The Glass Castle

{"I don't care what happened!" he yelled.

"But we were just protecting ourselves," I said.

"Brian's a man, he can take it," he said. "I don't want to hear another word of this. Do you hear me?" He was shaking his head, but wildly, almost as as if he thought he could keep out the sound of my voice. He wouldn't even look at me. (Walls, pg. 148)}

As I read this passage of the book, I came to realize that some of Jeanette's experiences with her parents are very similar to my own. Countless times in my life, I have been unjustly blamed for something I did not do. As well, in the past, I have made an effort to explain my side of the story in a situation where I seem to be the one at fault, but my truth is always thrown to the wayside. My father, for instance, does not like to be proven wrong. Similar to the way in that Rex 'doesn't want to hear about it', I have been told to "stop", or "that's enough". If I turn out to be in 'the right' in a situation, I would like to have the justification that people realize that I am telling the truth.

Jeannette felt this same way numerous times in the book. Her father, Rex, is a very stubborn individual who needs to learn to admit that sometimes he can be wrong. It is not always true what he says, especially if it involves alcohol. The situation is not always about who is right or wrong, but who is willing to listen.

Giving Thanks

Sometimes, a certain book can make you realize just how lucky you are with the way you live. This can happen with fictional books that speak in hypothetical terms about a similar uncomfortable or sad situation that happened to a friend, making you realize how they must have felt or even give you a feeling of regret for not taking the issue as seriously as it should have been.

In fictional or non-fictional books, there can sometimes be a character who has such a terrible life that it actually makes you depressed, imagining how horrible that person might feel all the time living that way. These books can also make you feel extremely thankful for the happy, normal life that you might be living. If not happy, at least it'll still seem better than the worst extreme, which is the life of the character in the story.

"The Glass Castle" for instance, a true story written by Jeanette Walls about her life as a child, is one such novel. Throughout the course of the story, young Jeanette narrates the many horrible things her parents do. Horrible, I mean in a way that her parents don't really seem to take much interest in their children. Do they care? Maybe. Are they careful? Not in the slightest.

Young Jeanette once lit herself on fire, singeing her eyelashes, eyebrows, and melting her hair. This was when she was three and her parents had let her cook hotdogs on the stove un-supervised. Sure, I suppose her mother was kind enough to take heed of her child's screaming and cover her with a blanket to put out the fire, but would the fire have started in the first place if she had been watching? Or if she hadn't told her daughter it was okay to cook over a hot stove at the age of three? I'm thinking that needs no explanation.

Sure, I've burnt myself plenty of times, but my parents always see to it that I don't full on ignite myself to an almost irreparable extreme. When I read this part of the book, early on into it, I thought at first "What terrible parents!! Why would they let her do something like that?!" which soon changed to "My god am I glad that my parents take better care of me than that." when young Jeanette explained how she had fallen out of the moving vehicle, the Blue Caboose, and cracked her head on the pavement--her parents not realizing she was missing for quite a while.

I've never had to move homes in my time, so I've always lived in the same spot. Although I like to travel and see new places, I would not enjoy a life on the road. "Where do you live, Enigmatic Banana?" "Hm? Oh. Yeah. I don't, really. You see, I enjoy an adventurous life where the most time I spend in one place is two months. Friends? Eh, I don't worry about that. I don't have time for friends, since we're on the road all the time." That doesn't quite seem like an enjoyable lifestyle to me.

I know in my time I've never had to worry about where my next meal would come from. I'm also aware that there are families not nearly as poor as Jeanette's that have this issue as well. Sadly, the Walls family is 'between jobs' and extremely hard to do for quite a time. Resorting to eating a stick of margarine because there was nothing else to eat was a depressing moment in the book. If I were the Walls parents, I would try to do whatever it takes so that my children never go hungry, or have to sleep in cardboard boxes. I'm very grateful, upon reading this, that I live in a home where I can eat when I want and have a comfortable bed to sleep in at night.

All in all, I am quite grateful that my parents are who they are. Indeed, they may argue with me and with each other at times, but they look after me as best they can. I've had a good education, have lived where I live for many years and have friends due to that, I have a home, and I have food to feed myself with when I hunger. Would you like a bit of cheese with this post? I suppose so. As much as it has been said in the past, I'm very lucky in that I have a caring family. My mother, brother, grandma, and father all look out for me in different ways. So, thank you, Jeanette Walls, for enlightening my current situation!

Link for the picture:
www.piersidegallery.com/artists/ellenshaw

Interesting book-related link:
www.readinggroupguides.com/guides3/glass_castle1.asp

The Downfall of a Society That Didn't Care

The ending of the short story "The Lottery", written by Shirley Jackson, has a sort of M. Night Shyamalan feel to it. I mean this in a way that it is somewhat of a surprise to see a small, pleasant village of roughly three hundred occupants commit such an act on a regular basis. The reader feels a sudden 'what a twist!' vibe as they discover that the famed black lottery box was really a tool meant to bring death! Indirectly, of course.

The three hundred and some villagers that inhabit the town have a horrible tradition that they themselves don't quite understand. It is a tradition in which one of the villagers would have to suffer the horrible fate of being stoned to death, upon finding a black spot marked on their lottery ballot. Although, not even the oldest member of the village remembers the purpose of the lottery. Why kill their own family members? They didn't know. It was tradition, so they just followed along blindly. No-one was brave enough to question the tradition or try to stop it, so poor Mrs. Hutchinson had to suffer an unreasonable death, and by the hands of her friends and family no less.

This story is similar to the events of the Komagata Maru (in 1914), a Japanese owned steamship that was transporting roughly four hundred immigrants from India to Canada. The condition of permitted immigration was that the Komagata Maru was not allowed to stop even once to restock on its long journey to the North.

Of course, this feat was not possible for such an amount of passengers, as food and supplies were needed. Upon arrival in Canada, the passengers were not allowed off the ship and the Komagata Maru was held in port for three months before it was forced to sail back to india--its passengers still aboard.

The issue about this incident is similar to "The Lottery" on the front that no-one even tried to change their ways to help others. People, in our society, only care for themselves. If something doesn't concern them or their family, they don't care. Though, when the tables turn, they always try to look for help from others, although they themselves would not offer it to someone else in the same situation. The world needs to learn a lesson from things like these so that incidents against other people happen to a lesser extent, or preferably don't happen at all. Old traditions in both these stories die hard, and so do people.