This book is by far the most depressing thing I have ever been assigned to read. It doesn't make sense to me why we would be required to read it. Basically so far, the book started with a woman who's mom digs in dumpsters willingly. Her daughter, who wrote the book (this isn't based on a true story... it IS a true story), is embarrassed about it and asks the mom what she's supposed to say if someone asks about her mom and the mom says, "tell them the truth." Then the book flashes back to when she was 3 and gets burned severely while cooking a hot dog (she was THREE). Then she proceeds to describe how they always had to move because her parents couldn't keep jobs and didn't have money and they had to live in their car. She fell out the car at one point and was left on the side of the road for a long time and was sad when her family came back because she thought they abandoned her. Then she sets a hotel on fire. (Fires a big thing in this book, I guess.)
The book gets its name from her father's endeavors to build a glass castle (he had blueprints and everything), but never got the opportunity due to his current circumstance and somewhat reckless nature.
My whole thing is I'm sure a lot of homeless people can relate to this. Like in the game "Beyond: Two Souls" in the chapter when Jodie was on the streets, she met these really nice homeless people who were only out there because of debt and drastic life-changing events. There was even a pregnant lady who was out there because the father-to-be was abusive. It was so sad. Whenever I see things like this, I just think about how if I could, I would let them stay in my home. Kind of like Haley Joel Osment did on "Pay it Forward".
My classmates on the other hand were entirely disrespectful towards the concept. To introduce the subject of The Glass Castle, my teacher put a picture of a malnourished homeless family in a car on the projector and asked us what we would think if we saw these people in real life and what we would do. I heard some of them say things like they look like zombies or dead people and I wouldn't to anything because I don't know what happened and they may have brought that on themselves. They're only saying that because they lived in an area where they never have to consider such a way of living.
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| This is the picture my teacher showed us. |
I said I would do whatever I could to help them. But I thought why do we have to read this book and ponder the predicament of homeless families if the school doesn't even do anything to help people with these circumstances? It's somewhat apathetic.
And this isn't the first time we read something depressing. Before winter break we read 1984 and that book was unbelievably depressing, but in a different way. The worst part is everyone was saying that book was "stupid". The book was really good, but it was dreary. And I let it go since it was quite philosophical, but I can't let The Glass Castle go because it was equally as dreary, if not more in its own way.
I'm sure there are far more positive books we can read as a class that can be good to get into, but books like "The Fault In Our Stars" (summer reading requirement and movie), "Lord of the Flies" (9th grade depressing idea of a story), "The Hunger Games trilogy" (depressing movies), the "Divergent" series and "The Maze Runner" (pattern of depressing concepts) should not be a part of our entertainment.
It's like society is built on being comforted by the idea that things could be much worse in life. That's still a negative thing to think. Why can't we think of what we can do to make things better? Everyone is blindly into the whole pity party lifestyle and then going about their business like "sucks to be you."
I'm not entirely sure what the solution is, but I think that the best things to do is to either pay attention with the intention of being solution oriented toward the problem, or to not draw your attention to it and try to live life as peacefully as possible, like an "ignorance is bliss" kind of thing. But don't show me a YouTube video of homeless people in America and then change the subject (another thing my teacher did). I have reason to believe you're a part of the problem.
I'm gonna read the cliff notes for the book to finish the study guide because there is no way in this world I'm spending an extended period of time willingly feeling bad for this family just to forget about it afterwards in the comfort of my stable home. All I know for sure is that going I'm helping he poor. No question, no matter how big or small the scenario is, if you need my help, I'm giving it to you. Because there's no point in being able to love if you can't share it with those who need it.
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