Analysis Essay

Imagine yourself at three years old. What would you be doing? Would your mom be hovering over you making sure you didn’t hurt yourself or get into any trouble? Or would you be downstairs in the living room watching the television and playing with your Barbie dolls? At the age of three Jeannette Wall’s was cooking hot dogs while her mother painted in the next room. In The Glass Castle, the developing theme of the book is self-sufficiency, which is a topic that emerges many times thought the narrative. For Instance some of the major contributive elements from the story are, how the Walls parents promoted the self-sufficiency of their children, having to learn to protect themselves as well always having each other’s backs. At such a young age these children had to learn that their parents would not always provide and protect them, so they needed to learn to do so on their own.

Rose Mary is an aspiring artist with a teaching degree who doesn’t seem to have the slightest qualms about supporting her family. Her husband Rex Walls is an alcoholic that is unable to hold a job but in a more flattering light is seen as brilliant along with a charming and charismatic personality. “You can't cling to the side your whole life, that one lesson every parent needs to teach a child is "If you don't want to sink, you better figure out how to swim” Here Rex Wall’s is teaching Jeannette in his own style, the ways of the world. Rex is giving his daughter a lesson on swimming, but the bigger picture is that he’s throwing her out on her own in the water to figure out how to swim. He was teaching her that sometimes you are going to be thrown into situations you are unfamiliar with or cannot control and it is up to you weather or not prevail or not in life. This correlates to the overall theme of self-sufficiency. “Mom liked to encourage