Character Analysis: The Glass Castle

Constantly Moving But Never Changing

Traveling as a family should be one of the safest and most worry free times you experience as a child. You bestow all your trust upon your parents without even realizing it and you expect to be in good hands. You expect your family to keep you away from bad situations and keep you out of harm’s way. This is quite typical for most families, but for Jeannette she experiences things much different. In The Glass Castle, by Jeannette Walls, the moving and traveling that her family partakes in on pages 48-50 reveals how irresponsible the parents are when it comes to their children and also how accustomed the children have become to a life full of bad situations. Throughout their moving and traveling
within this passage we realize how truly irresponsible and scatterbrained their parents are. The reason they set forth for Battle Mountain is not because they just randomly decided to, but because Rex Walls decided to put his children in danger and run from the police in a high speed chase. For example, “Dad took off. He said that if the cops stopped us, they’d find out that we had no registration or insurance and that the license plate had been taken off another car, and they’d arrest us all.[...] Dad peeled through Blythe at a hundred miles an hour, ran a red light, cut the wrong way up a one-way street, the other cars honking and pulling over”.(48) No parent in their right mind would ever put their four children though a high speed chase on the highway, especially when one is just a new born baby. What makes this even worse is that their mother did not even try to tell their father to stop, she just let him put the whole family in danger to save himself. As a parent it is your duty to make sure that your children are as safe as possible whenever you are driving them, not risking their lives. When the family got ready to leave for Battle Mountain their mother explained to them how they were going to be riding in the back of the U-Haul. For a parent to even consider letting their kid do such a thing really goes to show how thoughtless they are. “Suddenly, with a bang, we hit a huge pothole and the back doors on the U-Haul flew open. The wind shrieked through the compartment. We were afraid we were going to get sucked out, and we all shrank back against the Prospector. The moon was out. We could see the glow from the U-Haul’s taillights and the road we’d come down, stretching back through the silvery desert. The unlocked doors swung back and forth with loud clangs”.(49) Their father was too lazy and careless to even make sure that the unsafe environment they were already in was the safest it could be. If a parent were to ever have to do this, they would make certain that the doors on the U-Haul would not even have a chance of coming open. If it hadn’t of been for the car that came up behind them I don’t think their parents would have ever noticed the doors open and if one or more of the kids flew out they would have no idea what had happened. When their father eventually pulled over because the car behind them had let them know, he was angry instead of worried for his children. Brian asked his father if it was a cop that had passed them and he replied, “No, And you’re sure as hell lucky it wasn’t, or he’d be hauling your asses off to jail”.(50) He should be making sure all his kids are alright instead of making them feel like it is their fault that the doors came open when in fact they should not even of been back there in the first place. The way these parents treat their kids is something that you would not normally witness and because of this the kids are use to living a life full of difficult experiences. Through the irresponsibility of the parents during their moving and traveling, their children have grown accustomed to a life full of bad situations.
Every minute a child is growing they are learning, and when a child is growing in a lifestyle that the Wall family is living they are going to believe that what they are experiencing is normal. It is very sad to see how easy it is for Rex to decide on the spot whenever he wants to move and the children are so use to following everything their father says that they never question him. “Dad had been doing some research and settled on a town in northern Nevada called battle Mountain. There was gold in battle Mountain, Dad said, and he intended to go after it with the Prospector. Finally, we were going to strike it rich”.(48) A child should not be moving all over when they are young because it is important for them to grow up, meet people, and get an education. When moving from one place to another without any logical reasoning, they are missing many opportunities in life that most other children are able to take advantage of. They do not question any of their father’s decisions because they have grown familiar with a life of instability. It is sad to see three young children that really have no say in anything they do in life, and even sadder to see them be okay with that. When the U-Haul doors flew open, they did what they could at first to try and get their parents attention, but after realizing they couldn’t were already ready to handle the dangerous situation they were in. “Brian and Lori held tight to the Prospector, which dad had tied securely with ropes. I was holding Maureen, who for some strange reason had stopped crying. I wedged myself into a corner. It seemed like we’d have to ride it out”.(49) For kids this young to be able to adjust to a situation like this and be ready to “ride it out” reinforces the fact that they are so use to a life full of horrible and dangerous situations that when
they are in one they fail to see how truly bad things are around them. After their parents had stopped the car to figure out what was going on, it was time to get back on the road, and just like that the kids were ready to be locked up ready to go. “After we peed, we climbed back into the truck and watched as Dad closed the doors”.(50) Any other kids would be frightened to death after this happened, but the Wall children really didn’t know any better so they did what they always did and went with the situation. When you travel or move as a child it should be something that you look forward to or something that is going to better your situation. This is not the case for the Wall children though. They experience a whole different type of traveling and it is with this constant moving or traveling we are able to understand the type of lives they are living. In The Glass Castle, by Jeannette Walls, the moving and traveling that her family partakes in on pages 48-50 reveals how irresponsible the parents are when it comes to their children and also how accustomed the children have become to a life full of bad situations.