in total, she does not really have a sense of "normal" other than the experiences her parents are providing for her. Essentially, Jeannette's severe lack of experience is also heavily contributing to her indifference towards dangerous situations.
DeleteOne thing that intrigued me about this section of the book was how much Jeannette loved her childhood. This is my third time reading this book, so I have read over The Desert many times. I understand how love of your family can cloud your ability to judge situations, as can limited experience. Jeannette’s love for her childhood, however, was genuine. It didn’t come from not seeing the whole picture, or not understanding more complicated things. She honestly just liked the on-the-road, self-sufficient adventure lifestyle. This is clear in the numerous times she tells Lori how much she likes being on the road, but also in the care and detail she uses in her descriptions of the desert and her experiences there. Starting on page 21, there is a passage almost like a love letter to the desert, so descriptive and evocative that it made me see, for this first time, how somebody could love the desert the way Jeannette did, even though I’ve read this book so many times. It goes: “I loved the desert, too. When the sun was in the sky, the sand would be so hot that it would burn your feet if you were the kind of kid who wore shoes, but since we always went barefoot, our soles were as tough and thick as cowhide… We’d search for gold, and when we couldn’t find it, we’d collect other valuable rocks, like turquoise and garnets. There’d be a cool spell come sundown, when the mosquitoes would fly in so thick that the air would grow dark with them, then at nightfall, it turned so cold that we usually needed blankets.” And later, on page 22: “Raindrops the size of marbles came pelting out of the sky. Some parents worried that their kids might get hit by lightning, but Mom and Dad never did, and they let us go out and play in the warm, driving water. We splashed and sang and danced. Great bolts of lightning cracked from the low-hanging clouds, and thunder shook the ground. We gasped over the most spectacular bolts, as if we were all watching a fireworks show. After the storm, Dad took us to the arroyos, and we watched the flash floods come roaring through.” These passages make the desert sound like magic, an adventure, somewhere I would want to go. The best thing about these sections is that they convince me that Jeannette’s childhood was as good as she thought it was. She acknowledges that there were flaws and things she didn’t like, that her life wasn’t perfect, but out of the entire book, these are her happiest moments, even compared to the end of the book. The love that Jeannette used to craft these paragraphs and the guilt she feels when seeing her mother in the first section make me wonder if she ever misses these moments of her life.
ReplyDeleteMia, your response got me thinking about how much fun the Walls' lifestyle would have been for a child, particularly the freedom and beauty of their nomadic existence in the desert. When I think back to my own childhood, my worst memories involve boredom, sickness and bratty kids. Certainly the Walls' lifestyle left the kids more susceptible to getting sick/injured, and Walls is open in her description of this, but it did alleviate the other 2 problems, as the siblings got along well and did not seem bratty in the least.
DeleteThis is Charlotte's response:
DeleteResponse to Mia: I agree that Jeanette genuinely found her childhood extremely magical and that she loved moving around with her permissive parents. However, I don’t necessarily agree that Jeanette loved her lifestyle while understanding ‘the bigger picture’ or ‘understanding the more complicated things.’ I would argue that everything is relative--this was the only life she had ever known, and so she didn’t understand the bigger picture. She couldn’t understand because she had never had any other option, or lived any other kind of life. This is demonstrated by how her love grows for more ‘normal’ habits, once they become available to her. As an adult, we see her develop a life on Park Avenue in a nice apartment, and this is clearly the life she chooses over continuing the life she lived as a child. Therefore, although she did genuinely love her childhood, I would oppose the statement that she loved it while truly understanding all the other options (besides, she is so young at this point in the book… she still has a lot to learn about the world).
Mia, I completely agree that Jeanette loved her childhood while "seeing the whole picture." The way she reminisces about her early life suggests that, even as an adult, she is grateful for the unorthodox but beautiful and unique experiences she had. Her vivid "love letter to the desert," as you so aptly call it, illustrates how much she appreciates her parent's decision to immerse themselves in the wilderness, while at the expense of comfort and stability. As I read the book, Jeanette seems almost nostalgic for the freedom and adventure of her youth. Her childhood may seem terrible to us—her parents are erratic and unable to provide, often acting recklessly and neglecting their children, forcing them to fend for themselves—and it's easy to judge her parents as cruel and abusive. And while I definitely think they suffered from mental illness, Jeanette also emphasizes how her parents instilled important values in her and her siblings. She is, at a young age, a very responsible, self sufficient, and intelligent girl with a strong moral compass. While rarely in school, her parents do not deprive her of an education. She and her siblings are clearly precocious: her sister edits her mothers writing and the whole family spends hours reading together, looking up words they don't know. It's also clear how much her parents love their children: her father brags about them to strangers, pretends to chase off the demon under Jeanette's bed when she can't sleep (which I thought was very endearing) and, when unable to afford Christmas gifts, sits down with each of them in turn and lets them pick out a star—a moment I found especially moving. In many ways, her childhood was objectively bad and her parents behavior completely out of line. But I also think we should acknowledge that her upbringing wasn't inherently good or bad or right or wrong, and that we shouldn't judge it just because it is different from our experience. I recently read a memoir called "Educated" (I think you also read it too, Mia?) which is in many ways similar to "The Glass Castle"—a young woman escapes her radical survivalist family who live on the fringes of society to go to college. However, Tara Westover, (the author of "Educated") is much more critical of her family and upbringing. At the time she is writing her memoir, she is no longer speaking to her family members, having cut herself off completely. I thought her experience was interesting in contrast to Jeanette's—at the beginning of the book, Jeanette is still on good terms with her parents, even if she is embarrassed by them, and even more strikingly, she isn't judgmental of them. While Tara has an epiphany that her parents are toxic and abusive, Jeanette depicts her parents affectionately, though without hiding their flaws. While the two women's lives and circumstances are obviously very different, it really struck me how much more lovingly Jeanette describes her family and childhood, and how Jeanette and her siblings lead successful, stable lives while Tara struggles to overcome her emotional trauma and is often constrained by it.
