Kyra Powell

Ms. Dott

English III Hon.

27.11.17

Socratic Seminar Questions: Answers

Transcendental Thoughts

1. Transcendentalism is an objection or reaction to the conventional intellectualism and spirituality.

Throughout the book Rex and Mary Wall prove to us through many occasions that they are

transcendentalists. Their intentions, reasonings and ideas among values are substantially different

from our typical individual. Progressing through the book we notice that the Wall family moves

quite often. Whether it’s because of governmental issue or simply not suitable. Our average

family usually settles in one place, to be wed, have children, and raise them. From Tucson,

Arizona; Las Vegas, Nevada; and San Francisco, California to Welch, West Virginia and New

York, New York; the Walls live off the strive to seek adventure. “We moved around like nomads.

We lived in dusty little mining towns in Nevada, Arizona, and California. They had names like

Needles and Bouse, Pie, Goffs… and near places called Superstition Mountains... Dried-up Soda

Lake…” (Page 19) “We rode our bikes everywhere... Lori... was the navigator... she... plotted our

routes in advance.” (Page 99) Values are important to the Wall family. Though in a very different

limelight. Rex and Mary show that they prefer a lot of different ways to express their values.

“Later that night, Dad stopped the car out in the middle of the desert, and we slept under the stars.

We had no pillows, but Dad said that was part of his plan. He was teaching us to have good

posture. The Indians didn't use pillows, either, he explained, and look how straight they stood.

We did have our scratchy army-surplus blankets, so we spread them out and lay there, looking up

at the field of stars. I told Lori how lucky we were to be sleeping out under the sky like Indians.”

(Page 18) This passage illustrates many important characterizations in the memoir. Rex, is always
 dreaming up fantastic alternatives to reality to make life more adventurous for his children. Rex

communicates serious situations as privileges and excitement. Jeannette is the only one who plays

along with these fantasies of her father's. She believes the words he says, or at least, at a later age,

the intent behind them. Though this is early in the memoir, already Lori shows signs of cynicism.

She has already stopped believing fully in her father's fantasies and instead sees the reality of

their circumstances. “Mom frowned at me. 'You'd be destroying what makes it special' she said,

'It's the Joshua tree's struggle that gives it its beauty'.” (Page 38) When Jeannette devises a plan to

aright the Joshua tree which has grown sideways in the direction of the constant wind that passes

over it, her mother quickly dismisses the idea. Rose Mary claims that the tree is beautiful not

because it grows straight like the other trees, but rather because its struggle defines it and makes it

unique. The Walls (not just Rex and Mary) also have a unique way of handling certain situations.

At the beginning of the book one of the first instances that Jeannette is introduced she catches

herself on fire trying to make hotdogs. Her presents at the hospital ended shortly after the actions

of her father. “He unhooked my right arm from the sling overhead... a nurse yelled for us to stop.

But dad broke into a run... you’re safe now.” Overall, the walls view on intentions, reasoning and

values all provide an interesting read in proving to us readers that they are indeed

transcendentalists. Their contrasting views of God (The father being Atheist) also support their

role as a transcendentalist versus a romantic.

2. Self-reliance means being able to stand on your own two feet in what you say and what you do. It

means being able to be on your own path, with your own goals and ideas and holding on to them

no matter what. It also means existing in the world peacefully with other who have their own

paths and ideas while you have yours. In the novel, The Glass Castle, the author’s parents Rex

and Rosemary are examples of self- reliance to the extreme, because the choices they made

affected their children in both positive and negative ways, but oddly, made Jeannette the author

very self- reliant in her own life. The author’s father Rex Walls relates his ways of living a
 nomadic lifestyle while parenting his own family. Conventional ideas of having a regular home

with parents who worked and cared for their kids was not the norm in the Walls family. Rex

chose to raise his kids by treating life as an adventure and by doing so made a huge contribution

towards their attitudes and lives as adults. For example, on (Page 17), Rex had asked his daughter

Jeanette, “if she were brave and were ready for adventure,” and that this specific event within her

life would be the ultimate change, that she will need adapt to get through certain challenges and

opportunities that await her in the future. Another major event that also plays a role in shaping not

only Rex’s ways but the lives of his children, is found on (Page 129-130) when Rex and

Rosemary decided they didn’t want to live in Battle Mountain anymore but instead wanted to

travel to West Virginia where Jeanette’s grandmother and grandfather lived. In Welch, West

Virginia, Jeanette and her siblings are introduced to a whole new and different kind of setting

where they would remain for the next eight years before moving to New York City. “It took us a

month to cross the country. We might as well have been traveling in a Conestoga wagon.”

