The
title The Glass Castle in the book The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls
appears many times throughout the book. The
literal meaning of The Glass Castle is
a castle made of glass that the Wells family plans on building once they get
gold. In the book her dad, Rex Walls, is searching for gold, finding places to
live to keep them alive and places where he can work to hopefully find gold.
This gold will make him and his family wealthy and with that money he will
build a glass castle. She said “once he finished the Prospector and we struck
rich, he’d start to work on our Glass Castle” (25). Rex and his family spent most of the book chasing
this dream and planning out their Glass Castle although the idea itself was
ridiculous. At one point they thought they were so close that they begin
planning it.
The
figurative meaning of the title The Glass
Castle is also present in the book. The figurative meaning I’ve uncovered
is an unrealistic dream set by Rex but he believes its achievable. In the book
they had a cat named Quixote. Jeannette talked about Quixote briefly when she
said “They might decide that it wasn’t worth the drive back to retrieve me;
that , like Quixote the cat, I was a bother and a burden.”. The name of the
cat, Quixote, was taken from Don Quixote. I found out that Don Quixote is a man
who had ridiculous dreams and planned on chasing them, not realizing how
unrealistic they were. The significance of the cat being named Quixote was how
Rex’s dream of building a Glass Castle was ridiculous.
The
Glass Castle is also symbolic for hope. The Glass Castle gives Jeannette and
her family a sense that one day her life will be good and she’ll live in a
mansion with her family. Although many times the dream didn’t seem evident,
especially when they were starving or they had no money they still kept hoping
for that castle in the desert. Towards the end of the book they were close but
the foundation for the Glass Castle became covered in trash yet that didn’t discourage
them. At the end of the book she said “And
I’ll build the Glass Castle, I swear it. We’ll all live in it together”(238) to
her father when he was trying to get her out of going to New York, giving him
hope and showing that she’ll carry on the dream he’s always had.
nice!!
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