Page 285-288 Summary

The Glass Castle, Pages 285-288 Summary

Journal Prompt: Have you ever experienced the death of a close family member or friend? If so, how did you you react?





It had been five years since Jeanette’s family lost their dad, Rex, and Jeanette decided it was time for a Walls family get-together. This would be their first get-together since Rex’s funeral. Jeanette only saw her mom occasionally and her mom hadn't even talked to John before. John and Jeanette invited the family to Thanksgiving at their farmhouse they bought the previous year, where John could finally introduce himself. Her mom arrived from the train station in an overcoat, trousers and old sneakers, along with Lori, wearing a black cape and fedora. Jeanette remarked that they made quite the pair.


In the car ride to the farmhouse, John told her mom and Lori all about the area and what it was like. While John was driving, Jeanette thought about all the many reasons why she loved John, one being that he found her scar interesting. He said her scar meant she was stronger than whatever it was that tried to hurt her.


Brian, who had become a decorated sergeant detective, showed up to the gathering as well. The kitchen was filled with a variety of different types of food. Brian commented that it really isn’t that hard to put food on the table if that’s what she decides to do, but Lori told him there would be no recriminations. Jeanette and John showed them their house and their gardens, which even her mom admired.





At the table, Jeanette’s mom toasted to Rex by saying, “Life with your father was never boring.” They all raised their glasses and Jeanette could almost hear her dad laughing at her mom’s comment like he always did when he was truly enjoying something.






Alexa Bally, Val Gavioli, and Damon

The Glass Castle 252-261 Summary

The Glass Castle Summary 252-261

Journal Prompt: Have you ever had a family member diagnosed with a sickness? If not, how would you react? 

Jeannette was living happily in New York City when she hears on the radio that there is a traffic jam on the New Jersey Turnpike. A van broke down and everything spilled out of it including a dog that was being chased by multiple cops down the turnpike. Later that day Jeannette received a phone call. It was her mom to tell her that they have just moved to New York. Jeannette asks them if the broken-down van was them and indeed it was. A couple of times a month the family would get together in New York City. Jeanette’s parents were homeless and they didn’t mind, but Jeanette struggled with their decision. That year the winter was very cold, so Jeannette decided that her parents couldn’t keep living the way they were. Instead of staying at the library just to have heat Jeannette believed they needed to do better for themselves. Jeannette and her mother met up at a coffee shop to talk about the parent’s options of living, but they just ended up talking about movies. A couple of weeks later, Jeannette’s father, Rex, was diagnosed with tuberculosis. He promised Jeannette that he wouldn’t die and that he would rest until healthy.

Prompt: Desmond Purchula

Summary: Jonathan and Lucas
Picture: Lucas

203-213 The Glass Castle

The Glass Castle 203-213

Journal Prompt: Have your parents ever put you in an uncomfortable situation and told you, you would be fine? If not how would you have reacted? 

Summary: 
Jeannette starts working for the school newspaper. She works with the Teacher that she was named after (Miss Jenette Bivens). This is when she first understands and gets a good sense of the world, instead of being told the twisted version her parents tell her. She decides to be a reporter. Jennette's mom left for 8 weeks to renew her teaching certificate in Charleston. This left Jennette in charge of the house. Jennette's mom had left her $200 to buy food, for Brian and Maureen, and pay the water and electricity bills. For the first week, everything was fine but one afternoon Rex asked Jennette for $5 to buy beer and cigarettes. Jennette gave Rex the money. A few days later Rex asks for another $5 and Jennette gives it to him. A few days after that Rex asks for $20 and says he needs the money to make money. Jennette gives Rex the money. That Saturday Rex asks Jennette to accompany him on a business trip. Jennette goes with him to a roadside bar. They both take seats at the bar. After some time Rex gets up to play pool and a man named Robbie seats down next to Jennette. Robbie asks Jennette if she knows how to dance but Jennette shakes her head. Robbie says, " Sure you do " and gets up to dance with her. Jennette gives a stare to her dad and Rex just grins and waves back. Robbie and Jennette dance and then Rex calls Robie over to play him in a game of pool. Rex loses the first match but starts betting more and ends up beating Robbie. After every match, Robbie would dance with Jennette. Eventually, Robbie was down $80 and he quit. He asked Jennette to go upstairs to his apartment which was above the bar. Jennette said she wasn't sure. Robbie shouted at Rex and said, " I'm going to take your girl upstairs." Rex was fine with it and told Jennette to Holler if she needed anything. Rex put Jennette in an uncomfortable situation and acted as if he knew she would be fine. Jennette was very angry at her father and when they went upstairs she never hollered instead she made a quick escape by saying, " I think I hear Dad calling."
Later when they were in the car Jennette tells Rex that the creep attacked her when they were upstairs. Rex said," I knew you could handle yourself, Its like time I threw you into the sulfur spring to teach you to swim, you might have been convinced you were going to drown, but I knew you'd do just fine."
 
