Analysis Of The Glass Castle By Jeannette Walls

No matter how messed up, annoying, or just plain out crazy your family is, at the end of the day they’re still your family and you love them. In the book The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, you will learn and read about a very dysfunctional family. Throughout Jeanette’s childhood she went through constant struggles. From catching on fire trying to cook herself a hog dogs when she was 3, to moving over 20 times throughout the years while her parents struggled to keep a roof over their heads and food on the table. Jeanette shows us that despite bad parenting, a child can still become resilient. Walls also shows us that even though families fight and are abusive, at the end of the day they are still a family. Shortly after Jeannette got out

Her Dad thought she should get right back on the saddle and face down her enemy. Jeanette said “ Dad also thought I should face down my enemy, and he showed me how to pass my finger through a candle flame” (Walls 15). Later on in the novel after Jeannette has grown up a bit, she realizes that she needs to start taking action or else she is going to be stuck going down the same path and living the same life as her parents. In response her and he sister start talking about putting together an escape fund and planning on going to New York. Jeannette had already had an escape fund started and decided to share it with Lori. “I told Lori about my escape fund, the seventy-five dollars I’d saved.” They both agreed to take on some extra work and put everything into the piggy bank (Walls 223). At this point in the book,

One night he came back drunk from the bar stumbling into the kitchen knocking over chairs and plates off the shelves, breaking them. As the kids tried to help him he only fought them off swinging his fist at them and kicking them away. He was mad and looking for Rose Mary, his wife. He finally found her and they got into a fight where he wrestled her to the ground. Once he had her pinned down to the ground he told her, “Rose Mary, you’re one hell of a woman.” The book goes on to say, “Mom told him he was a stinking rotten drunk. ‘Yeah, but you love this old drunk, don’t you?’ Dad said. Mom at first said no, she didn’t, but Dad kept asking her again and again, and when she finally said yes, the fight disappeared” (Walls 122). This shows us how even though they may fight a lot, and even though he’s a drunk, they still love each other and are together for a reason. As the book goes on, at the end of part 3, when Jeanette is on the bus leaving for New York she finds herself waving and looking back at her dad through the back window in the bus. “I wanted to look ahead to where I was going, not back at what I was leaving, but then I turned anyways.” Jeannette knows that she is going to a better place for her future and has no doubt in her mind that she needs to get away from her parents and out of that town. Despite how terrible of father her Dad is,