Lost Dreams: The Glass Castle One of the most important things that parents provide for their children is a stable background: a roof to sleep under, regular meals, and a sense of security. In fact, some turn to a faulty upbringing in order to explain violence, crime, drug abuse or general bad behavior in adult life. However, Jeannette Walls grew up with an alcoholic father and a shiftless mother, neither of whom provided for or protected their children. She was raised in a household where sufficient food was a rarity, traveling around from small town to small town, often living in conditions that to most would be unbearable; yet as an adult, she created a life for herself that she deems comfortable and stable. The Glass Castle is a stirring account of Walls’s childhood, her relationships with her family, and her ability to overcome all the hardships she was faced with.
Gwen Hardwood The emotive qualities of Gwen Harwood’s poetry resonate with her readers. She uses her own memories to illustrate love for her family, her loss of innocence and the swiftness of time passing. She demonstrates this in her poems Father and Child, The Violets and At Mornington. The poem The Violets opens with the line “It is dusk and cold,” the time of day symbolising that this persona has reached old age and is metaphorically drawing closer to nightfall or the end of her days. Death is made apparent with the negative adjective “cold.” The flowers she is picking at the beginning of this poem are clearly what stimulate her memory of childhood as they are referenced later in the poem.
Frome marries Zenobia Pierce prematurely, only to obviate “the mortal silence of…long imprisonment.” (Wharton, page 61) He wanted “the sound of a …voice” to fill the void on his farm. (Wharton, page 61) Likewise, Holden seeks conviviality with Sally Hayes though he dislikes her phoniness. He ends the “depress[ing]” date by calling Sally a “royal pain in the ass.”(Salinger, page 133) Both characters were merely looking for companionship in their otherwise lonely lives but both encounters ended badly, for Frome on a large scale and for Holden on a smaller scale. Undoubtedly, these rash acts to receive camaraderie illustrate the foolhardiness of the protagonists. They both abhor solitude but are unsure how to find viable friendship.
Nyle’s Grandma allowed two evacuees, a mother and her very sick son, to settle in her house until the boy got better. The boy’s name was Ezra, and in the beginning Nyle was not happy with him staying at her house. She was sure he was going to die, so she swore she would not let herself get too close to him, she was to afraid she would lose him. Pity overcomes her and they become great friends. Towards the end of the novel Leukemia overcomes Ezra and Nyle is forced to live with the thought that Ezra might be dead.
Not only does this make finding a job next to impossible it also gets him a great deal of disrespect from the community, especially from Angela’s sister and mother. This even pushes Angela to a depressed state for a while where all she can do is smoke woodbine cigarettes and drink lemonade, neglecting her own children. Frequently, throughout the book, she must go to the St. Vincent de Paul Society in order to receive welfare for her family. This remains the only source of money for the McCourts due to the fact that when Malachy actually does get a job he ends up losing it or using his wages on alcohol. Angela’s Ashes shows the reader how an addiction can wreak havoc on a family, especially when that family has little to begin with.
As any other teenager, she did not want to be close to her family. Her relationship with her father was the weakest though. In the text it states “Their father was away at home at work most of the time and when he came home he wanted supper and he read the newspaper at supper and after supper he went to bed” (899). In the story, it was never mentioned that Connie had a problem with her father. This is can be understandable because she liked how their relationship was.
In the beginning of the film, the family seems to have the ability to function in an ordinary middle-class society. Towards the climax, one notices that the family can not function because the mother is blind and still morning over her husbands death which allows her the excuse of not being a parental figure to her children. Augusto decides the he has to take on the noble responsibility of a care giver instead of simply running off and fulfilling his dreams. He is the character that is most relatable because most of modern society has a family member who takes charge in the event of a death. Alessandro feels for his eldest brother and decides to solve all his problems by planning a collective suicide of all the family members including himself.
Mrs. Mallard conflict started with her having health issues and finding out her husband had died. Then she doesn’t know how to feel about her husband’s death. During the story it seems that Mrs. Mallard was only at the will of her husband because her husband (society) expected her to be. When I read “Clever Manka” it left me with a sense of will to fight for what you wish for. I say this because when her husband told her to pick any one thing in the house to take with her.
I am so blessed not to have experienced what Jo Goodwin Parker went though. As I read her definition on poverty, I could see the devastating effects that this had on her and her children. Three affects that Jo Parker endured during these hard times were neglected heath issues, malnutrition, and no luxuries. First of all, they had neglected heath issues that most would consider minor, such as, red and cracked hands from not having any hand lotion. She once saved her money for two months to purchase Vaseline for her dry hands.
John’s biggest downfall in this story is the fact that he is stuck with the unfortunate task of being not only his wife’s lover, but also her doctor. Instead of being a concerned husband and being there for his wife mentally, he took a more clinical attitude to the situation and there for our narrator was left to her own devises. Also John only knows the “pattern” of his wife and does not see the trapped woman with in. John truly care for his wife and is trying everything in his power to help and cure her. Unfortunately the only way he knows how to help her it by treating her as a medical patient or as an object and not as a person who needed love, not just care.