The Sea Inside: Post 3

When Ramon was dreaming of him and Julia kissing, they used a close up shot to show the intensity. It helped viewers show how he felt about Julia and what he really wanted to have with her. The camera angle really did help show us as viewers what he was dreaming and how he felt about Julia.

The Sea Inside: Post 2

The Sea Inside was a lot like The Diving Bell and the Butterfly in my opinion. In both stories the main characters were quadriplegics. They both had somewhat of a wish to die and felt like their conditions were torture. They both had families that cared about them very much and had no wish for them to die. I thought it was interesting that both Ramon and Bauby wrote books about their condition as well. Bauby in The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, had a worse condition than Ramon in The Sea Inside. Bauby could only blink one of his eyes and that was the only motion he could do. Ramon, however, could move his whole head. In my opinion, I thought The Sea Inside was a more powerful message in the way that Ramon spent a huge chunk of his quadriplegic life trying to die. It was a more in depth story and had a wider variety of conflicts which made it more interesting.

The Sea Inside: Post 1

I thought that The Sea Inside was a good movie. I enjoyed the storyline and thought it was really interesting. I thought that Ramon's request for assisted suicide was understandable. His condition, to him, was somewhat like a torture and he wanted to get out of it. The way the court reacted to Ramon's request was expected. They weren't just willing to give Ramon the OK to go ahead and commit suicide without a fight. I think that Ramon's friends must have really loved him to have the strength to let their friend die. I don't know if i could have been able to let one of my friends commit suicide even though it was what they really wanted.

The Glass Castle: Section 5

In this section, times in their new house were getting really harsh. Jeannette realizes that everyone in Welch fights. People at school, people on the streets, and their family. Rex Walls starts disappearing and again coming home drunk. They don't eat much and the kids at school notice how skinny the Walls kids are. They made fun of them so Jeannette stayed in the bathroom during lunch waiting for the other kids to throw away the food they didn't eat. When winter came in Welch, times got really hard. The house had no insulation and they didn't enough money for coal for their fireplace. The branches from the trees were too wet to burn from the snow so the house was just as cold inside as it was outside. They had to wear coats inside and put fire against the icicles coming out of the faucet to melt them. They had to go to their gandfather's house to bathe but Jeannette had a hard time going back once her uncle started sexually assaulting her. Her mother told her to not make a big deal about it and that it will only make her stronger. When the kids' Grandpa Erma died they went to the funeral, but got in trouble when they started making fun of her. Their father was so mad that he yelled at them in front of everyone and Rex said that he was ashamed of them. Lori was mad at him for saying that and remarked, "you're ashamed of us?" One day when Jeannette and Brian went scouting for firewood they found a diamond ring that belonged to the woman who lived there previously. They got really excited, hoping that they could sell it and make a bunch of money for food and hopefully they would be able to get a new pair of shoes. But when their mother decides to keep it for herself the kids get very disappointed. When Jeannette finds out her mother was keeping the ring she tells her mother to leave her father. Rose Mary was appalled but never told Rex what Jeannette said. A man came to their front door asking for Jeannette's parents. She told the man that they worked even thought they didn't. She got so furious about the man coming to the door, and she asked her mother to get a job so they could eat and have a chance at living. Her mother told her she would get a teaching job after she said that Jeannette was so focused that it was scary. Once Jeannette started high school, she started working on the school newspaper, The Maroon Wave. It became all she could think about and stayed late to work on it to stay in the heated school. Rose Mary feels she can't manage her life so she turns the money over to the kids. They start a budget until their dad starts taking money from them for beer and gambling. One night Rex takes Jeannette to a bar and he lets her go to an older man's apartment alone when she was only thirteen. The man tried to rape her and her dad knew that he was going to try. Jeannette was furious with her father and the only thing he said was that it was just like when he was teaching her to swim. Jeannette got a job at a jewelry store because she told the owner she was seventeen. Not long after that Lori and Jeannette came up with a plan of getting out of Welch and going to New York. Lori was just about to graduate and she and Jeannette started a savings to Go to New York. After they saved for almost a year there dad had stolen all of it. They had to make most of the money back and then Jeannette was off to New York after graduation. Once Jeannette Graduated, Jeannette flew to New York to meet Lori.

