Summary Of The Glass Castle By Jeannette Walls

The Invisible Chapter

It is hard to believe that a girl whose background is rooted in poverty has been able to become a successful writer after graduating from not just a college but from one of the Ivy League colleges. Living with an erratic and alcoholic dad and a distant and irresponsible mom - both of whom, even into her adulthood, have not changed for the better – compounded this girl’s difficulty of living in poverty. This scenario may sound alien in nature to the common middle class person, but was a reality for Jeannette Walls. Based on this description, it is easy and reasonable to believe that Walls is ashamed of her parents, Rex and Rose Mary, as well as her past when initially reading her memoir The Glass Castle. While it is certainly

In this part of the book Walls is having a conversation with her mom about how she could help her financially since her mom is homeless (Walls 5). In the conversation Walls admits to hiding from her mom earlier in the day when she saw her going through a dumpster (Walls 5). After her mom stubbornly refuses any financial help, she frustratingly asks her mom “’…what am I supposed to tell people about my parents?’” to which Rose Mary, her mom, replies “’just tell the truth…that’s simple enough’” (Walls 5). Here then lays not only one of the potential reasons for why she wrote this book, but also what can be considered the most obvious piece of evidence that Walls is not ashamed of her parents. The very existence of this book detailing the truth about her past and her parents to the whole literate world shows that Walls listened to what her mom has said and has come to accept them and herself for who they all really are; Walls is no longer hiding out of shame for her parents nor her past like she did when she saw her mom picking through trash in the dumpster - she is screaming to the world instead (Walls

These references include Walls describing her new house that she brought being surrounded by “woods and villages”, “marsh ponds where swans floated on mirrorlike water”, and “thickets of bare trees” with fallen leaves around their roots as well as how Rose Mary commented on her and her husband’s self-sufficiency after seeing the garden that the both of them worked on (Walls 286; 287). The description of where her home is located is very naturistic and serene much like the western deserts she spent a majority of her childhood in (Walls 130). Her mom’s comment on their self-sufficiency is reminiscent of a time in her childhood when she had to provide food for herself because of the family’s food shortages (Walls 172). Her decision to include both the self-sufficiency comment and the naturistic description could be an homage to her childhood and could also hint - perhaps for the sake of not painstakingly and explicitly explaining everything - to the reader why she decided to move out into a more rural area away from the city. Clearly she cannot be ashamed of where she came from if she made an homage to her childhood as well as based a big decision of buying a house on her childhood