Discuss Jeanette's disappiontment in life and explain how she created a life for herself that was filled with pride and achievement.

Our past shapes us. Despite her massively dysfunctional childhood, she manages to create a life for herself on her terms using her own resources. To a certain extent it is because of her past that enables her to do this so effectively. Although her father was very much the problem in her life, Walls comes to a cathartic conclusion at the end of the book, a conclusion born out of her suffering and accomplishments,

“But despite all the hell-raising and destruction and chaos he had created in our lives, I could not imagine what my life would be like – what the world would be like – without him in it" (279).