The Glass Castle

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The Glass Castle: by Jeanette Walls What is the meaning of the title? Why might the author have chosen this title? The meaning of The Glass Castle seems to the reader to be evident the first time it is described in the book. On the contrary, the Glass Castle has a much more complex meaning that can only be deciphered with a complete understanding of the entire novel. The Glass Castle is entitled as such for many intimate reasons Jeanette Walls has, as to find the Glass Castle such a symbol in the book and in her life as a whole. However, the most important reasons for Walls’s decision to use The Glass Castle as a title for her book are how the plans for the Glass Castle affected her and how the Glass Castle represents herself and her life as a whole. Jeanette’s father decided when she was young that his best bet at happiness was to discover gold in the West, and he planted ideas in his children’s head of what their family would be able to do once they came upon that gold. The most symbolic and extravagant idea that her father shared was that of the Glass Castle. The Glass Castle was indescribably important to Jeanette as a child, because she always had the hope for a better life in a majestic and lavish castle. Her father always carried around the blue prints for the castle in his pocket as if he actually planned on being able to successfully build it. At the point in Jeanette’s life when she realized that the Glass Castle would never be built, she had outgrown childhood and was already unhappy with the role her father played in her life, yet it was still a reason for distain towards her parents for the seed of a fantasy they had planted in her mind. The Glass Castle embodied for Walls the resentment she felt towards her parents, and even though she did not appreciate the fact that she felt as such, it was an important part of her life, and affected who she

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