One experience I share with these characters was always looking up to my parents. One way my family is different is because I don't get along as well as they do with my sisters. One thing I learned about the dad that I have not personally experienced was having to run out of a hospital or a building so we wouldn't have to get caught not paying debt collectors.

For my motif I chose "Home". I chose home because during the story they would travel a lot and weren't in one place for a long time. In the story the author and her old sister talked about how many homes they had, and they couldn't come up with an exact answer because they didn't know the true definition of a home. They also never owned their own home and only rented if they stayed in a house. Another time was when they were parked in a parking lot and were all able to sleep in the car if they put the seats down in their car.

After the author was caught on fire trying to make hot dogs, she went to the hospital for awhile and had to stay there to get patched up. While she was there she was interested in what a nurse was chewing on.

"One day a nurse with wave yellow hair and blue eyes makeup was chewing on something. I asked her what it was, and she told me it was chewing gum. I had never heard of chewing gum, so she went out and got me a whole pack."

Something that happened in that quote that I found significant was how she had never had a piece of gum. There are some things that I just think everybody has experienced but I guess that's wrong to say. The person speaking was Jeannette Walls, the author. This quote stood out to me because I thought it was kinda strange that she didn't even know what chewing gum was.

1) A significant event that occurred in the story was when the author told us how she caught on fire and went to the hospital and after she was okay her dad scooped her up and ran out of the building. I think the author's purpose of telling us was to show us why they are always moving around and how their family operates.

2) One event that reveals a little bit of the author's personality was when she was at the hospital and she told the doctor it would be okay even if they couldn't fix her burnt face. This showed us that she cared about her family and wouldn't want to be a bother.

3) A piece of information I think that was left out was why the husband and wife started running in the first place, or what caused them to be moving around so much before having to run from debt collectors.

1) How do economic conditions determine the characters' lives? - Economic conditions determine the characters' lives by effecting where and what they live in, for example in their car in a parking lot or renting a small home.

2) Does the work criticize class structure? - The book does not really say much about how important the class structure is.

3) Does the work explicitly embrace or reject socialism? - It does not explicitly say anything about neither.