Boundaries In The Glass Castle

Boundaries

The boundary between turbulence and order, a zone said to have no rules, like the Walls family. They didn’t live life like everyone else, there were no set rules they made or followed, and for the most part, the Walls family didn’t even follow the law. The Walls children’s life was built upon not having their parents tell them what to do and what not to do. Throughout the memoir, The Glass Castle, Jeannette endured many situations where she and her family are either pushing the boundary or are more on one side of it. Put simply, the Walls family epitomizes the line that separates chaos and control.

These forces are shown in the family’s everyday life. Metaphorically, the Walls family is the turbulence, representing the chaos;

They either showed the boundary existed or tried pushing it. The house on 93 Little Hobart Street exemplified the said boundary. It “was a dinky thing perched high up off the road on a hillside so steep that only the back of the house rested on the ground” (Walls 150). In color, the house was gray, and Jeannette decided she wanted to paint the house to try and spruce it up a bit. By doing that, she thought “people might be more accepting of us if we made an effort to improve the way 93 Little Hobart Street looked” (157). All through the memoir, the children try to grasp a sense of acceptance and fitting in. Jeannette’s attempt to improve the appearance of the house failed, making it two-toned. It stood out even more than it had before, and “instead of a freshly painted yellow house, or even a dingy gray one, we now had a weird-looking half-finished patch job” (Walls 158). The dwelling being two colors symbolized the boundary with the fresh paint displaying order and the dingy gray representing turbulence. Order was trying to paint over the turbulence, control the chaos, yet neither color was more dominant than the other and both were obviously