  
Kanna & Nick - Worked on Summary and journal prompt
Kanna - Chose Picture

The Glass Castle pages 186-195

Journal Prompt - Have you ever swam in a public pool, if not would you?


SUMMARY

     Brian and Jeannette found a ring in their house, they gave it to their mother to bring to a shop to see how much it was worth. When their mother came home, they asked her how much it was worth because it was apparently a genuine two-carat diamond. She said it didn't matter because she was keeping it because instead of getting the kid's food, she wanted to boost her own self-esteem. Later Jeannette urged her mother to leave her father because they can get some aid for food and clothes from the government. Her mother was disappointed that Jeannette would think of such a thing.
     Brain and Jeanette wanted to go swimming but the kids there made fun of them and told everyone that they had some sort of od disease, so they left without a swim. Jeanette's friend Dinitia told her to come in the morning the next day and swim with her because the kids who were picking on her wouldn't be there. Jeannette went and got to go swimming, she enjoyed it very much. Later when she was home a man knocked on the door. When she opened the door he looked very official. He was there to see the kids because someone had told him that there may be child neglect at that house. Jeanette sent him away quickly when she told her mother, she said she would think about what to do. Later, she told Jeannette that she would get a job.


https://www.mcall.com/resizer/6S-MpfUkjgxX3QDPF7HtFeGzhjQ=/415x275/top/arc-anglerfish-arc2-prod-tronc.s3.amazonaws.com/public/5K7534JODBHEHBRFCNLJGU2F5M.jpg

- Tristan, Grace, and Mae

Glass Castle Summary pgs 164-174

Glass Castle pgs 164-174

Journal Prompt:
Have you ever gotten in a group fight with another group? If so, was it worth it? If not, what would it take to get into a fight?

Summary

The Walls family had recently moved to Welch, West Virginia. One of the first things that they noticed was all the fighting. Nearly half the people on the streets had a black eye or some sort of injury from combat. Jeannette, Brian, Lori, and Maureen got into more fights than most kids. The other kids would make fun of them for being poor and for living next to a garbage pit. One day Jeannette and Brian were playing on an old tank by the armory when a kid named Ernie and some of his friends came over. They started to tease them and taunt them so Jeannette pushed him back. On Saturday, Ernie and his friends came to their house and started throwing rocks at them. One of them hits Brian in the head. Then Jeannette runs outside and scares them away. They figured he would come back so they built a catapult to throw rocks at them. When they came back, they launched rocks at them and Ernie and his friends ran away. All summer long, dad would disappear for a few days without telling everybody why. One night, he came home with a gash in his arm. He told Jeannette to stitch it up but she couldn’t so he helped her do it. Every once in a while, they would have enough food to go around. When they didn’t, Jeannette and Brian went hunting for food. They often found themselves hungry and rooting through the trash.

Prompt Question and Image: James Mudrick
Summary of Pages: Daniel Bates

The Glass Castle Pages 145-148

                          The Glass Castle pages 145-148

Journal Prompt: Have your parents ever taken a trip without you to a place you wanted to visit? If so, How did that make you feel? If not how do you think you would react? 

Summary: 

Mom and Dad get back to Phoenix to check the house of the stuff they need to bring all the way across the country. While the children were with Erma (Rex’s mother) she became meaner. But unexpectedly Erma sexually assaulted Brian. Jeanette walks in on this happening and she yells an Erma. Erma tries to assault Jeannette but instead slaps Lori. Lori gets back up and punches Erma in the face and down she went. Erma doesn’t allow the kids upstairs anymore so they have to use the storm door to get in and out of the basement. When Dad returns he is very mad but not at Erma at the kids. The kids then think if Erma ever did what she did to Brian to Dad. 