DeleteI love the book and it's a very interesting adventure of this family that faces hardships but gets through it together as a family. Somethings really popped out at me from this book. Something that stuck out to me was the type of parting that both Rex and Rosemary are to Lori, Brian, Jeanette, and Maureen. They have an unorthodox way of teaching their children and their actions are sometimes controversial. An example was when they sneak Jeanette out of the hospital after she got burned or when they snuck out Rosemary and Maureen from the hospital after she gave birth. It isn't the best way of parenting but I believe that this type of parenting fosters independence in the children. Their nomadic type of lifestyle avoids them from getting too dependent on those around them and they become independent on themselves. Another thing that stuck out to me was the fact that the Wall family can so easily come back together even after they hit hard times or when Rex starts arguing or getting drunk. However, I also noticed Rosemary's general weakness as a character and how Rex intimidates her and she can't say "no" to him. I think that her weakness in addition to the kid's unwavering belief that their parents were doing the right thing was a huge reason why they could easily come back together after a hard time or an argument. Also, what I realized after another closer look was that Jeannette's favorite toy Tinkerbell that she melted half-way and that she left when she was moving represents the lost innocence of her childhood. I think that the burns that Jeannette made on the toy show how fragile innocence can be. It also shows that even though she was burned she lived on and that serves as a reminder to Jeanette that no matter how hard it gets when you are moving around and face hard times that you can make it to the other side of the tunnel. Overall, I love this book and how it is unfolding and I still can't get over how close the family stays no matter what the problem is.
ReplyDeleteI agree that it is incredible that the family is able to stay together even though they face serious problems throughout the plot of the book. Like Hussain said, the parents get into many arguments but in the end they always come back together. This is a great thing since the children won't have to live with only one parent. But this relationship could bring a negative affect to the children. With the kids seeing how bad the Dad sometimes lives, they may think that his life is the lifestyle too stride for which would obviously be bad. There is also the way of parenting in the story that is somewhat different than what we are used to, and this different can be seen as good or bad. Hussain saw that different as being good, since the parents give more independence to the children. However, I see this as somewhat bad parenting to only a certain extent. I agree that parents should let children be more independent, but in this case they had let the little girl make hotdogs by herself. This should not be happening, because she was so little in age and could have died from the burns. She just became lucky, like the nurses had said in the book. But in the other instances in the book, there were somewhat okay, with them moving around a lot and letting the older children look after the youngsters. This book is really interesting, with many more intriguing plots to be revealed soon.
DeleteHussain is correct when he states that the family’s nomadic lifestyle allows the children to be independent than other children. As he points out, the family can easily discard items that they formerly owed in their previous household before they moved to another location like the cat, Quixote, that the father Rex threw out the window on the grounds that anyone that wasn’t fond of traveling was not included in this adventure and Jeannette’s doll Tinkerbell. To justify this action of throwing the cat out the window of the car, Rosemary says that they could easily get another cat and that being a wild cat was much better than being a pet. Muhammad points out that these parents let their children be too indepedent and points that Jeannette is making hot dogs by herselves. He is not wrong, since they still allow her to cook hot dogs by herself even after her burns.
DeleteI read this book a long time ago and I really loved it, but I didn't pay attention at all to how crazy (for lack of a better word) it seems that Jeanette grew up in such a free, non-traditional way, yet she lives such a seemingly sterile, I daresay "vanilla" life as an adult. When I was reading it for the first time, I just shrugged it off, thinking maybe she was just tired of having such a wild and adventurous life so she just swung to a polar opposite life, from a desert, to a high-class city, and when I read the first chapter I just remembered that she led a normal life as an adult, but I guess I just skipped over how absolutely wild her life was. Especially when I'm stuck at home, reading about her childhood is just utterly captivating and I feel like I'm getting big cartoon character eyes every time she describes it in depth. (Mia's desert quote!) That is always interrupted with uniformly placed moments where her life seems absolutely terrible, like when her parents fight or when she describes her dad when he's drunk. However, as a small kid, she didn't know a lot about alcoholism or unhealthy relationships to worry about them, and at least at this time, her amazing experiences were glossing over the occasional rough jabs. She was too engrossed in the fun of finding turquoise and playing in the rain, that she didn't notice how traditionally bad her family's situation was. I also think because her parents, especially her father, really catered to her sense of wonder, she just lived in that world, and not her world of bad experiences. I also agree with Mia, she had nothing to compare her experience to. Her parents were never neglectful, and they never didn't love her, so I wonder how she was able to live such a different life. I know she's uncomfortable with it, and I do remember that sometimes her wild life was really hard, but I don't remember any sort of shift in her character from leaving the hospital Rex Walls style, to eating dinner with her mom, except that she was worried about her parents and embarrassed by them.
ReplyDeleteWhen reading the first 57 pages of the book, one of the things that becomes clear very quickly is that the Walls family does not live what we would consider a normal life. They move constantly, let their young children cook themselves meals, and don’t care to spend much time in the hospital, even after they sustain significant injuries. A lot of this chaos is caused by Jeannette’s father, Rex Walls, who is driven by his big dreams of finding gold with his Prospector and building a Glass Castle for his family. He acts unconventionally, and is sometimes dangerous, like when he deliberately almost hits his pregnant wife with his car. Even though Rex might not be easy to relate to or (in my opinion) very likable, he is certainly intriguing. One passage in the book that stood out to me about Rex is the one about how the Walls family spends Christmas. I really liked the story of Jeannette’s Christmas when she was 5 years old, and her father had just lost his job. Even though they could not afford a physical gift, Rex didn’t want to upset his children, so he took them each outside and let them pick a star to have as their Christmas gift. I really enjoyed reading about how the Walls family spent this Christmas, and the way they created joy out of difficult situation. The book, and specifically this passage, really portray the Walls family as a unit, and less as individuals. Even though they are all very independent, they still rely on each other and always spend time together. In their ever-changing life, family is really the only constant. I think that the Christmas passage shows this clearly, and it is a heartwarming point in the story. It also stood out to me in terms of Rex’s actions, because he is normally not sentimental, and doesn’t seem like someone who would be focused on gifts or goods. However, Rex cares about making his kids happy, and I think giving them the stars was a really nice thing. To me, it felt like a powerful display of Rex’s feelings for his family, because the stars are unreachable and so much larger than anything physical that they could have gotten. Overall, I was very drawn to this part of the story, and even now it makes me happy when I think about it.
