Argumentative Essay On The Glass Castle

The Glass Castle is a book about the childhood and adolescence of Jeannette Wells, the daughter of Rex and Rose Mary Walls. Throughout her childhood, she moved all over the country with her family, moving from one town to the next, often lacking food and good clothes, and living in a state of perpetual poverty. Once the children have grown up, they go to New York, where they live out their dreams while their parents live on the streets. There has been much debate whether Mary and Rex are bad parents are not. Even though their childhood was less than ideal, the fact that they survived and are now productive citizens means that they were better off living with their parents than in a foster home.

Rex Walls, although he certainly loves his

kids, is not a great parent because of his many issues. He is drunk a lot of the time, and comes home in rages and destroys things, which could affect the children, seeing their father drunk and crazy. He was not very good at providing for his kids; most of the time he was unemployed and when he was employed, he would spend most of the money he earned on beer and cigarettes. Often the family would run out of money and Rex would resort to stealing money from the bank or his own wife and kids to buy more beer. He was also a neglectful parent, and would often leave his family to go drink and not return for days. He put his kids in danger more than once. For example, when he almost drowned Jeannette trying to teach her to swim (page 66), let his kids pet a cheetah that could probably bite their hand off (page 108), and let Jeannette almost be raped by a guy that was much older than her (page 212). Although he taught his children and cared for them throughout their lived, he probably destroyed the Walls family almost as much, or more, than he helped it.
Rose Mary Walls was slightly better than her husband, although she had her share of unsuitable parenting traits. First of all, she does not believe in looking after her kids and coddling them; instead, she ignores them and lets them fend for their own. She does not take care of their house and does not keep it clean, accumulating piles of art and junk and letting dirt and dust settle. When bugs invade their house, she decides not to use bug spray to kill them and instead just ignores or gets rid of them the “natural way” by killing all the bugs they can find in the house. On page 101, when termites invade the house, she lets them be and they almost destroy the house, creating an unsafe place for the family to live. She was also very bad at making sure that they had food or clothes or shelter, the most important things needed to survive. She wasn’t able to keep the money she earned from Rex, who would spend it all on beer. She was also partially responsible for the lack of income to supply food, as she would often buy large candy bars and eat them all by herself because she was “a sugar addict” (page 174). Often Mary would act like a young child and refuse to take care of her children, saying, “It’s time I did something for myself…It’s time I started living my life for me” (page 218). She quit her job and relied completely on her children to support the family, even though the parents are the ones that are supposed to provide. Jeannette remarked on her mother’s lack of responsibility on page 208, saying, “It was hard to believe that this woman with her head under the blankets, feeling sorry for herself and boohooing like a five year old, was my mother.” It is quite possible that Rose Mary suffered from mental illness, and it is also likely that she was depressed, based on her mood swings described on page 207. Nevertheless, she was a neglectful, self-absorbed mother that probably should not be trusted to look after children.
The children had many scars resulting from their upbringing, some physical, most psychological.

Jeannette got burned by fire on page 1, as the result of her being left alone, and will have a scar for the rest of her life. The children met lots of perverts and prostitutes over the years that most likely scarred them; Jeanette got sexually assaulted multiple times, and their parents did not seem bothered by this. This was not an easy situation for them to experience growing up, but they survived and flourished in despite of their harsh living conditions. If the Walls children were given a choice they probably would not have preferred the upbringing they got, but nevertheless, they became productive members of society eventually. The constant moving brought the siblings closer together, and made them have to trust each other. If the Walls children had been taken to a foster home, the siblings might have been split up, or they might not have done well being cooped up in a house and not traveling and exploring, instead going to school. They would have been brought up differently and may not have turned out as well as they did.

It is difficult to determine how the Walls children would have turned out if they had been in foster care. They certainly had a difficult childhood and had to deal with many issues; however, they all survived and became independent young people that are able to support themselves and not starve. As a result, it seems that the best course of action would be to leave the Walls children with their parents rather than send them to foster

care.