Another example is when Rex teaches Jeannette how to swim by literally forcing her to sink or

swim. He repeatedly throws her into a sulfur spring in the desert, rescuing her when she sinks

only to throw her back in again. Using these methods, Rex can train Jeannette to paddle and swim

to avoid being thrown back into the water. This strategy is representative of Mary and Rex's

general approach to parenting. Refusing to coddle their children, they often present them with

challenges, some life threatening, that the children are forced to handle. “If you don't want to

sink, you better figure out how to swim.” (Page 66)

3. Nonconformity is a touchy subject to many people. We have been told growing up no matter if

you were told in church or told by your parents to be yourself and don't 'conform' to the world. In

this world you are always told by society to dress a certain way, or act a certain way. In our

society you are either in the 'in crowd' or in the 'outcast crowd'. During everyone's lives we have

all done something to fit in whether it being agreeing to sneak out to go to a party, or to buy a
shirt just because it was considered 'in style'. I've been in the same boat, a couple months ago I

was out shopping with my mom, I saw a shirt that has been considered 'in style' and was

persistent about getting the shirt. My mom said to me, "this isn't your style" and then I realized

that I didn't really like the shirt, I just wanted the shirt because society would approve, and that

society would like the shirt, instead of liking me. In The Glass Castle Rex and Rose Mary have

already shown that they do not conform to anything or anyone. The family constantly does the

'skedaddle' moving from one place to another running from tax collectors and the 'FBI'. “We

moved around like nomads. We lived in dusty little mining towns in Nevada, Arizona, and

California. They had names like Needles and Bouse, Pie, Goffs… and near places called

Superstition Mountains... Dried-up Soda Lake…” (Page 19) “We rode our bikes everywhere...

Lori... was the navigator... she... plotted our routes in advance.” (Page 99) The family in no way

is your ordinary family from letting your child cook hotdogs at the young age of three when most

girls are just discovering Barbie, and then taking your child out of the hospital before they were

discharged. “He unhooked my right arm from the sling overhead... a nurse yelled for us to stop.

But dad broke into a run... you’re safe now.” (Page 13) These examples show nonconformity

through the way the lessons are taught. This also relates back to self-reliance and how were

taught ties into what we are expected to know. Transcendentalism, Self-reliance, and

nonconformity all have one thing in common. Someone who fits inside these categories is not like

our ordinary individual. They create a new path of direction that hasn’t been dug yet.

Nonconformity overall is about being unique and apart from others according to society. I believe

that our society has its ups and downs in believing whether or no nonconformity is being

encouraged. Sure, we say “if you set your mind to it you can do anything,” but, there’s always

going to be something to hold us back. Whether we can overcome that or not is the true

encouragement of nonconformity.
The Glass Castle

1. When she arrives in New York, Jeannette is greeted by Lori's friend, Evan, who picks her up

from the train station and takes her to see Lori who is working a shift as a bartender at Zum Zum,

a German restaurant. Jeannette goes exploring while Lori finishes her shift and decides that New

Yorkers only "pretended to be unfriendly." The sisters live in Evangeline, a woman's hostel in

Greenwich Village, and Jeannette gets a job working in a fast food restaurant. That summer, they

move into an apartment in the South Bronx with a large Puerto Rican population. Jeannette

enrolls in a public school where the students do internships instead of attending class and she

begins interning at The Phoenix, a newspaper owned, edited, and published by a man named

Mike Armstrong. She quits her job at the fast food restaurant when Mr. Armstrong offers her a

full-time job working at The Phoenix. News comes from Brian that conditions are deteriorating in

Welch, and Lori and Jeannette decide to move him up to New York as well. Soon after, Lori also

petitions for Maureen to join them so that she can be better cared for. Jeannette applies and is

accepted to Barnard College and the siblings begin to live a stable life as a family. Remembering

their past in Welch brings them all to fits of hysteric laughter. Three years after Jeannette left

Welch, Rex and Rose Mary Walls arrive in New York in a white van, declaring they have moved

permanently to New York to be a family again. The couple is kicked out of two apartments before

they begin living in Lori's home. However, Lori is fed up by her father's drunken fits and her

mother's aloofness and she is forced to kick them out of the apartment. Rex and Rose Mary live in

the van for a time until it is towed. They become homeless. Jeanette protests her parents' new

lifestyle, but Rose Mary insists that "being homeless is an adventure" and refuses to do anything

to change the situation. In, the end of it all I don’t think anyone in the book had a quest for

opportunity. Moving around so much and never really having a plan to do something didn’t really

give them a clear path. But Jeanette’s mom’s quote above ‘being homeless is an adventure” helps
 support a small hint of achieving a sort of hidden American dream. Where she’s carefree and is

trying to enjoy the life that she has as it comes.

