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).