PLN #3 - Authors Tone - Revised

       In the book, The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, the authors tone is depressed. Jeannette (the author) does not enjoy her life; they have to live in a poor neighborhood, barely get food, and live in a dysfunctional family.  The Walls family lives in a neighborhood they call “The Tracks”, it is located by some abandoned train station, which serves as Jeannette’s families home. Jeannette mentions the neighborhood and school she goes to, "Battle Mountian had started out as a mining post, settled a hundred years earlier by people hoping to strike it rich, but if anyone ever had struck it rich in Battle Mountain, they must have moved somewhere else to spend their fortune... Lots of other kids lived in our neighborhood, which was known as the Tracks." “The Tracks” residents all live in whatever they can find to serve as shelter, one neighbor lives in an old shack, she owns 3 dogs and finds it very hard to feed them.  The Walls family also has to steal food to get it; Jeannette will steal from friends kitchens, her dad will steal from the grocery store, just to get food. The kids are forced to keep their hunger to themselves otherwise the family will get into a fight, "We kids usually kept our hungry to ourselves, but we were always thinking about food and how to get our hands on it." Jeannette’s family is also very dysfunctional, her dad cusses, they leave their kids to fend for themselves and they do not have the best live for their kids, nor do they wish that upon them. A good example of how the parents leave the kids to fend for themselves is when Jeannette was learning how to swim, " We started back, and this time, when we got to the middle, Dad pried my fingers from around his neck and pushed me away. My arms flailed around, and i sank into the hot, smelly water." Mr. Wall basicly takes Jeannette throws her in the water and yells, "Sink or swim!" and leaves her there to swim to the edge and get out of the water. Jeannette’s parents are perfectly happy trying to achieve their dreams by living like a homeless person, they would love nothing more in the world then to accomplish the dream of building the Glass Castle.  Jeannette is not very happy with her life, she doesn’t like being lied to, or being “homeless” and she wishes that she could/ would have a better life, but in the end she knows her parents love her.

PLN #2

           The book The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls tells a story about one very dysfunctional family, they move a lot, have trouble taking care of their children, and sometimes want to kill each other. The Walls family is always on the move, whether it’s because it’s too hot, or to boring or they are running from something. “The next day he announced that Blythe had become a little too how and we were hitting the road again.”(Page 48) The Walls family is also struggling to take care of their children, for one move the kids had to sit in the back of a U-Haul, they had no light, no seatbelts and they couldn’t talk. “We got to ride in the back. It would be fun, she said, a real adventure, but there wouldn’t be any light, so we would have to use all our resources to entertain one another.” (Page 48) At the time the mom had just given birth so there was little baby Maureen in Jeanette’s arms. The parents also have tried to kill each other. “We shot forward toward Mom, who screamed and jumped out of the way. Dad turned around and went for her again.”(Page 43) The Mom and Dad had just recently got in an argument over how long the Mom had been pregnant, 11 or 12 months. The Mom had argued that she always carried babies longer than the normal person and the dad disagreed. I'm betting that the rest of the book will end up continuing on like this but getting even worse as the kids grow up.

PLN #1

              As of today I am reading The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, this book is very good but it has its twists. The dad is not the nicest or happiest person in the book, he is abusive, mean and in my opinion has some mental issues, but he also has this dream of building a glass castle in the middle of the desert. In order to build this glass castle the family needs to "strike it rich" by getting gold, that is why they are on this big adventure. The Walls family has left their house, friends and most of their belongings to find gold; they are now living in their car and on a desert using only scratchy blankets and a can of money to survive. I believe that this book would tie into what we are learning in class, about a “good” person, the dad is a “good” person on the inside but he doesn’t show it. Inside he really cares about his family but he doesn’t really show it. Everything he does is for his family, it’s proven by the blue prints for the Glass Castle, and he does not want his family to live like they have been so he has created a Glass Castle blueprint.