Sunday, September 30, 2007

The Glass Castle: section 2

Loaded Words:
> character, p.55
- This word is loaded because it is used as calling Mr. Walls this name. The author is emphasizing how other people view him as a person.
> wimp, p.59
-This word is loaded because it's describing how Jeannette and other kids view her dad. The author uses this word to show the little girl's age using her vocabulary.
>loathe, p.64
- This word is loaded because it tells the reader how the mother feels about her husband's budget skills. The author uses this word to show her deep feelings about her husband's quirks.
>Innocence, p.73
-This word is loaded because it tells you how Mr. Walls wants to be viewed in a certain situation. The author used this word to show the depth of the situation.
> mentally slow, p.73
-This word is loaded because it tells you how the kids in the classroom were learning. The author used this word to tell the progress in Mrs. Walls' class.
>Brilliant, p. 74
- This word is loaded because it's used to show Lori's intellect compared to the rest of her family. The author used this word to show how much more educated Lori is compared to the rest of the family.
>scarce, p.77
- This word is loaded because it tells you how much money the family has. The author used this word to show how the family's income comes and goes.
>ladies, p.80
- This word is loaded because it describes how a 6 year old boy views women that work in a "whore house." The author used this word to show the little boy's point of view on adult situations.
>aggressive, p.86
- This word is loaded because it tells you how the little boy is acting to Jeannette. The author used this word to show how badly Billy is acting and how his actions affect Jeannette.
> terror, p. 88
- This word is loaded to show how the children were feeling when billy was pointing the gun at them. The author used this word to explain in further detail how serious the situation really was.

Short Summary:
In section two the Walls family lives in a depot in Battle Mountain, Nevada. The kids start going to school and come in tact with all sorts of trouble. Jeannette's mother starts a new job as a teacher and her father works in the mine. Jeannette has an admirer, Billy Deel, but has no interest in him. He goes out of his way to show how he wants her to be his girlfriend but she shoots him down one time after another. Billy shows signs of an insecure childhood and questionable behavior. He attempts to rape Jeannette and she decided not to tell anyone about it. Only a day or two after the attempted rape Billy comes over to the Walls' house with a BB gun and starts shooting. Lori, Jeannette's older sister, grabs their father's pistol to scare him off. Later that night their parents come home with the police and they ask the children questions about the fight. As soon as the police leave Mr. Walls decides the family should flee to Phoenix where Mrs. Walls' mother once lived but recently passed away to start their new life.

Personal Reaction:
The more I read this book the more shocked I become. The lifestyle these people lived is so far from how I have grown up. The constant fighting of their parents and the unsteadiness of their parents' jobs concerns me. I only have to wonder how their new lifestyle in Phoenix is going to turn out and what surprises their lives have in store for them.

The Glass Castle: section 1 reactions

Section one of this book kind of shocked me. The way those children were being raised really gave me an uneasy feeling and i found it somewhat disturbing. The way Mr. Walls would swear and "care" for his family wasn't the ideal way of raising children in today's world. I think that the hospital should have looked more into their family and help them get back on track. The way Jeannette caught on fire should have been a big sign to the doctors at the hospital that the family needed help.

The Glass Castle:section 1

The Book starts out with the author, Jeannette, riding in a taxi and she spots her mother digging through a dumpster. She doesn't want to be seen by her mother so she ducks in her seat. By the time she gets home she is so mad at herself for no saying hello to her mother that she called a friend of her mother's and left a message. this was the only way she could get a hold of her considering she was homeless. About 3 days later her mother called and they decided to go out to lunch to a Chinese restaurant. While they're eating Jeannette says how worried she is about her mother and father. She offers to help them out and her mother says they don't want their charity. She also says how embarrassed she is of them and her mother tells her, her values are all mixed up and she needs to accept them for who they are.
The next part of the book goes back in time to when she was about 3 years old. She was cooking hot dogs by herself on the stove wearing her favorite pink dress. Not long after she'd been cooking the hot dogs she felt heat coming from the right side of her dress. She looked over and noticed she was on fire. She started screaming and the flames quickly spread. Her mother and father came into the room with a big wool blanket. As the flames go out her mother takes her and calls everyone else out to the car and they ask a neighbor if they could have a ride to the hospital. While they're at the hospital all the nurses question Jeanette's parents parenting. They wonder why she was allowed to cook hot dogs by herself at age 3. The doctors also ask her many other questions such as, have her parents every tried to hurt her, and how she got burned. Jeannette said her parents have never hurt her before and she got burned when she was cooking the hot dogs. The nurses couldn't help but wonder what was going on in their home.
While Jeannette is at the hospital her dad tells her how much she hates hospitals. He didn't take her sister Lori to the hospital when she got stung by a poisonous scorpion. After she got stung she went into convulsions and because her father didn't trust hospitals he took her to a Navajo witch doctor instead. On the sixth week at the hospital, Jeannette was stolen out of her room by her father. Her dad threw her over his shoulder and ran out the door to the running car where the whole family was sitting. He put Jeannette in the back and drove off as fast he could.
Not long after the hospital incident, her dad tells everyone to pack essentials and meet him in the car in 15 minutes. They take off from their trailer home and hit the road. The family cat Quixote started meowing and Mr. Walls threw her out the window of the moving car. He told the children that cats don't like to travel and he thought that was a good enough reason to toss the cat out the window. As the day turned to night they pulled over and slept under the stars. Mr. Walls confesses that the FBI is after him and that's why they had to leave their home.
They keep traveling from city to city and one day as they're traveling they car door pops open and Jeannette falls out of the moving car. Once she collects herself from the fall she sees the car travel further and further away. She starts to cry as she notices her cuts and bloody knees and nose. It takes the car a long time until they come back for her.

Tuesday, September 18, 2007

This I Believe assignment

1. A link to the essay:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=10853582

2. Author:

3. Title:
Admittance to a Better Life

4. One sentence of what the belief is:
I believe that education has the power to transform a person's life

5. 2 examples from the story that showed their belief:
1)
I still wonder what happened to that happy-go-lucky semi-thug who used to hang out with drug dealers on dimly-lit street corners. Well, I'm in the library parsing a Jane Austen novel looking for dramatic irony, while many of my old friends are dead or in jail

2)When I was on the streets, I never felt I was good at anything, but I wrote this poem about a girl who didn't care about me, and it got published.


6. 1 favorite passage:
For me, education was the rabbit hole through which I escaped the underclass.


Thursday, September 6, 2007

Goals

One goal for my sophomore year is to get straight A's. I'm hoping that i can keep all my activities, school work and social life balanced so that I don't spend too much time in one category than another. I hope to start off on the right foot and not procrastinate with my school work but also put enough time aside for time with my friends and family.

Anxious:

The one thing I am most anxious about at Edina High School is making time for everything. Because we no longer have and A day B day schedule it will be harder to keep up with my homework. I will have to adjust to finding time to do all my homework, go to my sports, and spending time with my friends and family.

Wednesday, September 5, 2007