ReplyDeleteOlivia, I agree with you that there are moments where Rex seems very attached to his children. Something interesting for me is that his attitude seems to change even with regards to his children. One thing that stood out to me as an example of Rex's shifting attitudes is when he throws Quixote the cat out the car window because he won't stop making noise. What's interesting is that this upsets his children, so it shows that he doesn't always prioritize his children's happiness. However, Rex also tells his children stories before they go to bed, and helps Jeannette feel more confident when she's convinced there's a monster under her bed; at times, he seems to really care about making them happy. Rex is a character who has a lot of different aspects and I find it very interesting to read about him.
DeleteTwo things that intrigue me in this book are the Rex and his wife's beliefs and how differently Brian, Lori, Janette, and now Maureen are being raised from me and how that affects their way of thinking. Rex and his wife believe things that are quite contrary to my own personal beliefs. Personally, I have learned to trust doctors and nurses knowing that they have gone through years of training and studying the human body. However, Rex does not seem to believe that they are not trustworthy as shown on page 13 when he calls the doctors in the hospital where Jeanette is being treated "heads-up-their-asses med-school quack." This belief can also be seen when Rex takes Jeanette from the hospital without the doctor's consent and when he does the same with his wife a few pages later. Another instance in which my beliefs diverge from those of Rex and his wife was when Rex thought it was ok to throw their cat, Quixot, a poor, innocent animal out the window. His excuse for throwing Quixote out the window was that the cat complaining was an obstacle in their adventure. I do not believe that the cat was creating an obstacle in the way of their adventure and it is not even possible to know why the cat was complaining as the can could not properly communicate what was making it uncomfortable. The way Brian, Lori, Janette and Maureen are growing up is quite differentt from mine as I was not raised living a nomadic lifestyle with parents who lived paycheck to paycheck. This difference completely affected how we reacted to different situtations. If I had been in a fire like Jeanette was at the beginning of this book, I would have cried like a baby and probably thought my life was ending. Jeanette on the other hand did not cry at all and even said on page 10 that she would not have been okay with not being okay. Another way they was raised differently from me was that they were raised to not believe in Santa Claus. I was raised to believe in Santa Claus and thus had some materialistic values imprinted in my mind. However, the Walls children did not believe in Santa Clause and thus did not care for the materialistic value of presents and gifts.
ReplyDeleteVasily, I agree with your point about how different Jeanette's upbringing and beliefs are from ours. Something that I didn't think about when I read that section of the book, was how Jeanette wasn't taught to trust the doctors in the hospital. I think that is a really interesting point because we have been raised to believe in science and medicine, and that is actually a really big difference between Jeanette's beliefs, and ours. I think an event that really shows how Jeanette's childhood was different from mine was when some girls from her school beat her up, and she told her dad that there were six girls that beat her up instead of three, and that she had been able to fight back even though she didn't. If that had happened to me, I would have told my dad about everything that had happened, and I would have been a lot more scared than she was, but because Jeanette's father always taught her to fight back and face everything head on, she felt like she had to lie to her father and hide the fact that she was as hurt as she was.
DeleteThe most aggravating part of the reading for me was how severely dysfunctional Jeannette’s parents are. They consistently make irresponsible decisions and seem to put their own twisted beliefs about society in the way of their children’s well-being. An early example of this is Jeannette’s catching-on-fire episode when she is three years old. Firstly, her mother allows the toddler to cook hot dogs by herself, with no supervision whatsoever. As she recovers from her burns in the hospital, her father decides to “check out, Rex Walls-style” (14) by taking her out early and escaping without paying the bill. He lets Jeannette shoot a gun at age four and she recalls, “Dad said my sharpshooting would come in handy if the feds ever surrounded us” (21).
ReplyDeleteRex embraces a nomadic, on-the-road lifestyle in which he can move the family to a town, stir up trouble, and move on to somewhere new, leaving behind the financial and legal obligations to his name in what he calls the “skedaddle.” His economic plan revolves around striking it rich with gold, hardly a responsible approach to providing for one’s family. His lofty hopes do not translate to real money as Rex cannot hold down a job and the family is poor. These factors combined result in a complete lack of stability or a sense of security in the future for the children, since their lives are constantly uprooted. Meanwhile, Jeannette’s mother, Rose Mary, comes off as selfish and apathetic about her children at times, like when she chooses to buy a piano rather than beds or furniture for the family. When Rex throws the pet cat out of the car window, Rose Mary tells Jeannette, “‘Don’t be so sentimental’” (18). Rex is an alcoholic. He drinks and drives with his family in the car and occasionally gets in explosive fights with his wife. Although the couple is able to instill some healthy values in their children, they go about raising them in an extremely irresponsible way which is bound to result in long-term emotional and psychological damage.
Silas, I strongly agree with your point that it was aggravating to read all those controversial actions taken by Rex and Rose Mary. Sometimes, when I was reading the parts of the story that were filled with these controversial actions, I would be amazed at their mindless decisions that Jeanette's parents made throughout the story. Again, I would like to agree with your point that not all hope was lost as the parents did instill some good into the lives of their children. Rex and Rose Mary did teach their kids math and how to read and other important pieces of knowledge that are very helpful for the kids in the real world. I believe that the most important lesson they instilled into their kids was independence. Their nomadic lifestyle taught the kids to never get too dependent on those around you and to rely on yourself for everything. At one point in the story, Jeanette says that she and her siblings met new kids but made sure not to get too close because they knew they were eventually going to leave again and most likely leave everything behind. This independence is essential at times in the real world and this is reflected by the success that Jeanette has as indicated at the begging of the story. Therefore, I agree with both your points that Rex and Rose Mary's parenting is controversial but it did instill some important lessons in the minds of their children.
