Preparing for the Program

Use the following questions as preparation before you begin to read, to guide your critical understanding of the text as you read, to stimulate your reflection on the text after you read, and to refresh your memory before writing your short paper and discussing the text during Welcome Week in the fall.

Before you Read

Before closely reading the text, you may want to begin by quickly familiarizing yourself with the text, looking for clues about the book, its context, the writer, and the writer’s purpose. You might consider the follow questions as you preview the text:

• What does the title of the book—The Glass Castle—evoke for you?  What impressions do you form based on the book’s title?
• Have you heard anything about either the book or author?
• What do you learn about the book from the textual and visual features of the cover, including the images/photographs on the front, inside front, and back cover?
• What do you learn about the author from the back cover, and how will this inform your reading?
• What can you learn from the prefatory material inside the front cover, such as the “Acknowledgements?” What is the significance of the wedding photo of Walls’ parents included in the front matter of the book?
• Several reviews of the book are included inside the front cover. How do these quotations from authors and critical reviewers prepare you to read the book and/or affect and influence your reading?
• Prior to Part I is a quotation from Dylan Thomas’ “Poem on His Birthday.”  What impression does this quotation make on you as a reader, and what might be the significance of this quotation?
• Based on the details you have gathered from the visual and textual features of the cover, what are your expectations of and assumptions about the book?  Based on your own history and culture, how might your prior knowledge and experiences influence your reading?

As you Read

The act of reading is not just an act of passively passing eyes over text but rather an active creation of the meaning of that text. As college students, you will be expected to read actively and critically. Engaging in active reading means meeting the writer halfway and carrying on a dialogue with the book as you read by underlining, highlighting or making notes and comments in the margins of the text (or on a separate sheet of paper). You can talk back to the writer, question points that are unclear, and make notes where you agree or disagree. Some of the following strategies can help you read the text more actively and critically.

1. Mark or make notes on the text, such as the following:

• Commenting on a passage (noting what you agree/disagree with, what you don’t understand, what intrigues you, what disturbs you)
• Evaluating a passage (noting parts that you like, parts that seem particularly evocative or well-written, parts that captivated you, parts that aren’t as appealing)
• Questioning parts by either asking for clarification (“What does this mean?”) or challenging parts (“What is the significance of this?”)
• Paraphrasing or restating difficult passages or key parts in your own words
• Underlining or highlighting key terms, sentences or passages that seem especially meaningful

2. Keep a dictionary nearby as you read, and look up words that you aren’t familiar with;

3. Read analytically, attempting to understand the writer’s purposes and techniques employed to engage and move readers. Consider the following as you read:

• What questions does the text address?  Why are these significant questions?  What communities care about them?
• What is the writer’s purpose in writing?
• Who is the intended audience?  Am I part of this audience or an outsider?
• What situational factors (biographical, historical, political, cultural) might have motivated or influenced the writing of this text?

4. Keep a reading journal of your reflections, reactions and responses. Develop questions/issues to share with peers in the fall.

As you read The Glass Castle, consider the following questions:

• The Glass Castle is a memoir, which is defined as a type of autobiographical account or reflection on one’s past. Typically, a memoir imparts factual events while incorporating fictional elements of storytelling, and it seeks to capture highlights of or meaningful events in one’s past, often serving a therapeutic function of sorts. A memoir commonly centers on a problem or focuses on a conflict and its resolution and on the understanding of why and how the resolution is significant in the author’s life. How is the memoir an appropriate choice for Walls’ story?
• Consider the structure of the The Glass Castle, beginning with Part I: A Woman on the Street, then moving to Part II: The Desert, Part III: Welch, and Part IV: New York City, and concluding with Part V: Thanksgiving. Why are Parts I and V the shortest (only 3 pages)?  What is the significance of ordering the middle parts according to place? 
• Consider the significance of setting. What is the significance of the shift from the desert (where half the novel takes place) to West Virginia (where the other half of the novel takes place)?  Explain the impact of the move from the desert Southwest and the house on North Third Street to the mining town of West Virginia.
• As you follow Wall’s nomadic childhood journey, what are some of the key conflicts/tensions/oppositions that arise in the memoir?  Are these mostly internal or external or both? Identify key climactic moments or turning points.
• What is the significance of the image of the glass castle, the transparent palace that Walls's father repeatedly promised to build for his children?
• What other objects or images recur throughout the text (such as fire, the geode rock that Jeannette takes with her when the family moves, Rex’s reference to Jeannette as “Mountain Goat,” Rose Mary’s jewelry collection, etc.)?  What do they represent?  What is the significance of the natural imagery throughout, particularly the stars?
• Describe the character traits of Rex and Rose Mary Walls. Are they static, unchanging characters, or would you argue that they are “round” characters who exhibit change and growth?
• Describe the relationship between Jeannette and her siblings and the role they play in one another’s lives. What do we learn about her via these relationships?
• Critics have described Walls’ style and prose as “unadorned,” “spare,” “bare bones,” and “unsentimental.”  How is this simple, direct style fitting for the memoir?  How would you describe Walls’ tone throughout and its significance to her storytelling?
• Examine the memoir's ending. Why do you think Walls chose to end the book with the Thanksgiving gathering?

