Personal Review Of The Glass Castle By Jeannette Walls

For my independent novel project I read The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls. This book is the story of the author’s life, living in extreme poverty all around the country. The book started off when she was 3 years old, telling her earliest memory of being on fire. From that moment on, the book never slows, talking about their constant moves all over California and Nevada, never having a big place or staying for too long. Their parents always kept life interesting; Their father, Rex, when sober, had big plans and even bigger dreams, all they needed was a little bit of money. Their mother, Rose Mary, was an artist at heart and never wanted kids and this was shown in the way she treated them, never having enough food and always blaming them for

her problems. Jeannette was the middle of 3 with an older sister and younger brother, and when she was 5, a 3rd daughter came along. After Maureen’s birth, the Walls family decides to settle down in Battle Mountain, Nevada, and for the kids this is the first place they can call a home. Rex Walls slowly became the town drunk and the mother had to become a teacher at the local school to make up the money he was drinking away, but she hated every minute of teaching and soon quit. This left the kids with even less food and they often had to go scavenging for something that they could make edible, whether is be a stale corner of bread or a stick of butter, they made sure they survived. After a couple months in Battle mountain, they packed up their things and moved into a house the mother had inherited in Phoenix, Nevada. Here they had a little better luck as they were placed into a good school that gave them lunch, the mother was selling some art and the father was conning himself into some better paying jobs, but eventually his alcoholism gets the best of him again and it becomes such a problem that Jeanette asks him to give up drinking for her 10th birthday. Trying to honor her wish, he gives it up for a couple weeks but when their car breaks down on their way to an “adventure” and a stranger offers them a ride home, his shame gets the best of him and he begins to drink again.
Their mother then suggest heading to Rex’s hometown of Welch, West Virginia. Although their father is reluctant, they eventually all pile into a car and make the long journey cross-country. When they arrive they find the tiny mining town less welcoming than ever. They move in with Rex’s parents, where they find his mother to be an abusive woman who tries to take sexual advantage of Brian, Jeanette’s brother, hinting at a past of sexual abuse towards their father. They eventually buy a tiny house with no indoor plumbing, no central heating and a leaking roof. They become the worst family to be associated with in town, their father the town drunk and their mother laying in bed all day, occasionally getting a check from a oil drilling company using her inherited land in Texas to get oil. The kids struggle to eat and stay warm and dry, but they manage to make their way through this segregated, unwelcoming and unforgiving town. As she gets older, Jeannette begins to realize her parents are not the people she thought they were when she was a child and her and her older sister hatch a plan to escape to New York City and against all odds, they make it. The girls love having money and heat with a good roof over their head and eventually convince their younger siblings to join them. By the time they all have their own houses with jobs, their parents decide Welch is boring without them and move to the city with them. But their luck runs out here too and they eventually become squatters in an abandoned building, always feeling like they are in the shadow of their children’s success. Their father is slowly dying after 60 years of drinking and smoking, and eventually dies of a heart attack. The youngest daughter, Maureen becomes unsteady, stabbing her mother and being submitted to a mental hospital before moving to Los Angeles to connect to her roots and get away from the family. The rest of the kids become something of themselves, and eventually make peace with their past and parents.

Theme
The theme of this book is resilience, because against all odds, the Walls children manage to make their way out of poverty and out from their parents shadow.

They manage to find a way to feed and clothe themselves and stay warm together, always sticking up for one another, even with their parents seemingly doing everything in their willpower to stop them. Jeanette goes from the youngest writer on her school’s paper to a successful journalist in New York City, even going to Columbia University’s sister college (Columbia was an all boys school at the time) and graduating with a degree in journalism. They came from the worst circumstances, “He wrote back saying things in Welch were still going downhill. Dad was drunk all the time except when he was in jail; Mom had completely withdrawn into her own world; and Maureen was more or less living with the neighbors. The ceiling in the bedroom had collapsed, and Brian had moved his bed onto the porch. He made walls by nailing boards along the railings, but it leaked pretty badly out there, too, so he still slept under the inflatable raft.” (page 249) “When other girls came in and threw their lunch bags in the garbage pails, I’d go retrieve them. I couldn’t get over the way kids tossed out all this perfectly good food… there was, at times, more food than i could eat… i stuffed it into my purse to take home to Brian… I was pretty sure he was rooting through the trash, too, but we never talked about it.” (page 173) “‘Lori, what are you eating?’ ‘Margarine,’ she said. I wrinkled my nose. ‘Really?’ ‘Yeah,’ she said, ‘Mix it with sugar. Tastes just like frosting.’ I made some. It didn’t taste like frosting… but I ate it anyway. When Mom got home that evening, she looked in the refrigerator. ‘What happened to the stick of margarine?’ She asked. ‘We ate it,’ I said. Mom got angry… ‘It was the only thing to eat in the whole house,’ I said. Raising my voice, I added. ‘I was hungry.’” (page 68-69). They took this struggle and created

something out of it, not letting themselves fail as their parents did when they were younger. “It didn’t bother me that the apartment was in a rough neighborhood; we’d always lived in rough neighborhoods… I got jumped a number of times. People were always telling me that if I was robbed, I should hand over my money rather than risk being killed. But I was darned if I was going to give some stranger my hard-earned cash… so I always fought back.” (page 247-248) “Lori was working as a freelance artist specializing in fantasy, illustrating calendars and game boards and book jackets. Brian had joined the police force as soon as he’s turned twenty… I was so proud of my brother on the day he was sworn in, standing there in the ranks of the new officers, straight-shouldered in his navy blue uniform with its glittering brass buttons.” (page 274) “I showed Mom and Lori the house… the first house I’d ever owned. Mom and Lori admired the wide-plank floorboards, the big fireplaces, and the ceiling beams made from locust posts, with gouge marks from the ax that felled them.” (page 287) “He looked at the dishes. I knew what he was thinking, what he thought every time he saw a spread like this one. He shook his head and said, ‘You know, it’s really not that hard to put food on the table if that’s what you decide to do.’” (page 287-288).

Part 2
Lori: Lori is the oldest Walls child. Her name is derived from Lorraine, which is a region of France and means Kingdom of Lothar. Lothar was a French king who ruled over this area. This name is slightly appropriate for Lori as she always feels as if she doesn’t belong anywhere and is always dreaming of getting away, which she finally accomplishes by moving to New York City. She is an artist and has the tendency to romanticize the situation, always trying to make the best of it and make it more bearable, linking her back to a French background.
Brian: Brian is the only boy in the family, and is younger than Jeanette by a year. The origins of his name is not known exactly but is theorized to be from the old Celtic element bre meaning hill, or by extension means high, or noble . This is appropriate for Brian as he was normally the one who went off exploring the wilderness and was always outside. When his two older sisters left for New York, he was left to try to keep the family together, acting as the glue, but ultimately gave up and abandoned his kingdom for New York with his sisters.
Jeannette: Jeannette is the narrator of the story, and is the second Walls child. Her name is French, like her sisters, and is the modern, feminine form of Johannes (John). In France Joan of Arc is known as Jeanne d’Arc. Is this a very appropriate name for Jeannette, as she is always fighting to make something of herself and break t