2) My reaction to this book only gets more surprised and disturbed. The childrens' parents' actions shock me to no end. When Jeannette was sexually assulted by her uncle, and her mom told her that it would only make her stronger, i couldn't even believe it. My favorite part of this section was when Lori and Jeannette decided to move to New York. They started saving money and working together to get out of the hell hole they were living in. I loved when Brian decided to help make money for their move even though he wasn't originally apart of the plan. I also loved when their life started looking up because they couldn't believe that they were living in an apartment that had ceilings that didnt leak, flushing toilets, and an endless supply of fresh running water. Another part I enjoyed reading was when Jeannette said goodbye to her dad even though he was trying to make her stay. She stayed strong and knew that life would be better if she left for good.

The Glass Castle Week 4: Part 2

The family decided to get out of Phoenix and go to Welch, West Virginia. It takes them about a month to get cross country and finally get to Rex's folks house. The house is very worn down and Rex, you can tell, is really embarrassed. Erma, Rex's mother, opens the door and tells the kids to call her Erma, not grandma. The whole town gives off a very weird vibe. The kids enroll in school without birth certificates and previous school reports and are placed in classes with kids who have learning disabilities because they can't understand the principle's accent. The kids have a hard time adjusting to their peers. Jeannette gets beat up by a group of black girls. They keep bothering her and beating her up until she, one day, saves the leader of the black girl's gang's neighbor. Soon she befriends her and she helps her with her homework. Rex and Rose Mary leave to go back to phoenix to get all the stuff they left behind. But when they got there they found that everything was taken. While they were gone, Erma takes advantage of Brian and Jeannette gets Lori to come in and help him. Lori and Erma get into a fist fight, and by the time it gets out of control their grandpa breaks them apart. Erma gets so mad that she sends them to the basement for the rest of the time their parents were gone. When their parents got back, Erma banishes their entire family from her house so they find a new home in the mountains that has no running water and is falling apart, literally.

The Glass Castle Week 4: Part 1

" 'Erma can't let go of her misery,' Mom said. 'It's all she knows,' She added that you should never hate anyone, even your worst enemies. 'Everyone has something good about them,' she said. 'you have to find the redeeming quality and love the person for that.
'Oh yeah?' I said. 'How about Hitler? What was his redeeming quality?'
'Hitler loved dogs.' ( The Glass Castle p.144)

This quote really stood out to me because it is sort of a reassurance that one of those children's parents has some sense and can teach their children some of the right ways to act.

The Glass Castle Week 3 part:2

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.
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.
he Walls family moves into Rose Mary's mother's house. They consider it a mansion compared to what they were used to living in. When the kids get enrolled in school they get their ears and eyes checked and Lori ended up getting glasses, which their mother disapproved, but because the school offered to pay for them she allowed Lori to get the glasses. Because Mr. Walls got a solid job with a steady income, he decided to buy all the kids bikes. The kids were so surprised and thought for sure life was looking up from there.
Not long after they moved into their new house they started having trouble with the neighbors. The first bad encounter was with their "gypsy" neighbors. They has supposedly stolen Brian's pogo stick and Rose Mary fought "magic with magic" to get the pogo stick back. The second encounter they had was with a neighbor that intruded in their open house at night which they called a pervert. He molested Jeannette in her bed and when she realized he was there, her and Brian chased him out all by themselves. We also learned that Rex doesn't like going to church because he doesn't have a faith. Most times when they take him to church he very rudely interrupts the sermon and gets them kicked out.
When Rex Walls hears about a women getting a Mountain Lion killed he gets furious and takes the kids to the zoo to show them how all animals aren't harmful if you know how to interact with them. He takes the kids to see the cheetah and he lets them stick their hands in the cage and shows them how harmless they are. The cheetah licks their hands but then a woman calls security on them and they have to run out of the zoo.
Rose Mary tells the kids that she thought it was going to be a great Christmas that year. They went out and bought a dead tree and put their grandmother's ornaments on it. When they get kicked out of the midnight mass they go home to open presents but their dad is too drunk that he sets the tree and all the gifts on fire .
For Jeanette's tenth birthday her dad asks her what she wants for her birthday to make the rest of her life better while she's living with them and she asks him to stop drinking. He takes this in a very strange way and he secludes himself from his family since she asked this of him. One day when she comes home from school she hears her dad yelling from his bedroom and he's tied to his bed. She asks her mom what's going on and she said that he's battling his own demons.
After Rex recuperates from not drinking he decided the family should go on a road trip to the Grand Canyon. They end up breaking the car down by making the car go as fast as it can. They end up having to hitch hike home but Rex decided to walk home. Three days went by and he came home completely drunk and started yelling for Rose Mary. They got in a huge fight which involved knifes, but didn't take long to taper off.

