The Glass Castle Research Paper

“Life with your father was never boring.” – Rose Mary Walls. Rose Mary Walls, Jeannette Walls’s mother and Rex Walls’s spouse, reminisces life with Rex, which included migrating very frequently, refusing to conform, and advocating self-sufficiency. In Jeannette Walls’s The Glass Castle, Walls reveals that there are turbulence and order in life, the influence of family, and how she develops as she grows up through Walls’s recollection of her life, from living in a nomadic household, where her parents neglect their children, to living in a squalid hovel with no plumbing, and finally living in New York City, where she works as a journalist. To begin with, fire is one of the symbols that represents life. Initially, Jeannette Walls was with her

In the third section of The Glass Castle, Welch, the Walls move from Phoenix to Rex’s hometown in Welch, West Virginia to live there. “He wasn't smiling, and he kept pulling at the skin of his neck as if he were itchy” (Walls 131). Rex expresses that he had scorn for his parents, which explained why he was against going to his hometown earlier. “Dad hated the idea, however, and refused to help Mom, so she plotted on her own” (Walls 123). At first, it was believed that Rex acted this way because his parents treated him abysmally. The Walls began living with Rex’s mother, Erma, and she is revealed to be abusive and would molest Brian when Rex and Rose Mary, left to go back to Phoenix. Walls’s older sister, Lori, got into a fight with Erma to intervene when Brian was being molested, and when Rex returned, he was outraged at Lori, Brian, and Jeannette. “’Brian’s a man, he can take it,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to hear another word of this. Do you hear me?’ He was shaking his head, but wildly, almost as if he thought he could keep out the sound of my voice. He wouldn’t even look at me” (Walls 148). His reaction was presumably due to Erma molesting Rex as well when he was younger leading him to leave Welch as well as why he drinks. Moreover, Rex’s refusal to remedy Brian was because he never got over the abuse Rex received when he was younger, and Rex was not able to confront it, ergo, showing how much of

Initially, Rex had promised his family that he would build a Glass Castle for all of them to inhabit, and he had blueprints for the structure, but the Glass Castle was never constructed. The Glass Castle is a symbol of Jeannette’s innocence and the delusions she must see past in order to mature. “’I swear, honey, there are times when I think you’re the only one around who still has faith in me,’ Dad said. ‘I don’t know what I’d do if you ever lost it.’ I told him that I would never lose faith in him. And I promised myself I never would” (Walls 78, 79). Walls had complete trust in Rex, and when the Walls moved to Welch, Walls and Brian started forming the foundation for the Glass Castle by digging it in their backyard, which is showing how much Jeannette believed in the fantasy of the Glass Castle. “We found a shovel and pickax at an abandoned farm and spent just about every free minute digging a hole.” ”But since we couldn’t afford to pay the town’s trash-collection fee, our garbage was really piling up. One day Dad told us to dump it in the hole” (Walls 155). This was a definite blow to Walls as she had believed in Rex, and he told her to dump the garbage into the foundation, but yet, Walls did not blame him, which is demonstrating her naiveté. Thereafter, Walls was intending on relocating to New York City, where Lori had moved as well, to pursue her goals of becoming a journalist, and Rex had pulled out the