"People got stuck in Welch. I had been counting on Mom and Dad to get us out, but I now knew I had to do it on my own."

This image shows self-sufficiency because just like Jeannette and her siblings, they had had to learn how to grow up on their own at a very young age. The quote supports the theme because Jeannette acknowledges that she needs to take control of her own destiny, since her parents were never going to. She already knew that she couldn't rely on her parents trying to get their kids a better life, so she knew that she would be the one that would have to. Instead of trying to improve the lives and living conditions of their children, they would always disappear and leave the children alone to take care of themselves. Since this was all they knew, they grew up knowing that no one was going to be there for them except for themselves and learned how to adapt to take care of themselves.

"I stared at the plans. "Dad," I said, "you'll never build the Glass Castle."

The left side of the image shows what we hope that the environment looks like, but on the right side it shows what the environment actually looks like. Just like how Jeannette’s whole life was promised by her father that they were going to have a Glass Castle, but at this point in the book, she hits him with reality by telling him he's never really going to build it. Rex in the entire book had a vision to build the Glass Castle and include glorious things, but he was only living in his own fantasy world. He didn't know how to take care of his own family, so how was he supposed to build a Glass Castle with all these special amenities?

"We kids usually keep our hunger to ourselves, but we were always thinking of food and how to get our hands on it."

This image represents when Jeannette and her siblings would go looking through the trash in hopes that they would find something to eat. It goes with the theme because since their parents always had little to no money, it was up to them to find their next meal or something to at least keep the hunger away. They would do this by stealing food from their neighbors’ home, only eating at school, or going looking in the dumpsters for something. They were always feeling starved; they wouldn't even want to ask for food sometimes because they didn't want to cause any trouble. With their mother being selfish, Brian once found their mother under the covers eating a chocolate bar. He took it out of her hand and broke it into pieces so he and his siblings could have at least something in their stomach.

"We'd make friends with them, but not close friends, because we knew we'd be moving out sooner or later."

The image of the pink tulip standing out shows that it is Jeannette and her siblings because they would meet other kids to become their friends but couldn't because they knew they would be moving again soon, so they would always keep their distance, not letting them blend or fit in with anyone. Their parents were never able to provide stability for their children, which led them to not develop any special kind of friendships or relationships with anyone. None of the children were able to experience the great feeling of having relationships with anyone until they either started working or were out of the house.

"For a while I considered dropping out of Bernard to help. It felt unbearably selfish, just downright wrong, to be indulging myself with an education in the liberal arts at a fancy private college while Mom and Dad were on the street"

This image represents the theme of survivor’s guilt because the woman in the picture, just like Jeannette, even though she is in a good place and high up, she still worries about the rest of the plant on the bottom. Just like how Jeannette still worries about her parents. She is living a life of success and achievements, but just like the quote says, "It felt unbearably selfish, just downright wrong, to be indulging myself with an education in the liberal arts at a fancy private college while Mom and Dad were on the street." She feels guilty. She doesn't know how she could be living so comfortably while her parents are still in poor living conditions.

" I wanted to let the world know that no one had a perfect life, that even the people who seemed to have it all had their secrets."

The picture of the peaceful background and the book represents coming-of-age because the heart and the peaceful background show acceptance in oneself. Jeannette was finally able to be at peace when she let her story out; Jeannette is finally accepting her past. The moment she had taken a job for writing a weekly column, she realized that she would become one of those people who knew what was really going on. She then proceeded to talk about how most people in Welch had an idea about how bad the Walls family was, but that those people all had their problems too. As she is advancing in her career, she knew what it was like to act like someone who had a perfect life even though their reality is a different story that most people wouldn't be comfortable knowing about.