I think that the book is very well written. When I'm reading i feel like I'm actually watching it happen. It is very descriptive and easy to follow. There are some things that I sometimes question and I wish she would follow more in depth with but overall I am really enjoying the book. This book also is somewhat disturbing to me. The way Jeanette's parents handle certain situations makes me sad for her and her siblings. I couldn't even imagine living the way they lived and I just have to wonder what my life would be like if I were in her shoes. I don't really have any relations to her in my own life. My life is completely different from the way she grew up.

The Glass Castle Week 3 part:1

1) In this section the Walls family moves into Rose Mary's mother's house. They consider it a mansion compared to what they were used to living in. When the kids get enrolled in school they get their ears and eyes checked and Lori ended up getting glasses, which their mother disapproved, but because the school offered to pay for them she allowed Lori to get the glasses. Because Mr. Walls got a solid job with a steady income, he decided to buy all the kids bikes. The kids were so surprised and thought for sure life was looking up from there.
Not long after they moved into their new house they started having trouble with the neighbors. The first bad encounter was with their "gypsy" neighbors. They has supposedly stolen Brian's pogo stick and Rose Mary fought "magic with magic" to get the pogo stick back. The second encounter they had was with a neighbor that intruded in their open house at night which they called a pervert. He molested Jeannette in her bed and when she realized he was there, her and Brian chased him out all by themselves. We also learned that Rex doesn't like going to church because he doesn't have a faith. Most times when they take him to church he very rudely interrupts the sermon and gets them kicked out.
When Rex Walls hears about a women getting a Mountain Lion killed he gets furious and takes the kids to the zoo to show them how all animals aren't harmful if you know how to interact with them. He takes the kids to see the cheetah and he lets them stick their hands in the cage and shows them how harmless they are. The cheetah licks their hands but then a woman calls security on them and they have to run out of the zoo.
Rose Mary tells the kids that she thought it was going to be a great Christmas that year. They went out and bought a dead tree and put their grandmother's ornaments on it. When they get kicked out of the midnight mass they go home to open presents but their dad is too drunk that he sets the tree and all the gifts on fire .
For Jeanette's tenth birthday her dad asks her what she wants for her birthday to make the rest of her life better while she's living with them and she asks him to stop drinking. He takes this in a very strange way and he secludes himself from his family since she asked this of him. One day when she comes home from school she hears her dad yelling from his bedroom and he's tied to his bed. She asks her mom what's going on and she said that he's battling his own demons.
After Rex recuperates from not drinking he decided the family should go on a road trip to the Grand Canyon. They end up breaking the car down by making the car go as fast as it can. They end up having to hitch hike home but Rex decided to walk home. Three days went by and he came home completely drunk and started yelling for Rose Mary. They got in a huge fight which involved knifes, but didn't take long to taper off.

2) Jeanette Walls had a shaken and wild upbringing. She Had 2 sisters and 1 brother. They traveled all around running from people her dad got in trouble with and never could depend on living in one spot for too long. Their parents had questionable morals and rules t which sometimes got them hurt or in trouble. Her father was an alcoholic and when drunk was abusive to her mother. He didn't set very good examples in front of his kids but his kids didn't know any better than to believe everything he said. Her mother was a painter and sold paintings for very little money. She started her own gallery in their house in Phoenix, but it didn't last long. Today she is an entertainment gossip columnist and is now a known author for her book "The Glass Castle."


sources: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7139443/
http://conversationsfamouswriters.blogspot.com/2005/10/jeannette-walls-glass-castle.html