Traumatizing Events In Jeannee Castle's The Glass Castle

The Glass Castle

In the book The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls goes through more than enough traumatizing events in her childhood. “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” is an accurate cliché describing her childhood. Many times, in each of our lives, this cliché has been said to us or we have thought it when something hard is happening. In April, I moved out of my childhood home and into my cabin which was forty-five minutes away from school. For Jeannette, simply moving houses wasn’t a big deal and more of an excitement; for me it was a big step in my life. Many times, throughout this experience of moving out of my house, then into my cabin, and then into a new house a couple months later, I thought of the cliché “what doesn’t kill you

In many ways, he made his kids’ lives harder than it already was. He was always drunk and spending their money on himself. Rex was also always running from authority. This was one of the reasons they moved around so much. One summer Rose Mary decided to go back to school to get her teaching certification again and leaves Jeannette in charge of the money. After only a week Jeannette has given Rex $30 after being guilted into it. Rex swindles a man in a game of pool and wins back the $30; he does this by using Jeannette as a distraction. After this experience Jeannette feels betrayed and used by her father. When Jeannette explains to her father that the “creep attacked [her] when [she] was upstairs” her dad shrugs it off by saying “I knew you could handle yourself.” (213) After Lori and Rose Mary got home from being away for the summer, Lori and Jeannette decide to start saving money so they can leave their parents and move to New York. One-day Jeannette comes home to find out that their piggy bank had been broken into and all the money was taken. Later they realize that Rex had taken the money and when they confront him about it, he denies it. Out of the four kids, Jeannette was closest to her father, but by the time she moved to New York she didn’t want anything to do with him or her mother. Many events that happened with her father were very hard, but made her stronger and more of an independent woman. Her father

By the time it is over, she was ready to get away from her parents. However, eventually her parents follow her and her siblings to New York and they live on the streets. Rex and Rose Mary became reliant on their kids. Soon the kids were tired of taking care of them, this resulted in their parents living on the streets. Every once and a while Jeannette calls her mom and they go to lunch. One time when they were having coffee during the winter months Jeannette suggested that Rose Mary and Rex should find a place to live indoors because of the bad weather. Rose Mary explained that she wants to live how she wants to live and “things usually work out in the end.” Jeannette then replies with “What if they don’t?” her mother then says back “That just means you haven’t come to the end yet.” (259) At the age of 59 Rex died from a heart attack. This shows that sometimes the things that are though and hard can kill you. Rex lived a life that was full of drinking, running away, and barley getting by. His whole life was hard and full of moments that could have killed him. With all of the adventure he died in a hospital (a place he wasn’t fond of) from a heart attack. After this, Rose Mary still decided to live on the streets and take little help from anyone. Jeannette’s childhood could be summed up with the simple cliché “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” A simple saying like this might help you feel