The Rough Life of Rex Walls
An admirable parent is a parent who doesn’t expect perfection from either them or their children. The parents also shouldn’t fear occasional failures. In The memoir “The Glass Castle” which was written by Jeannette Walls, the memoir tells about the Walls family’s rough and tumble lifestyle. Jeannette’s father, Rex Walls tries to be a good parent, but he keeps slipping back to his alcohol addiction.
Rex has many good traits that show he can be a good father when he isn’t drinking. One of these traits is that he never gives up hope. He promises his family that he will build them a house called the Glass Castle, a place where they can finally settle down in one place and stop skedaddling. Jeannette describes the Glass Castle as “a house completely made of glass and had solar cells on the top that would catch the sun’s rays and convert them into electricity for heating and cooling and running all the appliances”(25). One other positive thing he does for them is that he teaches his children important skills like swimming, self-defense and how to read and write. In one part of the memoir, Jeannette and her father are at the Hot Pot, a sulfur spring in the hills and Rex uses a teaching method that would make him seem crazier than he really is. He throws Jeannette in
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and lets her flail and sink around in the sulfuric water and then he rescues her and then throws her in again until she learns to float. Afterwards he said to her “ There, that wasn’t so bad, was it?”(65) One other thing Rex does for his family was that he told his children he was proud of them, especially Jeannette. He tells Jeannette “ I’m mighty proud of you, Mountain Goat.”(170). Rex can be a responsible father when he is not intoxicated. Rex also has some bad parenting traits, which usually are a product of his overdrinking. One of these traits are his excessive drinking. In one part of the memoir, the Walls family is on their way to Las Vegas and on the way Jeannette falls out of the car and Dad having been driving while he was “smoking with one hand and holding a brown bottle of beer with the other”(30). This shows that Dad is an irresponsible driver by drinking and driving. It also shows that while he is intoxicated, he becomes a very irresponsible father and doesn’t even notice that Jeannette has fallen out of the car. One other bad trait about Rex Walls is that he is burden on his family. Rose Mary Walls tells Jeannette “ Don’t worry God understands, He knows that your father is a cross we must bear.”(150). This shows how Rose Mary feels about her husband. One final trait Rex has is that he stole money from Lori and Jeannette’s escape fund to buy alcohol and cigarettes. This shows that his addiction made him have no respect for his children’s hard work. By the end of the book, Rex is able to redeem himself. He gives Jeannette money for college. He tells Jeannette and Lori “You guys need this money more than I do”(265). This shows that Rex finally realizes that he needs to provide for his daughter’s education. He also feels bad that he never was able to build the Glass Castle. On his deathbed, he says to Jeannette “Never did build that Glass Castle.”(279) This shows Rex’s regretful side and how he was sad he couldn’t keep his promise to his family. Jeannette even says that “Despite all the hell-raising and destruction and chaos he had created in our lives, I could not imagine what my life would be like, what the world would be like, without him in it.”(279). This shows that even though he caused a lot of chaos, his family still loved him no matter what. Jeannette’s father, Rex Walls makes an effort to be a good father.
In the memoir, The Glass Castle, Jeannette tells about her less than easy life. Her family was constantly moving about, never staying in one place for very long, or how Rex Walls would say they were always doing “the skedaddle”. But Rex, while trying to be a good father, struggles with a strong alcohol addiction. But all throughout the book we see that Rex has many of the traits of an admirable parent. These traits being that he never expects perfection from any of his kids or himself or his wife. He doesn’t fear occasional failures from them either. All parents should try to be admirable parents for their
kids.
