New York

New York is the land of dreams for Jeannette's family and the kids realized that if they were ever going to get out of welsh, it would have to be up to them. And with hard work, they all eventually get there. Jeanette, her older sister, and her brother all thrive. They work hard and build lives for themselves. This reminds me of the cliche saying "You can do anything you put your mind to." Jeanette did it. She worked her way up a newspaper, found a man, found happiness. You really can accomplish great things if you work hard.
This book was amazing. It is so hard to believe that it is true, it was a fascinating story. Anyone would enjoy this book and everyone should read it.

The Watch

When Jeannette is working at Becker's Jewel Box, the owner, Mr. Becker, doesn't trust Jeannette. He makes a show of checking the diamonds when he returns from his lunch. She finds out that she should get paid on commission from a customer and decides that she deserves to steal something. She picks a watch with changeable wristbands. She takes it without problem and brings it home to hide it. She then begins to worry and knows she can never wear it. She brings it back.
I wanted for her to have it so bad. Even though it was stealing. She deserved it and she should have been getting paid more. But she did the right thing.
I wish she would have kept it.

Used

Jeannette was the only one who still believed in her father. She tried to buy his stories of the mafia and gestapo, she was his moutian goat. But as she got older she began to see through him and his made up lies. At one point she has to put her foot down.. now he is just using her.

In the car, Dad took out the money he'd won and counted off forty dollars, which he passed to me.
"We make a good team."
I felt like throwing the money at him, but us kids needed the money, so i put the bills in my purse. We hadn't scammed Robbie, but we'd worked him in a way that felt downright sleazy, and I'd ended up in a tight spot. If Robbie had been set up by Dad, so had I.
"You upset about something, Mountain Goat?"
For a moment I considered not telling Dad. I was afraid there'd be bloodshed, since he was always going on about how he'd kill anyone who laid a finger on me. Then i decided I wanted to see the guy pummeled. "Dad that creep attacked me when we were upstairs."
"I'm sure he just pawed you some," Dad said as we pulled out of the parking lot. "I knew you could handle yourself."

Ouch.

The End

I really like the ending of The Glass Castle. I like how at the end, even though their life was difficult and stressful, everything seems like it will be ok. Her dad dies, but in the end everyone is together, except for Maureen. Brian changed a dump into a beautiful house, and Jeannette has a wonderful husband and house. Even Maureen, at the end, seems like she will be ok, she is finally talking about coming back for a visit.

Parents

"No one expected you to amount to much," she told me. "Lori was the smart one, Maureen the pretty one, and Brian the brave one. You never had much going for you except that you always worked hard."
I wonder what it would be like to have parents who thought you would never be anything. My parents always said that I could do anything I want but if they didn't I don't know who would believe in me when I don't.

Laughing

I love laughing. When I am with my friends we have many moments like these:

"Dad started laughing. It was a silent laugh that made his shoulders shake, and the more he laughed he funnier it seemed to him, which made him laugh even harder. I had to start laughing, too, and soon we were both hysterical, lying on our backs, tears ruing down our cheeks, slapping our feet on the porch floor. We'd get too winded to laugh any further, our sides cramping with stitches, and we'd think our fit was over, but then one of us would start chuckling, and that would get the other going ,and again we'd both end up shrieking like hyenas."

As witnessed in English class this year and last year, with one simple thought I can be in tears. The process is much like what happens with Jeannette and her dad. I laugh but keep it contained, then I chuckle just a little bit and then my friend (usually inside my head) will start laughing more. Then I start crying and I'm not able to breathe. It is one of the funniest experiences that I have, I find it quite entertaining.

"Art Career"

Thier mother always has this dream of her "art career". Everywhere they go she tries to make it work. All she seems to do is clutter up their house. I don't think this is all bad... her life isn't great but she has this dream. And she never gives up on it. Sometimes it seems like it is all she has.

Suddenly, Mom grinned broadly. "I'll bet there aren't any other artists living in Welsh," she said. "I won't have any competition. My career could really take off here."

