The Glass Castle is unlike any other ordinary book. This true story holds almost every detail of a poor family’s life. It holds in its pages hardships, adventures, fighting, longing, and loving. With an artistic mother named Rose Mary, a smart daughter named Lori, a beautiful daughter named Maureen, a country son named Brian, a drunk father named Rex, and herself, an adventurous hard-working daughter named Jeannette, they were those very people who made up the Walls family. They faced more challenges than the average family would. Some challenges, for example, would include living in a lifestyle that always kept them in poverty, moving around and escaping more than a few times, surviving multiple raging fires, living in a crumbling house, and …show more content…
They would “skedaddle” often. They lived everywhere from a trailer park in Arizona, to sleeping on the ground in the desert, to a motel in Las Vegas, then San Francisco on the beach. After that, they moved to a two-bedroom house in the Mojave Desert, and then to an old depot next to some train tracks on Battle Mountain. After a while in Battle Mountain, Rose Mary received news that her mother had died and she inherited a house on some land in Phoenix and the family decided to move there. When they became more financially unstable then before, they moved to Welch, a small city in West Virginia enclosed by mountains. They lived in Rex’s mother and fathers house until they were kicked out and were forced to find a crumbling house with no electricity, hot water, fireplace, or even a bathroom. Their crumbling house in Welch was where the Walls children had spent most of their life until all of the kids, now older, decided to finally leave Welch and move to New York City. They decided to move after their dad became a raging drunk and their mom would no longer take care of her children. Jeannette was accepted into an Ivy League school and paid her own way through. She became a very successful journalist. This is a good example of how this is a very unusual and different life than most people would live. Not many people can relate to, or even fathom the experiences that the Walls family had to live through, living place to place, paycheck to …show more content…
They often would eat in small portions, eat rotten food, or not eat at all. Even though Rose Mary had a teaching job in Battle Mountain, Rex would always drink away the paycheck. Sometimes, Rex would have “odd jobs” and bring home bags of groceries, however, they wouldn’t last long in their big family. One day, Jeannette came home and found Lori eating a half of a stick of margarine with some sugar because there was nothing else in the house to eat. During the school day, Jeannette would have to rummage through the trash bins in the bathroom and forage for food other students had thrown away. She would wonder how kids could be so wasteful with their lunch. When Rex lost his job in Battle Mountain, they “…quickly ran out of food… Sometimes one of [their] dad’s odd jobs would come through, or he’d win some money gambling, and [they would] eat for a few days. Then the money would be gone and the refrigerator would be empty again”, and they would go back to being hungry (Walls 67). This is a very unfortunate situation because kids count on their parents to provide and feed them but Rex and Rose Mary weren’t trying very hard to ensure that their kids were fed. This is another example of why the Walls family’s story is unlike any
The Glass Castle, by Jeannette Walls, tells a story about a dysfunctional family and the hardships they faced in what we call the journey of life. Throughout the book, Jeannette Walls re-encounters her favorite childhood memories spent with her father, Rex Walls, in spite of Rex's recklessness and destruction onto different parts of her life. Rex is a skilled electrician whose alcoholism often gets to the best of him and his decisions. His profusion of alcohol led his family to poverty because instead of paying off bills and buying necessities for survival, he spends most of their income on liquor. Therefore, his children lacked the simplest things such as food and clothing.
She was caught between a rock and a hard place as she had to choose which relationship she would dedicate her time to. Rose Mary's patience, however, was unconventional compared to the societal norm regardless of her relationships. Although her work ethic is detrimentally lethargic, she diligently tolerates Rex's shenanigans as “she liked to enforce self-sufficiency in all living things”. Rex is a nuanced, dynamic character, and Rose contrasts with his consistency. Her static nature provides a
In the beginning of her memoir, she puts a quote that says “To John, for convincing me that everyone who is interesting has a past”. So many people in today's world are struggling with poverty. Walls showed the reader what it is like to not get everything asked for, or even things that people need in life. She wrote about how she had to search through garbage cans to get food and steal things from clothes stores to be able to have new clothes. She wrote that she was made fun of for the way she smelled because they could not afford to take a shower more than once a month.
In addition to everything negative that happened in the memoir on the parent's behalf, some readers view these negativities as lessons being taught by Rose Mary and Rex to better their children. This argument can be explored in the memoir when the Walls family is living in Welch and the kids choose to get jobs in order to earn money for the things they need and want. As a result of Walls’ parents refusing to get jobs and save money, Walls and her siblings learn to take responsibility and get their own jobs. For example, when Walls is in charge of taking care of her two siblings Brian and Maureen for the summer Rex spends the money Rose Mary gave her on himself and leaving little for taking care of the kids. To solve the problem Rex created, Walls decides to get a job at a Jewelry store to earn money, her reason being that, “Mom still had more than a month in Charleston; we were about to run out of grocery money; and my babysitting income wasn’t making up the difference” (214).