After you Read

Return to the parts you highlighted and marked as you read, particularly any questions you noted, and see if you now understand these parts better in the context of having read the whole book. Then, use the following questions as a guide for considering the larger social and cultural implications of the book:

• In the New York Times book review, Francine Prose argues, “Memoirs are our modern fairy tales…. What the memoir writer knows is what readers of Grimm intuit: the loving parent and the evil stepparent may in reality be the same person viewed at successive moments and in different lights. And so the autobiographer is faced with the daunting challenge of describing the narrow escape from being baked into gingerbread while at the same time attempting to understand, forgive and even love the witch.”  Consider how Walls portrays her parents “in different lights” throughout the book. Do you think she is successful in striking a balance between the portrayal of the “loving parent” and “evil stepparent”?  Why or why not?
• What critics have found most surprising is not the fact that Jeannette had the guts and tenacity to escape the cycle of neglect and poverty but that, despite her upbringing, she describes her parents with such affection and generosity. As a reader, are you convinced to follow Jeannette Walls’ lead and put aside your condemnation of the parents?  Why or why not?
• Consider the theme of family in The Glass Castle. What seems to be Walls’ message regarding parents and the strength of family ties, both for better or worse?
• What statement does The Glass Castle make regarding the theme of education and the education system?  You might consider the “home schooling” of the Walls’ children, their love of reading, their performance in public schools, and the potential for education as an escape route for Lori and Jeannette.
• What is the message of The Glass Castle with regard to issues of socioeconomic class (see the opening scene where Jeannette is dressed up and on her way to a social function, only to see her mother going through a dumpster on the street)?  What commentary is made on poverty and homelessness?  You might look at how the family is ostracized, how the children are treated in school, the encounter Jeannette has with a professor who argues she has no knowledge of homelessness, the seeming inability of Jeannette’s mother and father to escape poverty, or the role of education in lifting one out of poverty.
• The book focuses on addiction and alcoholism, primarily through the characterization of Rex Walls and his interactions with his family. What statement does the book make about alcohol abuse, its causes and effects, and the possibility or impossibility of rehabilitation?
• How does the book deal with issues of physical and sexual abuse (you might consider the scene where Jeannette and her siblings are taken care of by their grandmother in West Virginia)?
• According to Kirkus Reviews, Walls’ “chilling, wrenching, incredible testimony of childhood neglect” is a “pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps, thoroughly American story.”  Drawing on textual evidence, argue whether or not you agree or disagree.
• According to a reviewer for New York Newsday, “Some people are born storytellers. Some lives are worth telling. The best memoirs happen when these two conditions converge.”  Explain how these conditions have converged (or not) in The Glass Castle. What makes Jeannette Walls’ life “worth telling?”
• What issues/ideas raised by the book would you like to discuss or debate further with peers during the group discussions at Welcome Week?

Moving from Reading to Writing

After you have read the book, write a short (one-page) paper, using any of the above questions or statements as a starting point. The paper should be typed. Bring one copy of this paper to your discussion group, and reserve another copy for your freshman writing or honors class. Your papers will be read carefully by your discussion leaders and then submitted to the office of the Special Assistant to the Chancellor. If you have any questions about the assignment, contact Holly Lucas at hlucas1@utk.edu.

This year's selection:
The Glass Castle
by Jeannette Walls

 

“Sharing incredible, painful experiences in no-nonsense prose, Walls has, as The New York Times Book Review notes, ‘succeeded in doing what most writers set out to do—to write the kind of book they themselves most want to read.’” —Bookmarks Magazine

“Just read the first pages of The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, and I defy you not to go on. It's funny and sad and quirky and loving. I was incredibly touched by it.” —Dominick Dunne, author of The Way We Lived Then: Recollections of a Well-Known Name Dropper

“Jeannette Walls has carved a story with precision and grace out of one of the most chaotic, heartbreaking childhoods ever to be set down on the page. This deeply affecting memoir is a triumph in every possible way, and it does what all good books should: it affirms our faith in the human spirit.” —Dani Shapiro, author of Family History