Sunday, November 1, 2009
Summary
The Glass Castle is a memoir by Jeannette Walls, about her life growing up in a dysfunctional family. She has three siblings, Lori, Brian, and Maureen. She is born to Rex and Rose Mary Walls, whose strange ideals and stubborn non-conformity shape their family's life. Rose Mary is an artist who cannot bear to sell her artwork, and Rex is a brilliant drunk who teaches his children physics, geology, and to embrace life without fear and to not care what other people think. They are not concerned about money or social status, but rather staying together as a family. Indeed, throughout most of the book, they live in poverty, despite the land Rose Mary owned (and refused to sell) that was worth one million dollars.
The family moves around much like nomads, "doing the skedaddle", as Rex says, usually when the bills pile up or Rex loses a job. Because of this lifestyle, the Walls children are sheltered with their family, and so idolize them despite their faults. But as they grow older, and are exposed to the world around them, they realize they must fend for themselves. Rex especially betrays them many times, for he is trapped in a vicious cycle of drunkenness. In the end, the Walls children escape to New York, where they build up normal lives, and their parents follow, as homeless people on the streets. Interestingly, both the children and their parents are proud of the lives they have shaped as their own.
The remarkable thing is that Jeannette managed to escape from her parents' lifestyle, while, at the same time, describes them with deep affection and respect. Her memoir is an unconventional, inspiring story about family.
The family moves around much like nomads, "doing the skedaddle", as Rex says, usually when the bills pile up or Rex loses a job. Because of this lifestyle, the Walls children are sheltered with their family, and so idolize them despite their faults. But as they grow older, and are exposed to the world around them, they realize they must fend for themselves. Rex especially betrays them many times, for he is trapped in a vicious cycle of drunkenness. In the end, the Walls children escape to New York, where they build up normal lives, and their parents follow, as homeless people on the streets. Interestingly, both the children and their parents are proud of the lives they have shaped as their own.
The remarkable thing is that Jeannette managed to escape from her parents' lifestyle, while, at the same time, describes them with deep affection and respect. Her memoir is an unconventional, inspiring story about family.
What I Learned
The Glass Castle is the tale of a life so refreshingly different that it offers a distinct philo
sophy on life that one can learn much from.
One idea is the unimportance of money in correlation to happiness. Jeannette spends much of her childhood in poverty, but for the most part, she and her siblings are happy. Battle Mountain, one of the places she lived, was a poor and desolate town, but she was felt it "the first real home [she] could remember" (80), and content was playing outside, collecting rocks. Rose Mary, Jeannette's mother, even has the potential to make her family rich by selling the land that she had inherited from her mother, but she refuses to sell it on the simple belief that land should stay within the family.
An inspirational theme in the memoir is survival against all odds. By the end, not only does Jeannette manage to escape the rut of her dysfunctional family to New York, but also attend college, with the little public schooling she has (most of her education is taught by her father), become a writer, and relying only on herself and her siblings. At Battle Mountain, the same real home she felt happy in, she was starving. At one point, Jeannette comes home to see Lori eating margarine, Lori claiming that it "tastes just like frosting" when mixed with sugar. Jeannette and her siblings scavenge for food, from eating other children's leftovers to stealing, all without the knowledge of their parents.
sophy on life that one can learn much from.One idea is the unimportance of money in correlation to happiness. Jeannette spends much of her childhood in poverty, but for the most part, she and her siblings are happy. Battle Mountain, one of the places she lived, was a poor and desolate town, but she was felt it "the first real home [she] could remember" (80), and content was playing outside, collecting rocks. Rose Mary, Jeannette's mother, even has the potential to make her family rich by selling the land that she had inherited from her mother, but she refuses to sell it on the simple belief that land should stay within the family.
An inspirational theme in the memoir is survival against all odds. By the end, not only does Jeannette manage to escape the rut of her dysfunctional family to New York, but also attend college, with the little public schooling she has (most of her education is taught by her father), become a writer, and relying only on herself and her siblings. At Battle Mountain, the same real home she felt happy in, she was starving. At one point, Jeannette comes home to see Lori eating margarine, Lori claiming that it "tastes just like frosting" when mixed with sugar. Jeannette and her siblings scavenge for food, from eating other children's leftovers to stealing, all without the knowledge of their parents.
Text Connections
A text-to-world connection relates the ideas of poverty and self-sufficiency highlighted in the "What I Learned" post with what millions of Americans are learning right now during the recession. Jeannette and her family always make do with the situation they are in, from sleeping in their car to "overdrawing" their account at the bank by having Rose Mary and Rex withdraw money simultaneously. Not that Americans should resort to that kind of illegal action, but they should follow along that same line, thinking of ingenious methods to gain necessities.
A text-to-text connection between Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible and The Glass Castle is the idea of a dysfunctional family, and especially, how they stick together. Both the Walls family in tGC and the Price family in tPB stay together as a family to survive in poverty, the Prices in the untamed Congo and the Wallses wherever they go. Interestingly, both families' father figures, Nathan Price in tPB and Rex Walls in tGC, are idolized by their children while growing up, but then looked upon from a flawed, more realistic point of view as their children grow older and become more independent.
A text-to-text connection between Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible and The Glass Castle is the idea of a dysfunctional family, and especially, how they stick together. Both the Walls family in tGC and the Price family in tPB stay together as a family to survive in poverty, the Prices in the untamed Congo and the Wallses wherever they go. Interestingly, both families' father figures, Nathan Price in tPB and Rex Walls in tGC, are idolized by their children while growing up, but then looked upon from a flawed, more realistic point of view as their children grow older and become more independent.
Quote
"When Dad wasn't telling us about all the amazing things he had already done, he was telling us about the wondrous things he was going to do. Like build the Glass Castle. All of Dad's engineering skills and mathematical genius were coming together in one special project: a great big house he was going to build for us in the desert" (25).
This quote explains the title of the memoir, but deeper than that, it shows the overall theme of the book. The Glass Castle is Rex Walls's ultimate dream. It shows his genuine love and care for his family, despite what he seems like when he is drunk. But dream is the key word here, because Rex never really got around to building it. The Glass Castle symbolizes that even though Rex was a good father in nurturing his children's minds and giving them hope that things would get better, he failed in providing necessities for his family. They even had an unspoken rule: "we were always supposed to pretend our life was one long and incredibly fun adventure" (69).
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