Being exposed to alcoholism, weaponry, abuse, and having to take care of both her mother and father, Walls loses all her childhood innocence at a young age. Walls learns to be a tenacious and competent person which helps her succeed as an adult. Growing up, her family is always on the run, leaving friends, family, pets, and toys behind and never looking back. This helps Walls become a forgiving person because it teaches her to live in the present and not the past- to forgive and forget. Rex and Rosemary Walls are constantly hurting their children because of their irresponsible actions.
However, he spirals into alcoholism; recklessly spending money on liquor rather than on provisions that would help sustain his family. His compulsive spending on alcohol is, unfortunately, a major factor keeping the Walls family in a continuous cycle of impoverishment. As a result, Jeannette Walls is forced into a life of responsibility; having to be the one who looks after her siblings, as well as being the one to regulate what little money the Walls family had; this eventually drives her to head to New
The joy of learning is what unified the Walls family and is the source of the children’s most endearing memories. They would read together and bond over learning. Jeannette recounts her happier moments “after dinner, the whole family was stretched out on the benches and the floor of the depot and read with the dictionary in the middle of the room so we could look up words we didn’t know. (Walls 56-57) The Walls not only believed in a growth mindset; sharing knowledge was in fact how Rex and Rose Mary best expressed their genuine love and affection towards their children.
Since the Walls family is so poor and homeless it seems that Rex and Rosemary are not always there to give their children the support and comfort that kids need at a young age. Instead of giving love and comfort, they decide to teach their kids how to be tough and how to learn to do things themselves. Unlike most parents, who focus on supporting, caring for their children first, and then teaching them how to live on their own once they get much older. This attentive parenting method is not visible in the Walls’ family. For example, when Jeannette has her accident with fire and explained it to the nurses she gets rather surprised and
The Walls were in situations that the needed help, and no one was able to do anything about it. The places that they resided in for an ample amount of time such as Arizona and West Virginia should have been able to implement change in their lives much earlier on. However, the system failed and they continued to live their lives in desolate conditions. Finally, once Lori was able to make a life for herself they were able to lean on one other to change the children’s lives. Yet, there is something to be said that Maureen was put in jail.
The walls parents consider themselves to be their kids’ friend rather than a concerned parent. “’ Good for you, Mom said when she saw me cooking. You’ve got to get right back on the saddle”’ (15)… Friends tend to encourage you to do stupid things but in this situation Jeannette’s mother is the one encouraging her to do something not so bright. Rex and Rosemary do not expect their kids to become any greater than they are.
It’s one of the main key issues addressed in this memoir. The Walls family were very poor and sometimes ‘stable’ in the basic needs of life. Unfortunately, Walls children had to grow and suffer in a wretched and miserable home, enduring poverty and hunger. Jeannette and her family always make do with the situation they are in, from sleeping in their car to overdrawing their accounts at the bank by having Mary and Rex (Jeannette’s parents) withdraw money simultaneously. And Jeannette and her siblings always picked their lunches from the cafeteria trash at school.
She believed in him when the rest of the family couldn’t. One time, her father gave her Venus as a Christmas present. Walls was always conscious and sometimes grateful for their bond. The Walls family continued to move across the country, staying with both sets of grandparents for a time.
As a child, Jeannette Walls moves around constantly with her family. The Walls family would move to different desert towns and settle as long as Mr. Walls can hold a job. When sober, Mr. Walls represents a charismatic father who loves his children and teaches them important life skills. He encourages imagination inside of the Walls kids and often captures their dream and creativity. Together, the family had planned to build a glass castle that contains all of the family’s hope and inspiration.
Rex’s method is not that of many fathers, his being “sink or swim”, providing not only the ability to swim but also a strong metaphor for the reader and Jeannette. This is a representation of not only the Walls’ teaching strategy, also for the struggle to succeed in a life the Jeannette has literally been thrown into. Jeannette takes this idea to heart even though she may not realize it, for her not to succumb to the environment in which encapsulates her, such as Welch and life on the road, she must be able to handle these hard situations and be able to stay
In this world, there’s learning things the hard way and the easy way; in Jeannette Wall’s world, there’s only learning things the hard way. The Glass Castle is an adventurous story that reveals the painfully miserable story of Jeannette Walls. A selfish mother, a careless father, and terrible social encounters- these are some of the elements of a harsh reality Rex and Rose Mary Walls failed to shield their children from. Growing up poor was already difficult, but growing up with a selfish parent, specifically an unfeeling mom, made life hell for the Walls children. The family barely had one source of income from Rex Walls, and instead of helping out with the family’s finance issues, Rose Mary spent her days at home painting.