As much as Walls loved her father, she realized he would “never build that Glass Castle. But we had fun planning it.” (279) Rex told them that special kids could have “those shining stars, he liked to point out, were one of the special treats for people like us who lived out in the wilderness.” (39) Walls really felt special when her mother said, “life’s too short to worry about what other people think. Anyway, they should accept us for who we are.” (157) This vicious cycle proves to the reader that Walls never had a way to escape from her parent’s cruel ways; she grew up thinking like her parents did. This cruel way of thinking made Rex feel good about himself while making Walls’ feel special. The idea of the Glass Castle gave Walls a sense of hope that her dad would stay true to his word, but the impracticable idea of a house of glass symbolizes just how unstable the Walls’ foundation was. Walls said, “As awful as he could be, I always knew he loved me in a way no one else ever had.” (279) Rex never had the stability to protect her and she knew he would endanger her. Walls’ father Rex had extraordinary power in convincing Walls that he only wanted the best for her, even while causing her to
The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls is a memoir told from the perspective of a young girl (the author) who goes through an extremely hard childhood. Jeannette writes about the foodless days and homeless nights, however Jeannette uses determination, positivity, sets goals, and saves money, because of this she overcame her struggles. One of the ways Jeannette survived her tough childhood was her ability to stay positive. Throughout The Glass Castle, Jeannette was put in deplorable houses, and at each one she tries to improve it. “A layer of yellow paint, I realized would completely transform, our dingy gray house,” (Walls 180).
Every day the safety and well-being of many children are threatened by neglect. Each child deserves the comfort of having parents whom provide for their children. Throughout the memoir, The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls explains the childhood from being born into the hands of parent who neglect their children. Many may argue that children need to grow with their parents; however, the removal of children is necessary if the parents disregard the kid’s needs and cannot provide a stable life for their children.
Throughout the Glass Castle there is a constant shift in Jeanettes tone through her use of diction. Her memoir is centered around her memories with her family, but mainly her father Rex Walls. Although it is obvious through the eyes of the reader that Rex is an unfit parent and takes no responsibility for his children, in her childhood years Jeanette continually portrays Rex as an intelligent and loving father, describing her younger memories with admiration in her tone. The capitalization of “Dad” reflects Jeannette’s overall admiration for her father and his exemplary valor. “Dad always fought harder, flew faster, and gambled smarter than everyone else in his stories”(Walls 24). Jeanette also uses simple diction to describe her father, by starting sentences with, “Dad said,” over and over. By choosing to use basic language instead of stronger verbs, she captures her experience in a pure and honest tone.
This can lead to frequent absences from work, unemployment, and misusing financial resources of the household and family. In Rex’s case in particular, he hurt the entire family: Distinctly, the Walls hold a short budget to begin with, but due to Rex’s constantly poor employment situation, and his control of Jeannette for alcohol money from their miniscule budget, the family is worse off than when they even started. Rex struggles to find employment due to alcohol’s effects: loss of work ethic and the pull to drink according to Drug Free. It doesn’t help that Jeannette gives in to Rex’s requests, but in the end they have even less money than they had. In addition to the financial hardships, the children tremendously suffer from their Rex’s behavior. As soon as Rex’s alcoholism hits it peak and the family grows well aware, Jeannette begins to adopt a trait called codependency. Codependency may be
When Erma died, he spent four days in Junior’s Bar. Erma was his mother. The children were walking home from Erma’s funeral with their parents. Their father Rex was so distraught that he once again resorted to alcohol. When they were walking, Jeannette and her siblings noticed “He turned down the street to Junior’s bar. We all watched him go… Dad just kept walking” (Walls 181). Rex’s family is ashamed of him for drinking, but they rarely make an effort to help him stop. Alcoholism is a disease that is deadly for many people. It is not something that you can conclude without help. Rex took all of what money the Walls family did have and spent it on alcohol. This was a recurring event. This lead the young children to fend for themselves. They often had to go days without food but if they did have food, it was sometimes inedible. In many cases, they were pilfering through other people’s belongings. Substance abuse is dangerous in a sense that the substance itself causes many life threatening conditions. It can also be dangerous because people will do anything they can to be able to abuse again. This includes taking money that could be used on a week of groceries or to heat a home during
The novel The Glass Castle, written by Jeannette Walls, brings to the surface many of the the struggles and darker aspects of American life through the perspective of a growing girl who is raised in a family with difficulties financially and otherwise. This book is written as a memoir. Jeannette begins as what she remembers as her first memory and fills in important details of her life up to around the present time. She tells stories about her family life that at times can seem to be exaggerated but seemed normal enough to her at the time. Her parents are portrayed to have raised Jeannette and her three siblings in an unconventional manner. She touches on aspects of poverty, family dynamics, alcoholism, mental illness, and sexual abuse from
The Glass Castle is a memoir of the writer Jeannette Walls life. Her family consists of her father Rex Walls, her mother Rose Mary Walls, her older sister Lori Walls, her younger brother Brian Walls and her younger sister Maureen Walls. Jeannette Walls grew up with a lot of hardships with her dad being an alcoholic and they never seemed to have any money. Throughout Jeanette’s childhood, there are three things that symbolize something to Jeannette, they are fire, New York City and the Glass Castle, which shows that symbolism gives meanings to writing.
