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Personification
Definition of Setting
Setting is where and when a story or scene takes place. The where can be a real place like the city of New York, or it can be an imagined... read full definition
Setting is where and when a story or scene takes place. The where can be a real place like the city of New York, or... read full definition
Setting is where and when a story or scene takes place. The where can be a real place like the... read full definition
Setting
Explanation and Analysis:
The events of The Glass Castle span Jeannette Walls’s childhood, adolescence, and adulthood, from the 1960s to the 2000s. The memoir opens with Jeannette as an adult living a successful, comfortable life in New York City, then flashes back to her early childhood in the American Southwest. Because of the Walls family’s nomadic lifestyle, the memoir’s setting constantly shifts from this point on. Jeannette spends brief periods of her youth in cities including Las Vegas, San Francisco, and various desert towns in Arizona and Nevada.
The Walls family then spends a relatively long amount of time living in Phoenix, in a house they inherit from Jeannette’s maternal grandmother, Grandma Smith. In Phoenix, Jeannette and her siblings briefly enjoy safer living conditions, access to material goods, and social and academic success. In this way, Phoenix is an idyllic setting that represents a turn toward stability. However, the family’s problems soon catch up to them.
Eventually, the Walls family settles in Welch, West Virginia, a small coal-mining town where Dad grew up and where his own family still lives. In Welch, the Walls children experience heightened levels of poverty, physical danger, and emotional discomfort. The deterioration of their family is mirrored by their dark, dilapidated physical surroundings. One by one, the Walls children escape Welch and their dysfunctional parents by moving to New York City, a setting that represents independence and the possibility to create dreams and lives of their own.
The memoir ends at a country farmhouse that Jeannette owns with her husband. This setting is the first truly permanent, stable home Jeannette has ever had. It provides a place for her family to gather, in spite of all the hardships they’ve endured.
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