DeleteSilas, I completely agree, and I think the words you use in your second paragraph say it best.
Delete"His economic plan revolves around striking it rich with gold, hardly a responsible approach to providing for one’s family. His lofty hopes do not translate to real money as Rex cannot hold down a job and the family is poor. These factors combined result in a complete lack of stability or a sense of security in the future for the children, since their lives are constantly uprooted."
There's nothing wrong with being an eccentric person who doesn't follow the typical rules of society, but when your behavior is to the detriment of others, especially your children -- who you have legal and moral obligations to protect and nurture -- you simply cannot live that way. Hussain argues that the kids have learned skills from the nomadic lifestyle. This may be true, but learning survival skills can be accomplished in many ways, including those that don't require you to pretend that you are on the run from federal law enforcement. Hussain's quote of Jeanette's learned behavior to not get too attached to anyone they meet is not something that I would be consider to be a skill. Sure, you should learn to move on in life, but frequent drastic change in a child's social life is more of a source of psychological distress than a skill to be learned.
3. Choose a passage from the reading that you think is just outstanding writing. Include the
ReplyDeletepassage and articulate why you find this selection so powerful.
"When the rains finally came, the skies darkened and the air became heavy. Raindrops the size of marbles came pelting out of the sky. Some parents worried that their kids might get hit by lightning, but Mom and Dad never did, and they let us go out and play in the warm, driving water. We splashed and sang and danced. Great bolts of lightning cracked from the low hanging clouds, and thunder shook the ground. We gasped over the most spectacular bolts, as if we were all watching a fireworks show. After the storm, Dad took us to the arroyos, and we watched the flash floods come roaring through. The next day the saguaros and prickly pears were fat from drinking as much as they could, because they knew it might be a long, long time until the next rain."
I really like the descriptions in this passage. First, the description of the air as heavy, right before a storm. I'm not sure why it strikes me but I completely get what the author means - it's the same feeling I get when it's really humid out. Somehow, once you notice how the air feels heavy, it won't go away. I also like the description of the plants "drinking" up the rainwater.
1. Write about something that intrigues, impresses, amuses, shocks, puzzles, disturbs,
repulses or aggravates you in the reading.
I really, really, really don't like the author's parents. I completely understand not wanting to live a "highbrow" lifestyle, but the level to which they reject any reasonable standard of living is not demonstrative of them being progressive thinkers. It just makes me think they're mentally ill. This idea is furthered by their distrust of modern medicine, how they take their injured daughter and flee out of a hospital, being on the run from the "FBI", the constant moving. If you have personal opinions about living one way or another, that's perfectly fine. But a child is not to be subject to the random wishes and wants of their parents, especially if those wishes and wants have a destructive, dangerous, and unhealthy flourish to them. I'm sure they care about their children deep down, and clearly with the Christmas story they do, but I don't understand how any sane person could subject their children to that kind of life and not feel at least somewhat guilty. If you want to live out in the middle of nowhere, moving around every day, that's perfectly fine. But children are entitled to a reasonable upbringing.
Sam makes an interesting point that Jeannette’s parents are neglectful, and despite the parent’s good intentions, that neglectfulness is harmful to Jeannette and her siblings' upbringing. I completely agree with his point and the book does well in expanding on this idea.
DeleteThe second chapter, I found to be one of the most representative of how Jeannette’s parents’ neglectfulness is ultimately harmful to Jeannette and her siblings. In this chapter Jeannette suffered large burns as a consequence of being left unsupervised while she boiled hot dogs at the age of three. Jeannette’s mother believed Jeannette to be “mature of her age” and therefore allowed Jeannette to cook for herself on many occasions. Jeannette’s mother’s extreme trust in Jeannette might seem great (why shouldn’t parents trust their own children, after all?) However the ultimate impact of this trust—that being Jeannette’s extensive burns that resulted in a long hospital stay— certainly goes to show that despite her parent’s good intentions, Jeannette has suffered damage from what is most certainly a form of neglect.
Furthermore, the incident Jeannette suffered on page 30 well exemplifies Sam’s idea. Jeannette fell out of the family car, the Green Caboose, and had to wait some stretch of time before her parents noticed she had fallen out. This, in itself, is neglectful on the part of the parents as neither of them thought it necessary to make sure their kids put on a seatbelt; however, what happens next really goes to show the true extent of Jeannette’s parents’ neglect. After finally coming to retrieve Jeannette, Jeannette’s father tends to her wounds as best as he can and remarks, “Damn honey, you busted your snot locker pretty good.” In saying this Jeannette’s father reveals that he believed the incident to have been Jeannette’s fault. Instead of apologizing for his obvious neglect, Jeannette’s father both doesn’t take her to the hospital and tells Jeannette that she was the one to bust her nose. This remark is shocking as Jeannette should have never been in that situation if her parents were more attentive to the needs of their young children.
In my opinion, I think the narrator's parents are good parents and I enjoy them. Although you can argue that they are careless and irresponsible, they give their children a lot of love and I feel sometimes the parents adventurous side can benefit the children in the long term. Also although they do not have a lot of money, the parents still try to treat the children once in a while like at the casinos or taking them to restaurants and I think thats an example of them saying that they are sorry to their children and an attempt to make it up to them. They are funny, caring and I think that is all you need as a parent and that genuine love makes up for the carelessness and immaturity they show sometimes.