In the book The Glass Castle the parents take a very laissez faire approach to parenting. Some people say that this is a good parenting style because it allows the children to find themselves and so they are not guided by their parents. This may work in some cases. But, in Jeannette Walls case she does not have resources to become what she wants to become. Her dad can not hold a job so they're constantly moving moving around. Also, this parenting style can be very dangerous Within the first page of of Jeannette talk about her childhood it already is a consequence of this Laissez Faire Parenting style “[Jeannette] was three years old… [She] was standing on a chair in front of the stove, wearing a pink dress…[she] was wearing the dress to cook hot dogs”(Walls 9). Already this shows a very Laissez Faire style she is cooking hot dogs in a dress. A few sentences later it talks about how her mom is in the other room singing not
Even though things were good with Rex and Jeannette , but “ He did have what mom called a little bit of a drinking situation”(23) which wasn’t that big of deal to Jeannette in the beginning, but due to his habit of changing jobs, more so losing them, and having the same excuses for losing them creates doubtful feelings in Jeannette’s mind. which exhibits a bit of concern in Jeannette about her father’s doings. One time the walls family went to the church but Rex wasn’t himself for he was drunk, so he started insulting the people at the church, which just shows his miserable state every time he drinks. He then goes out of hand by insulting Jeannette, “ I didn’t like dad when he talked like that” (p;114), first time Jeannette feels negative towards
...life living with yet loving parents and siblings just to stay alive. Rosemary and Rex Walls had great intelligence, but did not use it very wisely. In the book The Glass Castle, author Jeanette Walls discovers the idea that a conservative education may possibly not always be the best education due to the fact that the Walls children were taught more from the experiences their parents gave them than any regular school or textbook could give them. In this novel readers are able to get an indication of how the parents Rex and Rosemary Walls, choose to educate and give life lessons to their children to see the better side of their daily struggles. Showing that it does not matter what life throws at us we can take it. Rosemary and Rex Walls may not have been the number one parents in the world however they were capable in turning their children into well-educated adults.
“When Dad went crazy, we all had our own ways of shutting down and closing off…” (Walls 115).In Jeannette Walls memoir, The Glass Castle, Walls enlightens the reader on what it’s like to grow up with a parent who is dependent on alcohol, Rex Walls, Jeannette’s father, was an alcoholic. Psychologically, having a parent who abuses alcohol is the worst thing for a child. The psychological state of these children can get of poorer quality as they grow up. Leaving the child with psychiatric disorders in the future and or being an alcoholic as well.
This quote includes a rhetorical question that gives characterization to the father. When he asked it, he did not want an answer, he wanted Jeanette to feel reassurance in him. However, this question prompts readers to doubt Rex’s ethos. This is because the readers know that he has let Jeanette and her siblings down numerous times throughout the book, thus destroying his credibility. His statement gives insight to his frame of mind throughout the book. It is also dramatic irony because readers know he has disappointed Jeanette before, though Rex’s perception is different. He thinks he has been helping his children and making a good life for them, yet the kids have a very different view of his actions. They see him as a challenge they must overcome
Parents Rex and Rosemary Walls in, The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, seems to demonstrate permissible parenting throughout the memoir. Out of the 4 parenting paradigms the Walls reside well within the permissive category with Rex showing “non-traditional and lenient ways” (Kendra Cherry, The Four Styles of Parenting). Jeannette vividly recounts when her in a drunken haze “took my hand and slowly guided it to the cheetah’s neck” in the zoo enclosure (108). Extremely non-traditionally Rex lets him and his kids into the cheetah’s enclosure, despite protests from the ‘normal’ nuclear family’s at the zoo. “Permissive parents believe in self-regulation” (Cherry) when it comes to the maturing of their kids. Rosemary firmly says “children shouldn’t
Most often, in most families, children look up to their parents for guidance as children view their parents as role models. However in The Glass Castle, this was not the case but the exact opposite.