2. As the title of the memoir, this symbol could easily sum up most of the tensions in and interests

of the book. The Glass Castle symbolizes the illusions that Jeannette must release to fully mature.

For years, Dad has, with the kids, made blueprints and floor plans for a magnificent transparent

palace built in the desert and relying on solar panels for electricity. The Glass Castle epitomizes

how Dad would like to live, self-sufficiently and sustainably, without submitting to a system or

authority. In Welch, Brian and Jeannette even dig a foundation pit for the palace. The illusion is,

for Jeannette, definitively burst once Dad tells her to fill up the pit with garbage: the very idea,

the dream itself, has become no more than a receptacle for trash. Dad’s flimsy attempts to revive

the dream, by showing Jeannette new floor plans when she’s about to leave for New York, only

confirm for her that she must definitively let go of the idea of the Glass Castle. But as sobering as

this symbol is, by choosing it as the book’s title Walls pays homage to Dad’s magnificent dreams

and illusions, as unrealistic and broken as they might be. “When Dad wasn’t telling us about all

the amazing things he had already done, he was telling us about the wondrous things he was

going to do. Like build the Glass Castle. 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.” (Page 28)

“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.”

“As soon as I finish classes, I’m getting on the next bus out of here. If the buses stop running, I’ll

hitchhike. I’ll walk if I must. Go ahead and build the Glass Castle, but don’t do it for me.” (Page

238)
3. There’s no telling for certain that you’re going to write a memoir about your life but most people

at a young age keep a journal entry. Others if enough uncommon things happen in their life it’s

easier to remember. In this instance "I will never forget it. I tried!" Walls laughed. "I tried, and it

didn't work. So, you remember, not out of anger, but out of gratitude, that you can start at a place

like that and make your way out." (News, CBS. “Jeannette Walls on Writing ‘The Glass Castle.’”

CBS News, CBS Interactive, 30 July 2017) I’ve gone through a few things in my life such as

cancer and my parents divorcing but I will probably never remember in immense detail of my

past like Jeannette Walls did. A true story can never actually be proven true, but it is likely that if

the character names are kept the same in a memoir much like The Glass Castle it would be quite

hard to publish it without someone in the book pointing something out something isn’t true. So,

when it comes down to it, we don’t REALLY know if the story is true but assume because it has

been published under that category until proven otherwise.

4. The idea of free will, the illusion that our minds are free to wander, independent of the brain, is

problematic. In The Glass Castle Jeannette’s parents Mary and Rex defy stereotypes by insisting

that living on the streets is “an adventure.” As the book opens with the scene of Jeannette seeing

her mom on the side of street rummaging through the garbage it embarrasses her. “I was still

rattled from seeing mom, the unexpectedness of coming across her, the sight of her happily

rooting through the dumpster.” (Page 3-4) Having a mental illness and making choices, sure we

know is different from your average person, but this also ties back to Transcendentalism where

it’s believed that God created us all equal and unique. The point of a moral responsibility to help

the homeless is very controversial. This topic sort of ties into the free write/debate we wrote

(November 28, 2017) asking about “Is our generation more self-centered than past generations.” I

believe that it depends on the person and the situation. There are many Social experiments videos

uploaded to YouTube or some other social network that “shows the real in people.” But when you
think about it, those videos are edited and set at certain places at certain times for certain

situations. It’s not a like an average homeless person who’s on the same street 24/7 in the same

state of inability to vouch for themselves. In addition to that, we all become in a state when we

need help or a little encouragement. Who are we to judge when and why someone needs it? Yes,

as an American we do have a moral responsibility (or responsibility in general) to help the

homeless, unemployed or anyone else around us in need. We are all not perfect nor the same. We

come individually with our strengths and weaknesses, and depend on the rest of humanity to help.

This relates back to self-reliance and how we are all expected to at least know some things. For

example, in school each grade level is expected to remember material from the previous grade. It

is unfair in society to take without giving and that why we do have a moral responsibility as

Americans to help the homeless.