DeleteI agree with Sam´s second response. The way that the parents think, and the way that they impose their thoughts on their kids is unacceptable. To make their kids think that the FBI is chasing after them is just plain cruel, and the kids should not have to go through their childhood the way they currently are. Also, I agree with the idea that Jeanette´s parents might have some sort of mental illness. The idea that one would blatantly tell lies to their kids, pull them out of the hospital when Jeanette is injured, ship them around the country whenever they want, and not send their kids to school is insane. To add on to this, it is explained in the text that the father likes to drink. That idea certainly does not help his case. Having a drinking problem clouds one´s judgement and makes them prone to doing irresponsible things. Sound familiar? Furthermore, I agree with the point that the parents are being horrible parents and that the kids deserve a better life than the one they have now. The idea that the father just doesn't want to hold a stable job shows he is royally unqualified to be a father. Being a father comes with responsibility, and he and his wife should realize that in order to be good parents, they should put down roots, and get stable, permanent jobs that allow the kids to have a normal childhood, not the childhood that they have been subjected to.
Delete10. Which characters remind you of friends or family members?
ReplyDeleteJeannette’s dad reminds me in many ways and reminds me a lot of my own. As shown throughout the beginning of the book, he is a man dictated by logic. In the book he is a highly skilled engineer and the way that we see Jeannette being bullied for being smart when she goes to school shows that he is also a very good teacher. My dad is maybe one of the smartest men I know as well, him being a psychiatrist. Also his demanding presence he has in the book, of always thinking he is right based on what he knows also applies for my dad. The dad in the book isn’t the most reasonable guy though. Believing in a bunch of conspiracies about the government or when he basically steals Jeannette from the hospital and says that, “ You don’t have to worry anymore, baby… You're safe now.” By doing this he is showing that he doesn’t trust medicine and that he knows how to heal her better than actual doctors. Now in this regard, my dad differs greatly from Rex. My dad actually getting a medical degree believes in the sciences heavily. He also is not one to believe a conspiracy theory, needing proof for things he cannot see. But what really struck me while reading the book was when he was letting them pick out stars as a present, She picked a planet, but this really reminded me of my dad in a lot of ways because as he is a person deeply rooted in logic, he has an almost irrational love for his family. Just like how Rex can’t actually give the stars to his kids as presents.
I really enjoyed your comparison/contrast between Rex and your dad. One point to consider: I think Rex was motivated less by his contempt for "quack" doctors and more by the need to escape being billed. While his morals are lacking, he certainly comes up with wild and entertaining ways of dodging his responsibilities.
DeleteWhat I find particularly striking about the book is how Jeanette Walls tells the story of her extraordinary childhood without judgement. The opening scene—Jeanette is headed to a party and sees her mother rooting through a dumpster out of her taxi window—is powerful. We can understand her embarrassment at the sight of her mother and are immediately intrigued by the gulf between them. She is able to connect us readers—who can more easily relate to her privileged life on Park Avenue—to the crazy circumstances of her childhood and the unbelievable lives of her parents. We see how normal her life is now compared to her unconventional upbringing. But as Jeanette begins to tell the story of her childhood, she doesn't criticize her mother and father's parenting, she isn't accusatory, she doesn't even seem to regret a single moment, emphasizing her parents affection as much as their erratic behavior and their inability to provide. It is clear from the get-go how much she loves and respects her parents, despite their stubborn rejection of an orthodox life. I find this really interesting because in her situation I think it would be easy to resent the insane parents who deprived her of a stable life, dragging her as they "skedaddle" from town to town, often homeless, with little to eat. Her account is honest. She doesn't hide her families flaws, she exposes everything: her father's drinking and gambling problems, her parent's paranoia surrounding the government and general mental instability, her father's rages, her mother's tough, almost indifferent, attitude, the family's struggle to get by. But she also seems to truly admire them and their values. Her parents believe in family, love, education, respect, resilience, innovation, creativity, spirit, etc, and impart their values onto their children. Jeanette seems to feel that her parents taught her harsh but important lessons that perhaps more privileged children would not have learned. While most children are protected and censored, the Walls family push their children to face reality, to appreciate its cruelty and beauty. And, while recognizing how unconventional and concerning her childhood is to the average reader, Jeanette paints it not as a harrowing experience but a fantastical adventure. She writes affectionately of her father's intelligence, his dreams, his resourcefulness, as well as her mother's wit and creativity. She is able to explore her parents worldview without judgement, she humanizes them to the extent where I forget how insane they are and find myself growing fond of them. Rereading this book, I once again find myself rooting for her father a misunderstood genius (yes, I am aware that he is a subpar father and junkie who is probably bipolar), her mother, an eccentric, spirited artist, and the outcast family fed up with civilization, struggling to live the free, adventurous life they want to in the confines of society.
ReplyDeleteIsabel, I also found Jeannette’s perspective on her childhood to be particularly intriguing. It is interesting how she is able to speak about her past with the same perspective as the present. In a way, it seems like she is more connected to her past, and the crazy adventures that she had with her family growing up. For me, the opening scene came off as slightly uncomfortable (Jeannette seeing her mother and being so embarrassed that she went straight home) where as the rest of the story feels natural and honest. While reading about Jeannette’s childhood, I was able to let go of my judgements about her life because she was letting go of the judgements about her life. I agree that the opening scene allows us to connect to Jeannette, and I think that this connection helps us to accept and understand Jeannette’s upbringing. Because she can appreciate her parents, even with their major flaws, the reader is also able to accept her parents. As much as I can judge Rex and Rose Mary because of their parenting downfalls (the drinking, the distrust, the lack of attention to their kids’ safety at times, etc.), I am also able to acknowledge their intelligence, creativity, and the love that they have for Jeannette and her siblings. From a young age, Jeannette is able to develop courage and independence that someone living a sedentary and more “normal” lifestyle probably wouldn’t be able to (I speak from experience), so there are some advantages to the lifestyle that the Walls family leads. In the book so far, I think that although unorthodox, the Walls family lifestyle hasn’t caused any long term problems for Jeannette or any of her siblings. For example, I at first found myself intensely judging Rex Walls for just taking his family members out of the hospital with no warning. However, looking back on it, Jeannette and her mother seem to be fine, so there were no real consequences. Because of Jeannette’s perspective on her childhood, I have realized that I have to let go of some of my judgements and recognize the many positives to the unorthodox and adventurous lifestyle of the Walls family.
