Homework Journal #4: The Glass Castle, pp. 155-213

August 7, 2014
            A) Jeannette tries to cope with the move to Little Hobart Street by getting her house to look more like the other families' in their new community.  On page 157 she says, "I kept looking for other ways to make improvements."  She decides that to do this, she will paint their house by using yellow paint and paintbrushes that her dad brings home from one of his odd jobs.  As far as her food deficiencies go, Jeannette copes with her hunger by sitting in the bathroom during lunchtime, waiting on all the girls to throw away their leftover food.  She then goes and collects the scraps for herself to eat.  Sometimes she even sticks some in her purse to help curb her brother's hunger.  She also fights back against the kids that try to make fun of her and her brother for living "in garbage."  She and her brother make a contraption out of a mattress and rope that will shoot rocks at the kids, hopefully making them stop using their mean words.
            B) They tolerate abuse from their peers in the way that their parents have taught them: by fighting back.  An example of this would be when Brian and Jeannette make the rock launcher out of a mattress and some rope to shoot rocks at the kids that make fun of them for their living conditions.  They tolerate the abuse from their parents by just forgetting about it.  They know that if they tell their parents, then they will just make matters worse.  They tolerate abuse from Erma by doing about the same thing as with their parents - they forget about it.  If they confront Erma, she will physically abuse them or kick them out of her house.  If they tell their parents, the siblings will get yelled at about how they don't know how lucky they are for even having their grandma.  I sympathize with Jeannette's situation a lot because she doesn't know any better.  She knows that if she complains then the consequences would be bad, so why make a situation worse than it has to be?  As much as I would love to think that if I was in this situation, I would stand up for myself, I know that I wouldn't.  I would be too afraid.  Jeannette has been taught to believe in a false reality.  She definitely doesn't know any better, and the only other people that would teach her any different would've been Grandma Smith and maybe Mrs. Shaw.  Grandma Smith began to teach Jeannette when she was extremely young, but when she needed to learn the most, Grandma Smith had died.  Mrs. Shaw could have been another person to teach Jeannette about the real world, but the Walls' family doesn't live in Phoenix long enough.