Lainie and Ashley- Worked together to put together the summery

Elizabeth and Zoe- Worked together to find a picture and they came up with a journal prompt

Welch and First day at School: pages 129-139

JOURNAL: What would you do if you went to a new school and you didn’t know anyone there? Why?





SUMMARY:

Rose Mary, Rex, Lori, Jeanette, Brian, and Maureen were driving from Phoenix, Arizona to Welch, West Virginia. In Welch, they meet their Grandma, Grandpa, and Uncle Stanley. They realize soon that their father’s family is not how they had wanted and that they were almost worse than their father.


Rose Mary and Rex brought them around Welch to show them the history of the town. The town had seemed run down and also could have influenced why her father acted the way he did. Her mother enrolled Jeanette and Brian into the elementary school where they were told that they had disabilities because they spoke faster than the western accented principal. In the class, she had tried to show she didn’t have a disability but the teacher and class made fun of her, they even physically hurt her.


On the first day at her new school, it was a rainy, dreary day. During her class which was "English for students with learning disabilities," a question was asked by the teacher and Jeanette didn't agree with the said question, so she didn't raise her hand. This then prompted the teacher to mock her defense on why she didn't agree in front of the class and say Phoenix like "'Feeeeenix'". After being humiliated by her teacher, Miss Caparossi, the girl behind Jeanette poked her between the shoulder blades with a sharp pencil, only to beat her up after school.


Jeanette was threatened and beaten up because the other students thought that she was trying to be better than them. This was due to her mother telling her that she should try to be better than them. Jeanette's bullies pushed her onto the ground, in the rain and mud and started to kick her to their heart's content.

Grandma Dies and Jeannette's Birthday Wish: Pages 91-101, 119-125

JOURNAL: Have your parents selected not to tell you about the passing of a loved one or family pet? If yes, how did you react when you found out? If not, how do you think you would react?

SUMMARY: Jeanette describes her grandmother’s house as big and white with French doors and Persian rugs. She remembers spending time with her grandmother, getting pampered and one day she cut her hair like a “flapper”. Grandma was a teacher in a one room schoolhouse and have very strong opinions about the ways things needed to get done. These rules drove Jeanette’s mother crazy, so she treated her children differently. But Jeannette loved her grandmother.

Her family is on their way to Phoenix where their grandmother lived and Jeannette asks if they are going to her house. He mom tells her that their grandmother is dead. Jeannette became very upset and her mother doesn’t understand why. She doesn’t see how there is any reason why the kids needed to know that she was dead. Her grandmother died of leukemia and Jeannette’s mother said that they shouldn’t grieve because everybody dies at some point. Jeanette’s mother chose to inherit the adobe house in Phoenix’s business district. So they were moving into this house.

The house was practically a mansion with fourteen rooms including the kitchen and bathrooms. They had a huge yard with orange trees. The neighborhood was inhabited by mostly Mexicans and Indians in big houses that were split into apartments. All of the children went to Catholic Schools, but their mother and father didn’t believe in the ways of Catholic schooling. So, they enrolled in a fancy, public school called Emerson. All of them were put into gifted reading groups because of their ability to read. The nurse tested their eye sight and Lori had to get glasses, although Mom disagrees.

They took advantage of all the neighborhood had to offer and bought and sold many items to stay afloat. Mom opened an art studio in the house and Dad joined the electricians union. They even got a telephone. This didn’t last long though, because termites started to eat through the floorboards in the house.


.......


When Jeannette turns ten, she asks Rex for a very specific present: for him to quit drinking. Lori doesn’t believe that he will do it because he’s tried before and always fails. Jeannette, however, is optimistic. Rex locks himself in the bedroom to go through withdrawals and Jeannette is always by the door when she’s home to make sure he is okay.

It took 2 seasons for him to completely sober up and when he was they decided to move again. Jeannette encouraged him to speed on their drive which led to the car breaking down. Rex decided that they could easily walk back to the house in Phoenix to get the tools to fix the car, but it was over 80 miles. On their way, a woman stopped to pick them up and called them “poor people,” which seriously upset Jeannette. When they finally got home, Rex left and didn’t come home that night.

The Hot Pot and Dad Lost his Job: pages 64-72

In Battle Mountain they had many pets. They couldn’t afford pet food, so the pets would get their scraps or nothing at all. Mom also would not let them kill any files in the house because it ruined the cycle of life. The flies were needed to feed the lizards, and the lizards were needed to feed the cats.