Delete14. This part of the book is controversial because...
ReplyDeleteI feel that this part of the book is controversial
I feel that this part of the book is controversial because it depicts a way of life that is morally wrong in so many ways. The parents, especially the father, seem to have a distrust for modern society and a normal way of life, and while everyone is entitled to their beliefs, it is morally wrong to end up hurting their children while exercising that belief. Furthermore, the idea to not send their children to school and teach them what the parents think is necessary instead of a conventional education that will better prepare them for the real world is just preposterous, and in doing this, are going to give their kids a permanent setback that will negatively affect them for the rest of their lives. To add on to this, the idea that a father would pull their daughter out of a hospital before they were healthy is wrong on so many levels. It does not occur to me how any sane person would distrust medicine, and exercise their distrust by pulling their badly injured daughter out of the hospital, which could have ended up really hurting Jeanette. Finally, while I am not opposed to teaching your child (of a reasonable age) how to shoot a gun, I think that any sane person would realize that giving your four year old daughter a gun and teaching her how to shoot it is irresponsible, immature, and very dangerous. I am of the opinion that the parents are not fit to be responsible guardians of their children because of the unsafe and awful lifestyle that they are forcing innocent children to live, and I think that the children are deserving of a safe, normal, healthy life.
8. Themes and Symbols I’ve Noticed:
ReplyDeletePerhaps the most enjoyable element of this book so far is how the author manages to use symbols and themes to bring depth and intrigue to Jeannette’s story.
The symbol of fire is one present throughout most of the book. The second chapter recounts the story about how Jeannette caught fire boiling hot dogs at the age of three. The fire resulted in her needing reconstructive skin grafts to patch up some of her more damaged areas. This whole chapter, however, lacked any real description of the damage Jeannette suffered other than the description of some scars. This interesting choice left me believing that the fire’s damage must have not been severe. This element of Jeannette’s life was later recontextualized when, on page 16, Jeannette’s favorite doll, Tinkerbell, suffered similar burns. Jeannette witnessed first hand this once beautiful doll’s features melt. The doll’s nose was completely burned off and her mouth was left disfigured. This was the author’s first real description of what burns do visually to your body and as such this scene serves to recontextualize the severity of Jeannette’s burns. Suddenly my perspective was changed, Jeannette hadn’t simply escaped unhurt by the fire, as I had previously believed, she had instead only thought she had. In reality, I now assumed Jeannette left just as disfigured as her doll.
Similarly, the theme of abandonment present throughout the story helps to contextualize events to come. On page 17, both Tinkerbell and Quixote, the family cat, were abandoned when the family was moving. Quixote was thrown out of the car by Jeannette's father. This act shocks Jeannette and she even cries. Jeannette's mother tried to comfort her by saying “Quixote was going to be a wild cat, which is way more fun than being a house cat.” This painted not only the father as heartless for throwing out a cat after a single outburst, but also painted the mother as callous because she tried to give Quixote’s abandonment a silver lining. This event on its face seems relatively unimportant in the grand scheme of things. However, when Jeannette falls out of the family car when they are driving on page 30, Quixote’s abandonment gives the impression that there is a real possibility that Jeannette’s parents aren’t going to come back to her. Even Jeannette worries about this remarking that “like Quixote, I was a bother and burden they could do without.” Despite her family eventually picking her up, in the moment Quixote’s fate serves to bring suspense to the plot as Jeannette wouldn’t be the only close family member abandoned on the road.
Ultimately I really value how this author manages to create suspense and intrigue through their use of symbols and themes.
Peter, I completely agree with you that fire and abandonment are recurring aspects of this book. When I read the book, I hadn't realized that there was no description of Jeanette's wounds after the fire. However, once I finished the chapter with her in the hospital I realized that the wounds must have been quite bad as her whole right side was covered in bandages and the doctors were telling her that she was lucky to be alive. I do see the parallels between the Tinker Bell doll incident and Jeanette's hot dog fire incident and I agree that the Tinker Bell doll incident was a realization for both the reader and Jeanette herself. I think that this incident was also a realization for Jeanette that it was ok for someone to have burns. The very last line of the chapter was "Even though her face was melted, she still was my favorite toy."(16) This shows that even through such burns, Jeanette still loved Tinker Bell as much as she had before. On the next page, when she forgot Tinker Bell behind, she wrote that she "hoped whoever found Tinker Bell would love her despite her melted face."(17) On the topic of abandonment, there is quite a difference in the way that Rex treats the abandonment of Tinker Bell in comparison to the abandonment of Quixote. When Jeanette left Tinker Bell behind, Rex reassured her that Tinker Bell would be ok and could survive on her own. Yet when Quixote was abandoned on the side of the road, Rex did not reassure Jeanette and tell her that Quixote would be able to survive on her own. Even when her mother tried reassuring her, she was not telling Jeanette that Quixote would survive just that life would be more fun for Quixote now that he was a wild cat. I agree with you that Rex's actions and his wife's reaction paint them a heartless father and a callous mother. I also agree that there was a connection between the abandonment of Quixote and the abandonment of Jeanette. Had they not abandoned Quixote then I do not think Jeanette would have thought that they would abandon her.
