You are The Key to Your Own Success
A Review of The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls




We can all agree that you, yourself, is the only one who can decide who and what you want to be in life. Both the book The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls and the article “U.S. Student Became Mexican Drug Kingpin” By James C. McKinley Jr. and Elisabeth Malkin help support this idea. The Glass Castle my Jeanette Walls is an autobiography about how Walls grew up in poverty but still succeeded in life against the odds. The article “U.S. Student Became Mexican Drug Kingpin” By James C. McKinley Jr. and Elisabeth Malkin talks about a Mexican-American man who grew up in a decent household, had about everything he could in order to do something with his life, but instead decided to become a drug dealer. These two pieces of literature teaches readers that no matter where you come from, or how you grow up, or what impact society has on you, evidently your goals and what you want to do in life is all up to you.
My definition of success is being content with who you are and what you have in life. At this point my only goal in life is to be a good person. The obstacles I may have to face before reaching that goal is probably deciding the difference between whats right and whats wrong, but then again we all have different definitions of that. The Glass Castle taught me that if you want to get anywhere in life you have to work for it and do it yourself. I say this because when Walls was growing up her parents did not really raise her in a way that would benefit her. She never had a stable home and she never went to school for very long, but she managed to get into an Ivy League school and become an author. Despite the path her parents had carved for her she had taken her own route. The same goes

Edgar Valdez Villarreal from the “U.S. Student Became Mexican Drug Kingpin” article. His parents planned for him to go to college, start a family, etc. but instead he decided to take a different path in life. The most inspirational part of The Glass Castle was the ending, when the whole family finally got together after Walls' father died, after all these years of not really communicating each other. “ Also, most people in Welch had a pretty good idea how bad off the Walls family was, but the truth was, they all had their problems, too-- they were just better than we were at covering them up. I wanted to let the world know that no one had a perfect life, that even the people who seemed to have it all had their secrets”(Walls 270). It show's that they all got over their differences and decided to deal with each others individuality so that they could once again be a family. The reason this part of the book was so inspiring to me is because I hope that one day my family and I can be as close as theirs despite our differences.
The Glass Castle starts off with a scene of Walls watching her mom digging through a trashcan and her inside a car waiting to go to a party, but being to embarrassed to come out of the car, in case her mom might recognize her and start a scene.”I was sitting in a taxi, wondering if I had overdressed for the evening, when I looked out the window and saw Mom rooting through a Dumpster... To the people walking by, she probably looked like any of the thousands of homeless people in New York City”(Walls 3). The book then flashes back to her earliest memory from her childhood and continues on from there with memories until it explains how it gets to point where her parents are homeless while she has money to spare. I liked the way the book was written because it captures you in beginning and keeps you reading because it doesn’t give anything away till the right moment.

I definitely would recommend this book to others. The glass castle gives you a real insight into what its like to live in poverty, to not have anything, but shows that handwork can get you anywhere. Jeanette walls is an amazing raconteur and tells her story with lots of imagery and detail. Both the article and The Glass Castle show that you must carve your own path in life. What everyone else thinks and what everyone else wants you to be should have no impact on what you think and what you want to be and do with your life.

I am reading the book The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls. As far as I can tell it is about a girl who's parents are homeless. She tried to help them but they tell her they don’t need help. They tell her they choose to live this way. So far I think the book its pretty alright, I really haven’t gotten that far into it yet. I think the theme right now is, to look at the world from different perspectives, because the girls mother claims that even though that she and her father are homeless, they are as happy as they've been. She wants the girl to understand that you don’t need money and things to be happy.

The first theme for Il Postino is that love is faithful. I say this because through out the movie, everyone in a way sort of stayed 'faithful' to each other. For example Beatrice stayed faithful to Mario during their courtship. She could have gone with the other man who was writing her poems, but she didn’t, even though he was probably richer. She also stayed faithful to Mario after he died because she didn’t really go off and marry someone else. Another example would be how Mario stayed faithful to Pablo. When everyone else said that he forgot about them Mario didn’t believe it. He knew Pablo really did care about them and didn’t let anyone elses thoughts phase that.

The second theme for Il Postino would be everyone, no matter where they come from, can be friends. I say this because Mario and Pablo are both from different classes, but they became great friends. We know they're from different classes because of the way they dress and also based on where they love and their occupations. Mario came from a family of fishermen and he is a delivery man. He also dresses in darker colors. Pablo is a poet, and usually he wears very light colors. He also has better living conditions. Mario and Pablo come from two different worlds but they managed to become great friends.

The third theme would have to be that poetry lives in everyone. Mario is your average Joe and no one would've guessed that he would be able to write poetry. But they soon find out that he is in fact a very talented poet. At the beginning he didn’t even know what a metaphor was, but later on he manged to win the heart of the girl of his dreams with metaphors.


I kind of did like this movie. I liked the messages it was trying to send through, but I didnt like its slow pace. I think it would be a pretty good movie if they remade it, and also if they made Mario more attractive. Also I think it would've been easier to pay attention if the movie was in English. But overall it was a good movie.