The Glass Castle Essay

The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls is an incredibly powerful memoir. Jeannette recalls her life and childhood and tells her story exactly how she remembers it. Her family was a little messed up, her father was an alcoholic and her mother was a little “loopy”. Neither of them could hold a job, so the family was always on the run from the police and other people who wanted the money the family owed them. Jeannette and her siblings knew that their environment was toxic, and they were able to get out as soon as they could. The children moved to New York City and began to live a better life. Eventually, the parents joined the kids in New York, but they remained homeless and living on the streets. The children thrived in New York, finding new jobs

that allowed them to have a decent living, but they couldn’t forget about their parents. The children tried to find the way to help their parents but they did not want any help. The Glass Castle has a lot of very intense themes ranging anywhere from rape to alcoholism, but it still tells a good story. The memoir shows that people in the worst situations can rise up and do something wonderful with their life. Throughout The Glass Castle Jeannette deals with a crazy family life, and it is something that I have also dealt with in my entire life.
When I was a child, my parents both worked steady office jobs.

I am incredibly lucky that both of my parents were both employed in well off jobs, so don’t think that I am taking any of this for granted. Since my parents worked, my brother and I were sent to a babysitter. Most children are sent to a babysitter at some point in their life, but I had a couple interesting babysitters. The first babysitter I remember having was named Kimberly, she lived down the street from us, so it was incredibly convenient. The earliest memory I have of her is when we were at the neighborhood lake. The details are a little fuzzy, but I remember her putting sand in our bathing suits. My mother was obviously not happy with this, and ended up firing Kimberly. The next babysitter I remember was a girl named Crystal. Crystal ended up being the longest babysitter my brother and I ever had, which I always found interesting because she was a little weird. Crystal was a cosmetology student, so she would always have practice doll heads around and it would freak me out. She had a younger sister that I would play with, and then Crystal would always watch Maury and lay on the couch all day. One time when I was about nine or ten, Crystal took me and her sister to her apartment so she could dye her hair. She was in the bathroom for almost two hours and she left her sister and I to watch Family Guy on her TV. Having a babysitter isn’t necessarily a crazy thing that happens to a child, but I did have some

crazy babysitters in my life. When I was younger, I used to be really upset that my parents would always leave me for such a long amount of time, but now that I’m older I understand that they had to work in order to provide the comfortable life.
As I got older, my parents continued to work but I was old enough to look after myself. My brother and I would be left alone after school and during the summer when we were old enough. My brother was much more of the extrovert than I was. He would always have friends over or not even come home at all. When my brother had friends over, I would normally hide in some other part of the house, not to get in the way. Sometimes he would let me sit there or ask me to make them food, but for the most part I was just all alone. My brother began to party a lot, which is understandable considering how extroverted he was. My parents were aware of the situation, but he still asked me to keep secrets for him. I was a good little sister, so I kept them. After my brother graduated, he went into the Navy. Everything about that made sense for him. He would be earning money and even getting an education. My parents were obviously very excited and a little scared that he had made the decision to go into the military, so it became all they talked about. Even as I started highschool and started to have achievements of my own, they would always talk about my brother. Sometimes the comments were positive, saying that my brother would have never gotten an academic award, but other times it just sounded like they wished he was still here. My family would go and visit my brother in Norfolk, Virginia and those trips were always incredibly fun. After they were over, my parents would always get sad, but there was nothing I could do about it.
In November of my sophomore year something changed. It was a warm November evening and I was performing at Artwalk that night. My parents had gone down to Virginia for a court case involving my brother. He had gotten himself in trouble and was facing charges that could possibly put him in jail. I wasn’t allowed to go to the court hearing, and I do not regret that in the slightest. I was staying with my grandfather and I was about ready to leave for the performance when I got a phone call from my mother. My brother was going to go to jail. To this day, nobody has told me what exactly the charges were, and at this point it is kind of irrelevant. I didn’t know what was going to happen after that phone call, and my parents really didn’t either. Unfortunately, I didn’t really have time to fully process what was going to happen. My parents had warned me that it was a possibility and I had come to terms with that. I went to the Artwalk performance and sang the best that I could. Afterwards, I was going to hang out at a friend’s house. One of the girls needed a ride and I said that I would take her. I went to turn left onto Main St., but I wasn’t paying a lot of attention. I turned and then another car crashed into the right side of my car. Nobody was injured, their car wasn’t damaged, but my car looked a little worse for wear. I didn’t really know what to do. I pulled to the side of Main St. and then I called my dad. I felt bad already adding to the stress of their day, but I didn’t really have another option. My dad kept me calm because I was, of course, shooken up. The other car called the police and I had to explain the situation to them. I ended up getting a ticket and I was going to have to go to juvenile court for some sort of repercussion. My car was totaled, my brother was in jail, and I had gotten a ticket, let’s just say it wasn’t a great night for me.
Now that I’m older things are mostly better. I only got my license suspended for 30 days?. Which in the grand scheme of things is really not that bad. My brother is still in jail, but he has earned parole and should be getting out very soon. It will be interesting for my family to deal with, but I know everything is going to turn out okay in the end. Moving on, this experience helped me to not take anything for granted. My parents and family will always be there to support me even if sometimes it seems they are busy with other things. The car accident I was in gave me a perspective on what it is like to be in a crisis situation and have it be my fault. I was able to learn from this experience and in the future I will know what to do if something like that were to happen again, which hopefully it doesn’t. In regards to my brother being in jail that has helped me realize that every day with someone matters. Even though we fought a lot growing up, he is still my brother and he is very important to me. I know that he will try to do everything possible to move on from that situation, so I know that I don’t need to worry about him. As Jeannette says in The Glass Castle, “Sometimes you need a little crisis to get your adrenaline flowing and help you realize your potential” (Walls 254). I don’t want to use the hardships I have faced in my life for excuses for any of my actions. I think that I have handled everything that I have gone through pretty well. If anyone was going through a similar situation, I would tell them to stay positive. Focusing on the bad times is never a good idea. Something positive can be found in every situation, even if it doesn’t seem like it, a person can grow from their situation and make that positive. Another piece of advice I would give to someone in a similar situation is to find someone to talk to about everything. I have a good a support group with my friends and family, and a lot of the time I try to add humor to the situations. Things always get better and it always works out in the end, it is just hard to remember that during a bad situation.
My family life has been a little crazy, but nothing compared to the family situation that Jeannette dealt with in The Glass Castle.

Even though I have had some hardships in my life, I know that I have learned from the mistakes that I made or that other people made. I will take the things that I have learned and apply them to my own life. Dealing with these situations have made me a better person today and I know that it was better to go through these hard times than to never have experienced something like this. Staying positive and adding a little bit of humor to situations has helped me through the harder times in life. In life, there will always be ups and downs. It is good to learn from the down times rather than let them take

over.