DeleteThis is Harry's response:
DeleteDear Peter,
I'm often not the greatest at analyzing books. I don't see things that other people might see, so I enjoyed your bringing to light of the parallels between Jeannette's "hotdog incident" and how we as readers are shown that, through Tinkerbell, her injuries were actually serious. I was wondering while I was reading if the burns were still there, or how bad they were, but my wondering was diminished when the book failed to talk more about it. Your response now makes me think more deeply about the book and the subtle details and symbols in it. One thing that I did get, and appreciate out of the passage with the fire is how her parents have taught her, either a blessing or curse, that she shouldn't be afraid of it, even after being burned. She goes right back to the fire when many of us would be afraid of it. Though I don't agree with their parenting style (who lets THREE-YEAR-OLDS cook on an OPEN FLAME?), I do respect that she's not afraid of the fire. With the cat, Quixote, I thought your ideas about the themes, and what was through Jeanette's brain when she fell out of the car, are completely accurate, and I also was in suspense hoping that her parents would pick her up. I was pretty sure they would though, because of the passage about how distraught her father was over losing a child. All in all, I agree with what you've said, and am glad you brought to light something I didn't notice.
So far, I really like this book and I think it’s very interesting. A character that I really liked reading about – although I’m not sure if I like him as a person – was Rex, the father. Sometimes, he did things that I found kind or funny. For example, when the family didn’t have enough money for Christmas gifts, he decided to give all his kids a star – whichever one in the sky they liked the best. I thought this was a very sweet thing to do and showed how much he cared for his kids. He also used it as an opportunity to teach his kids, telling Jeannette that “planets glowed because reflected light was constant” after she picked Venus (pg. 40). Rex also, though, did things that made me uncomfortable or upset. When Rosemary jumped out of the car, he didn’t try to reason with her; instead he chased after her with the car, cursing and coming dangerously close to hitting her. The kids were obviously afraid, but he ignored them and kept being aggressive. I was genuinely worried that he would hurt Rosemary, and I think that he acted overly cruel both to his wife and his kids in this situation. Overall, I really like reading about Rex because he acts in such an interesting way and clearly isn’t a one-dimensional character, but I’m also not comfortable with everything he does. I also thought the way the kids were raised and educated was very interesting. On the one hand, Jeannette knew how to fire a gun and “could hit five out of six beer bottles at thirty paces” by age four (pg. 21). Teaching a four-year-old how to fire a gun isn’t a very typical thing that parents do, to say the least. I felt that this showed Jeannette’s parents were overconfident in their kids’ abilities or irresponsible or perhaps a little bit of both, since teaching such a young child to handle such a dangerous weapon is not very safe. On the other hand, though, Jeannette’s parents seem like they’ve done something right – by age three, Jeannette could cook hot dogs and the nurses tell her she could read “as well as a six-year-old” (pg. 11). While it might not be a good idea to have a three-year-old cooking hot dogs, this and her reading ability do show that Jeannette’s parents are doing a good job teaching responsibility and life skills. I think that there’s a debate to be had over this parenting style, which, while not seen as socially acceptable, does appear to have some benefit. Also, from the current point in the story, Jeannette seems happy with her life and looks up to her parents – so it’s very interesting that in the beginning chapter she said she was embarrassed of them. I’m curious to see her outlook on their lifestyle change.
ReplyDeleteZoe, I totally agree with you that Rex is a really interesting character to read about even though I don’t really like him as a person. I also don’t really get why sometimes he could be such a kind, caring father while other times he could be so irresponsible and do such foolish things. An event that made a really big impression on me that made me feel like Rex was a really good father in some ways was the time he took Jeanette with him to chase the old demon that he clearly knows doesn’t exist just because Jeanette was afraid. In the end he told her, “‘ All you have to do, Mountain Goat, is show old Demon that you’re not afraid.’” (pg 17)That part and particularly that quote really moved me. Most parents would not waste their time helping their child chase away an imaginary terror, but he did. He could also be seen as a really good parent for teaching his kids things like facing their fears which many parents overlook in their children’s upbringing. Then there are times that he does things that really disturbs me, like the time he just took Jeanette from the hospital and ran when she hasn't fully recovered yet. That section also talked about how he didn’t bring Brian to the hospital when he cracked his head open and how he took Lori to a Navajo witch doctor when she was stung by a scorpion.(pg 13) These decisions sound really dangerous and irresponsible, contradictory to Rex’s intelligence, and really aggravates me. I also agree with you that Jeanette’s parents are irresponsible and a bit overconfident. However, I think that this parenting style is more detrimental than beneficial in total. Although it’s true Jeanette was able to read and cook well at such a young age, I don’t think it’s really necessary to have these skills at such a young age. Childhood is the time to have fun and be carefree. This parenting style is moreover very dangerous, as shown in the time Jeanette burned herself, and I think it’s overall not right.
DeleteSomething I noticed was that the style of writing definitely reflected the author's way of thinking as a toddler. It was sophisticated, but curious and gave me an air of a person who still had so much to learn from the world - in many senses. This added to my reading of the passage and enhanced my understanding of the author's personal experience as a young child. With this, though, it was even more jarring to learn about the events the author went through at this age. Her cat was thrown out of a car, she was burned, she herself flew out of a car, and she moved from home to home in an endless cycle with no say at all in the matter. This, of course, is disturbing enough on its own, but what particularly struck me was the fact that the author wrote as if all this was perfectly normal. It's sickening and heartbreaking to acknowledge that there are children who think that this type of improper care by their parents is okay, because they don't have the knowledge of what 'normal' is. It really stuck with me when the author's dad asked her, "Don't I always take care of you?" and she responded with, "Course you do," without a second thought (page 17). It's so messed up that she was neglected and mistreated in different ways and could do nothing about it. With all this though, I wonder about the psychological effects of such an upbringing on the author now. She was stuck in the back of a truck with her siblings for way too long of a time, was constantly on the run, lived with parents who didn't treat her or their other children right, and surely experienced countless other hardships. This would most definitely have affected her in the long run and I'm curious to see if this is discussed or to learn more about this as the book continues.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteI agree, Ari, that as a toddler going through such an erratic upbringing, Jeannette accepted her life and saw it as completely normal if only because it was the only thing she knew. This dynamic is surely present in children who make excuses for abusive parents without realizing that their actions are not acceptable no matter what. Jeannette is definitely more forgiving of her father's actions than is healthy, such as when she immediately stops being angry at him after she falls out of the car when he calls her nose a "snot locker" (31). She sees him as a figure who can do no wrong in her life. I'm also interested in seeing how her childhood had longterm psychological effects on her. However, I feel your observation about the writing style of the memoir during her early years is more a reflection of Jeannette's skill as an author than a true portrayal of how she thought as a child. She fuses sophisticated writing with the innocence of a little girl to represent her younger self in a way that is entertaining, informative, and probably pretty close to her real attitudes at the time.