Bottles

Brian grabbed the bottle out of my hand. He emptied it into the kitchen sink, then led me out to the shed and opened up a wooden trunk in the back marked TOY BOX. It was filled with empty liquor bottles. Whenever dad passed out, Brian said, he took the bottle Dad had been drinking, emptied it, and hid it in the trunk. He'd wait until he had ten or twelve, then tote them to a garbage can a few blocks away, because if Dad saw the empty bottles, he would get furious.

Even at a young age, Brian was playing father. He was the responsible one, he stuck up for his sisters, he took control of the situation. But he still had a "father" hovering over him constraining him, keeping him from his potential by being abusive and a drunk.

Joshua Tree

"I thought the Joshua tree was ugly. It looked scraggly and freakish, permanently stuck in is twisted, torched position, and it made me think of how some adults tell you not to make weird faces because your features could freeze. Mom, however, thought it was one of the most beautiful trees she had ever see She told us she had to paint it."

I love how her mom can see the beauty in things that most people can't. I feel like sometimes I do the same thing. I end up thinking in ways other people don't. Sometimes in a simple way when its really a pun and sometimes really deep when it was just a simple line. Also, I think that in the midst of dead and dry desert, the fact that she finds beauty is such a great thing.

Erma

Jeannette, Brian, Lori, and Maureen have a grandma, Erma, and from the second they first said 'hello' to her she hasn't been terribly nice. She is extremely strict and in fact she doesnt want the kids even laughing in her house. She hates them being loud and doesn't have any respect for any of the kids.
I can sort of relate to Jeannette here. My grandma is very strict, not as much now as before. We used to dread going there because even if we were fake fighting, she would get mad. She wasn' quite as extreme as Erma but I can relate to how they feel at a level.

Christmas

For Christmas this year, they want something special. They all get nice things and wrap them up and put them under a real Christmas tree. Everyone wants this to be the year that they have a real Christmas. Then in the day they were going to celebrate, their dad comes home drunk and ruins it all. He smashes everything they worked for into unrecognizable smithereens. This reminds me of how we can work so hard for something, put all kinds of time and energy into putting it together... then ruin it in one foul swoop.

Secret Someone

"I didn't go hungry. Hot lunch at school cost a quarter, and we could usually afford that. When we couldn't and I told Mrs. Ellis, my forth-grade teacher, that I had forgotten my quarter, she said her records indicated that someone had already paid for me. Even though it seemed awfully coincidental, I didn't want to push my luck by asking too many questions about who this someone was. I ate the hot lunch. Sometimes that lunch was all I had to eat all day, but I could get by just fine on one meal."
I like this passage. It is cute how she doesn't think about who could be paying for her. She looks so innocent and vaurnerable. I think that most forth-grader think like that. My forth-grade sister ususally tries to find out where certain things come from but i think if it were somthing like her lunch she would be embarressed and then she wouldn't try to figure it out. And I think, even though Jeannette didn' mention it, embarressment was a part of why she didn't ask who paid for it. In 4th grade, everyone is judging you on everything so knowing who is paying for her and knowing she doesn't have the money for lunch would be embarressing to her. It would be someone in on her secret that she doesn't want people to know.
Also it is sad to think about how she only gets one meal, yet we get home from school and immediately go to the pantry for something to eat.

Driving

In this scene I feel so much like Jeannette's mom...
"Okeydoke!" Mom shouted. But instead of easing forward, Mom, who had never quite gotten the hang of driving, hit the gas pedal hard, and the truck shot ahead."
One time my mom was driving and I was criticising her. She asked me if I would like a try, so in an empty side road/alley thing I got into the driver's seat. I put my foot down gently on the pedal, we almost flew out of the car. I was comparing a car to the only other driving experience I had, golf carts. My mom got quite angry and I didn't drive until driver's training.

The Good and The Bad

The idea that everyone has both a good and a bad side is so easy to see in this book. Especially with Jeanette's parents. An example of good would be her dad taking the kids out one by one at Christmas time and telling them to pick a star for their present.

