The Glass Castle

           "No matter how many times he hurts me, I always forgive him. Some call it stupid. Others call it love." - Unknown
          
           The Glass Castle, by Jeannette Walls, is a memoir that takes an in-depth look at her unique childhood. Her parents, Rex and Rose Mary Walls, have three other children named Lori, Brian, and Maureen. Bad parenting and poor life decisions cause the Walls family to endure many hardships such as no food and a poor place to live. The book follows the family as they are constantly moving from place to place, and all of the troubles they encounter. Two of the main problems are Rex's drinking problem, and Rose Mary's not putting her intelligence to use by getting a job. The children, and eventually Rex and Rose Mary, all move to New York. As each child starts to take their own path and find peace; both parents continue their destructive behaviors as homeless people. Over the course of the book, Jeannette realizes that the Glass Castle symbolizes her relationship with her father; when the idea of it comes up and they are ready to plan it out, their relationship is solid and happy. However, when Rex is drinking and/or his promise of building the Glass Castle becomes empty, their relationship crumbles a little bit more.
           In the book, Jeannette's father keeps on promising Jeannette that when they build the Glass Castle, then it will be more extravagant than any apartment in New York, Jeannette's dream city to live in. "All of Dad's engineering skills and mathematical genius were coming together in one special project: a great big house he was going to build for us in the desert. It would have a glass ceiling and thick walls and even a glass staircase. The Glass Castle would have solar cells on the top that would catch the sun's rays and convert them into electricity for heating and cooling and running all the appliances. It would even have it's own water-purification system... He carried around the blueprints for the Glass Castle wherever we went, and sometimes he'd pull them out and let us work on the design for our rooms" (page 25). In this scene, Jeannette was describing what Rex had planned for the Glass Castle to look like, and during this time, she and her father had a strong relationship. The Glass Castle was acting as one of the few things they had in common, and it kept them in good terms with each other.
           However, when the plan of building the Glass Castle doesn't seem to be working out, Jeannette and her father don't seem to get along as well as they usually do. "Dad's hands trembled slightly as he unrolled different blueprints... I stared at the plans. 'Dad', I said, 'you'll never build the Glass Castle.' 'Are you saying you don't have faith in your old man?' 'Even if you do, I'll be gone. In less than three months, I'll be leaving for New York City.' ... 'Dad', I said, '... Go ahead and build the Glass Castle, but don't do it for me'" (page 238). In this scene, Rex was attempting to convince Jeannette to stay and to not move to New York by saying that he would build the Glass Castle with her. By this time, Jeannette had learned that her father was excellent at making promises and then breaking them. She understood that if she stayed back and believed that her father would actually build the Glass Castle, then she would be losing a huge opportunity to start a new life and to become successful. She realized that a glass castle would do no good for her anymore and that her father was full of empty promises.
           In conclusion, in The Glass Castle, the promise of building a Glass Castle becomes a symbol. Every time Jeannette's father promises her a life in the Glass Castle, he and Jeannette have a wonderful relationship, but towards the end of the book, Jeannette realizes that he isn't an promise keeper. This shows that she no longer cares about the Glass Castle, or if she does, it's only a little bit. This also shows that she realized that it was going to take more that the promise of a dream to make up an entire relationship with a person.

How the Murder of Four Teens Started a War: Response

           In the article "How the Murder of Four Teens Started a War", by Patricia Smith, the article talks about the killings of 4 teenagers, and how it was the start of a seven-week battle between Israel and Hamas, a militant group that controls Gaza. Smith starts the article off by describing how the three Israeli boys, Naftali Fraenkel, Gilad Shaar, and Eyal Yifrach, were killed. She then tells of the Jewish extremists who took the life of the fourth boy, Muhammad Abu Khdeir, a Palestinian. Over the course of the article, Smith describes the history between Israel and the Palestinians. She then ends by talking about what might happen next and what people hope will happen next.
           The pictures right above the beginning of the article show the four boys all smiling, days before the killings. I think that this is meant to show their innocence and how horrible it was to have them being killed off. Throughout the article, Smith uses loaded words, when she says "Israel launched devastating airstrikes in Gaza." The word "devastating", in my opinion, is a very powerful word. I feel that devastating isn't the right word, and that the sentence would sound better without it. Also, the author uses heavy words to express her point of view. For example, she said "... for surviving Israel's military onslaught." This quote caught my eye, because she uses "onslaught" to show her feelings on the casualties from the seven-week war. This makes the reader think that she is more sided with the Palestinians, because the way she worded this sentence makes the Israelis look like horrible, mean people, while the Palestines are innocent and a victim.
           Overall, the idea that killing innocent teenagers makes me feel unsafe, because if this can happen in a situation like this, it can happen anywhere. This also makes me realize how self-centered and selfish countries can be, because they are not thinking about all of the trouble they are causing and how many people they have hurt, physically and emotionally.