One day they went to the Hot Pot, a natural sulfur spring in the desert, to go swimming. Brian and Lori knew how to swim, but Jeannette did not. So, Dad decided she was going to learn that day. He would take her out into the deep parts of the water and let her go. Jeannette would be flailing around eventually would start to sink, inhale, water, and almost drown. Each time, her father would pull her out and throw her back to the same fate. She then realized that in order to stop being thrown back into the water she would have to get away from her father. Eventually she got away. This was her father’s way of teaching her to swim. Jeannette was really mad at him for teaching her in this way. But how else would she have learned??

Then Dad lost his job, but he said it was because he had a new plan for finding gold. Times became very tough because there was no way to get food and Dad would be gone for weeks at a time. One day he came home with a package of food. The can of corn was stolen and they ate most of the rest of the food. Lori and Jeannette were so hungry one day that they ate margarine mixed with sugar. Mom yelled at them, but Jeannette thinks it was because she had planned on doing the same.

These hard times led to Dad asking if their grandmother could loan them some money, but Mom was too proud to do that. This led to a LONG fight between Mom and Dad. They caused such a scene that their neighbors came out to watch. Soon furniture was thrown out the window and Mom was hanging from the second floor window screaming. Jeannette was embarrassed. They ran inside to help Dad pull her back into the room. Mom accused Dad of trying to kill her and claimed his innocence.

Introduction to parents and lifestyle: pages 9-16, 19-25

Jeanette is cooking hot dogs in her favorite outfit when it catches on fire. Her father is not home, so her mother asks their neighbor for a ride to the hospital. At the hospital the doctors are worried about her because she is severely burned and needs a skin graft. The nurses are concerned about her home life too. They think she is neglected by her parents. Jeanette enjoys staying at the hospital because everyone takes care of her. One day her family shows up and argues with the doctors because dad does not approve of the hospital. So, he came back another day and took her out of the hospital without permission.

When she got better she became fascinated by fire. She would light things on fire and stamp them out, run her finger through a flame, and lit matches constantly. One day she melted the face of her favorite toy and wished she could do a skin graft on the plastic toy to make it beautiful again.

Their lives consisted of travelling around the desert areas of Arizona and surrounding states living in mining towns. They were always on the run from perceived evils like the FBI, but they were just moving because of bill collectors. Jeanette’s dad never got along with her mother’s mother, who was very wealthy. So, they never lived a life of luxury. Dad taught them how to shoot guns, and throw knives by the time they were four. They also learned how to read and do math very well by age five. Their parents taught them how to thrive on almost nothing in the desert and survive any type of storm. Dad was an extremely intelligent man. He knew almost everything there was to know about math and science, and he was an inventor. He developed the Prospector to find gold. However, he was an alcoholic, but an awesome story teller. He told stories about what he’s done in life and what he will do; like build the Glass Castle. As soon as they found gold, the Glass Castle would be built.

The Joshua Tree and Christmas Gifts: pages 35-42

JOURNAL PROMPT: If you did not have the means to live comfortably, what would you take joy or pride in? How would you celebrate the holidays?

SUMMARY:

The Walls move from California to the Mojave Desert in Arizona. They stop in the middle of the Desert because Mom wants to paint a Joshua Tree. The Joshua tree is ugly and has grown sideways because of the strong winds it has to put up with. Jeannette thinks it is an ugly tree, but her mother says it’s beautiful because, “It’s the Joshua Tree’s struggle that gives it its beauty.”

So, they move into a shack in a town called Midland. Jeannette is afraid of the critters crawling around, so Dad makes up a game of hunting the Demon so that she is no longer afraid. They run around the house and desert in the middle of the night calling out for the Demon to approach them to get killed. Dad found a job at a gypsum mine and Mom is pregnant.

None of the kids believe in Santa Claus because Mom thinks it’s a conspiracy and that all of the toys are “Made in Japan”, not by Santa’s elves. They usually celebrated Christmas a few days later because that is when they could buy presents and wrapping paper at sales, and get a Christmas Tree from someone’s garbage. This year, Dad lost his job at the gypsum mine, so they have no money. Because they could not get presents for the kids, Dad took them outside one at a time and allowed them to choose a star. This star would be their Christmas present. Jeannette chose Venus, even though this is not a star. She likes it because it is really bright and you can see it early in the morning when all of the stars have already disappeared. That night at dinner, Dad told them everything there is to know about Astronomy and the stars.