"Pick out your favorite star," Dad said that night. He told me I could have it for keeps. He said it was my Christmas present.
"You can't give me a star!" I said. "No one owns the stars."
"That's right," Dad said. "No one else owns them. You just have to claim it before everyone else does, like that dago fellow Christopher claimed America from Queen Isabella. Claiming a star as your own had every bit as much logic to it."
I thought about it and realized Dad was right. He was always figuring out things like that.

This passage is sweet and sincere. It may not be logical but it was better than anything he could have given her.

An example of bad would be when they are moving from Blythe to Battle Mountain. There is only enough room for thier parents in the front seat so all the kids, including a newborn baby were stuck in the pitch black in the back of the truck for hours. Without food drink or bathroom. I understand that their parents really didn't have options. But that is just something you do not do.

After a while, it got cold and uncomfortable in the back of the dark U-Haul. The engine made the floor vibrate, and we'd all go tumbling around whenever we hit a bump. Several hours passed. By then we all had to pee and wondering if Dad was going to pull over for a rest stop. Suddenly, with a bang, we hit a huge pothole and the back doors on the U-Haul flew open. The wind shrieked through the compartment. We were afraid we were going to get sucked out, and we all shrank back against the Prospector. The moon was out. We could see the glow from the U-Haul's talilights and the road we'd come down, stretching back through the silvery desert. The unlocked doors swung back and forth with loud clangs.

This passage makes me wonder about how many other things may be happening out there in the world like this. The family seems crazy and like something like this could never exist but it does. And these kids really were raised like this. It's crazy to think about.

The Stars

Later that night, Dad stopped the car out in the middle of the desert, and we sleep under the stars. We had no pillows, but Dad said that was part of his plan. He was teaching us to have good posture. The Indians didn't use pillows, either, he explained, and look how straight the stood. We lay there, looking up at the field of stars. I told Lori how lucky we were to be sleeping out under the sky like Indians.
"We could live like this forever," I said.
"I think we're going to," she said.

I agree with Jeanette when she says that she is so lucky to be sleeping under the stars. I love looking at the stars, they are so pretty! One time my friend and I brought blankets out and layed in the grass looking at the stars. We turned off all the lights that we could so that we could see the stars better. Even still i think it would be even better in the middle of the desert were there are no lights.

The Desert

I loved the desert, too. When the sun was in the sky, the sand would be so hot that it would burn your feet of you were the kind of kid who wore shoes, but since we were always barefoot, our soles were as tough and thick as cowhide. We'd catch scorpions and snakes and horny toads. 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.

I am in some ways jealous of her life. The adventure, the running around with desert sand between your toes. Coming close to dangerous things... living life. I live in a happy, and very safe environment; I am sheltered from the beautiful and scary things of outside of my view.
I am jealous of her freedom. She can go anywhere she wants when she wants, her parents encourage freedom and learning from your own mistakes, even at a very young age.
I too had a rock collection when i was young. I would scour around the back of my house in the field... picking up old pieces of glass. My mom always worried, she worried that i would hurt myself or step on a piece of glass. I never did.
Am i crazy for being jealous? Her parents are obviously a little (lot) off their rocker... I should be glad i am safe and clean and loved by parents that obey rules.
A piece of me still wonders what it would be like.

The hospital

The next time they visited [in the hospital], Brian's head was wrapped in a dirty white bandage with dried bloodstains. Mom said he had fallen off the back of the couch and cracked his head open on the floor, but she and dad had decided not to take him to the hospital.
"There was blood everywhere," Mom said, "but one kid in the hospital at a time is enough"
"Besides," Dad said, "Brian's head is so hard, I think the floor took more damage than he did"
Brian thought this was hilarious and just laughed and laughed.
Mom told me she had entered me in a raffle at a fair, and I'd won a helicopter ride. I was thrilled. I had never been in a helicopter or a plane.
"When do I get to go on the ride?" I asked.
"Oh, we already did that," Mom said, "It was fun."

These are just a few lines from the book The Glass Castle, by Jeannette Walls. It shows what her family is like. Things get passed off like they are no big deal in her family. Like getting set on fire, or missing out on a helicopter ride in your name. This is all she knows so how should she know it is wrong?