DeleteThis is Michelle's post. This website is not being nice to her, so I'm posting for her.
ReplyDeleteI read this book in 6th grade, but rereading it again, there are many parts of the book that still shocks me. On page 9 it states, "I was on fire. It's my earliest memory. I was three years old..." I have forgotten that Jeanette was only 3 when this happened, and I'm still extremely shocked and puzzled about why her parents think it was okay for a three year old to cook by herself. It really aggravates me that after she came back from the hospital her parents continued to let her cook by herself with no supervision. I wonder how could they have not learned the lesson of the danger of it yet? Her parents did seem to love her but their irresponsible actions like these always confuses me. It is really intriguing how Jeanette did not become afraid of the fire afterward but rather became fascinated by it though. Most people would have been afraid of fire if not scarred for life if they had been burned as badly as Jeanette but she didn't even become more cautious of fire. Instead she played with fire and then put them out. Through this it was like she became their master. Page 33 states, "I was torturing the fire, giving it life, and snuffing it out." It was like she felt that she had overcome fire once and will always do so. I feel that this really demonstrates Jeanette's brave, strong, and persistent personality since the time she was such a small child. Later on however, you find out that her experience being burned was not completely ineffective on her. Page 33 also supports, “I tried to scream to warn them but nothing came out of my throat. I wanted to reach over and shake them awake, but I couldn’t move. The fire was growing bigger, stronger, and angrier.” Although on the surface Jeanette didn’t seem afraid of fire after she was burned, her reaction to this fire shows that a big fire actually would freeze her with fear. This sheds light to the insecure part of Jeanette's personality that is not as visible as her other characteristics. We can learn that although she is mostly a brave girl, there are moments when insecurities and fears swallow her up.
continues in next post
ReplyDeleteAfter all these years, I could understand Jeanette’s parents a tiny bit better, but they're still extremely puzzling to me. Both of them seem to be educated and really intelligent at times while acting like fools and making stupid decisions at others. Her mother taught all her kids to read pictureless books by the time they were five. Page 57 states, “Mom read everything: Charles Dickens, William Faulkner, Henry Miller, …” From the name of these Authors you could tell that she probably received a pretty high level of education. She writes her own novels and even occasionally makes deep statements like “ It’s the Joshua tree’s struggle that gives it its beauty.” However, sometimes she would do many puzzling things that seem stupid. For example, letting Jeanettte cook by herself at three. The text states on page 28, “Suffering when your young is good for you, she said. It immunized your body and your soul, and that was why she ignored us kids when we cried.” This explains her way of raising her kids, and although the statement makes a bit of sense, it doesn’t fit the situation. It’s especially irresponsible to not care about young children crying, something serious might be happening to them but they don’t know how to voice it yet. You would think that with her intelligence she would have these common sense but she doesn’t. This is demonstrated again when she climbed out of the car and ran away when she was many months pregnant just because her husband won’t believe she was 10 months pregnant and carried all her children for more than 10 month. She should know that was impossible and running around with a pregnant stomach seemed a bit dangerous. This whole incident made me realize that Jeanette’s mom probably had sort of a romanticist type personality. I think it’s not that she doesn’t know these common sense but she chooses not to believe in them. This would explain everything, including the reason that she chooses to follow her husband and let her childrens starve sometimes instead of making the family stay with her wealthy mother. That is one of the things that really aggravates me though. I don’t get how could you let your kids live such a life of instability and poverty when there's an easy alternative? Jeanette’s dad is similar to and even more confusing than her mom. However, I still haven’t really figured out why there is such a drastic contrast in his intelligence and actions.
This is Lily's post. The website is not giving her a break....
ReplyDeleteI think something that this reading has taught me is how far people will go
to guard and honor their belief system and pride, even if it does not
improve their life in any way, and is sometimes harmful. We see the
author's parents repeatedly stick to their opinions, superstitions, and
judgements without any grounds for these beliefs. They are often blind to,
or just don't care about how their behavior may affect their children. I
don’t think this necessarily makes them bad people, just stubborn people
stuck in their ways. We see this at every stage of their lives, from when
Walls is a toddler to when she is an adult, juggling a successful
professional life while trying to help her parents. When she gets badly
burned and must go to the hospital, her parents don’t trust the doctors -
they wanted to get her out of the “antiseptic joint” with it’s “med-school
quacks” as soon as possible. Her father nearly gets in a fistfight with her
doctor, refusing to believe he was wrong about what should be done to treat
her burns. Both parents seem dogmatic to a fault, which sometimes ends up
possibly endangering their children - like when Brian cracks his head open
and they don’t take him to the hospital. Another instance of when the
father’s preconceived notions of how the world works overshadows logic is
when he smokes cigarettes from the wrong end to throw the “FBI Agents” off
his trail. Later in their lives, the parents choose to be homeless despite
their daughter’s best efforts to help them out. They deny needing help,
believing that the way they live their lives is the way to go. Her mother
insists that her daughter is “the one who needs help.” She seems to be
holding on so tightly to her perception of how life should be that she
refuses the help that her daughter offers her to bring her out of poverty.
It isn’t clear to me yet whether her parents are aware of their
stubborness, or if they have become so merged with their refusal to change
their beliefs that they don’t realize it. They are willing to put
themselves and their family in difficult situations just to guard their
superstitions and ideology, which I think is true for many people, even if
it isn't this extreme.