Outside Reading - Week 3, Post A

The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls

Vocab

Hedonsim (105): ethics, the doctrine that pleasure or happiness is the highest good in life. Some hedonists, such as the Epicureans, have insisted that pleasure of the entire mind, not just pleasure of the senses, is this highest good.

Mongrel (141): An animal or a plant resulting from various interbreedings, especially a dog of mixed or undetermined breed.

Appeals

1.) “‘It’s almost eighty miles,’ Lori said. ‘That’s right,’ Dad said. If we covered three miles an hour for eight hours a day, we could make it in three days.”(pg 120) This is both a logical and emotional appeal. It is logical because it shows the exact math of how long it will take them to get home. It is a fact. It is an emotional appeal because you agonize with Lori knowing how hard it will be.
2.) “Once the fire was out and the sodden burned down tree lay smoldering on the floor we all just stood there.”(pg 115) I think this is an emotional appeal because it makes you wonder how the family will react, what the dad will say/do and it really makes you feel bad for them as you imagine what it would be like to have that happen to you on Christmas. You even feel worse for them than you would for yourself because this was their first real Christmas.
3.) “Erma pulled a bottle of whiskey from the pocket of her housedress, and Dad looked happy for the first time since we’d left Phoenix.”(pg131) This is an emotional appeal because it makes you think about the word “happy” in the sentence. This shows that everyone is happy from different things, and obviously, Jeannette’s dad feels happy only when he’s drinking. It makes you feel bad for Jeannette as she notices that not even she can make her dad happy.

Quote

“I knew Dad wasn’t talking about buying me some extravagant present, like a pony or a dollhouse. He was asking what he could do, now that I was almost grown up, to make my last years as a kid everything I hoped they’d be. There was only one thing I truly wanted, something that I knew would change all our lives, but I was afraid to ask for it. Just thinking about saying the words out loud made me nervous […] ‘Do you think you could maybe stop drinking?’”(pg 116) This quote is important because it really shows how much of a burden Jeannette’s dad’s drinking really is. It also shows how Jeannette cares for herself and her family. She would rather make her family’s life better, than get a cool toy. It is clear that her dad needs to change.

Theme

I think that accepting new people and ideas has been a theme so far in the book. Jeannette must, and does accept her unkind and inhospitable grandparents, her new home, and the new kids that terrorize her at school. On the other hand, one girl Dinitia begins to accept Jeannette even thought her friends don’t.