Examples Of Trauma In The Glass Castle

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Jacob Rubinstein Mrs. Lee English I Honors 10 December 2012 Drama and Trauma in The Glass Castle The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls is a memoir that shows how she became the person she is today. Jeanette’s childhood was different than most. She endures many hardships including fire, poverty, and neglect. Disappointment is something Jeanette learns to live with. Faced with a lifetime of dramatic and traumatic events, Jeanette is faced with having to become independent and make a life for herself at a young age. Burnt at a young age, Jeanette was traumatized not just physically, but mentally as well. While letting a three-year-old cook hot dogs is a bad idea, the Walls family let her anyway. From this, she is physically traumatized. She recalls the moment vividly, “I screamed. I smelled the burning and heard a horrible crackling as the fire singed my hair and eyelashes”…show more content…
Although this is not a disappointment yet, she gets ecstatic when she hears of this new present. Her reaction is predictable. “It never occurred to me that one day I might actually own one [bicycle] myself. Especially a new one” (Walls 98). The new bicycle is soon forgotten when they move across the country, once again creating disappointment. Jeanette always needed a reason for doing things, unless her parents told her otherwise. She was maturing “I had always wanted a watch…that was the kind of person I wanted to be” (Walls 216). This shows her need for practicality or reasoning and her plans for the future and where she stands in level of maturity. Her mother brings home a piano, but there is no room for it in the house. She sees through her mother’s optimism “Most pianists never get the chance to play in the out-of-doors” (Walls 53). Her mother is showing optimism. What the problem really is, their living conditions are not the best. This long term traumatizing effect plays a minor difference in the

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