Hope In The Glass Castle, By Jannette Walls

That hope for a better tomorrow is what inspires people to keep going. And for Jannette Walls it was that hope that kept pushing her forward. The Glass Castle is a memoir written by Jannette Walls about her childhood. Walls did not grow up alike many other people; her family moved around a lot, her parents couldn’t hold a steady job, and they had close to no money. But in spite of her rough upbringing, Jannette believes that she is luckier than others; and for one reason only, her parents taught her and her siblings to be dreamers. The Glass Castle was an idea of a mansion that Jannette’s father, Rex, would make for his family. He always said that once he finds gold then they can start on the Glass Castle. They never got to that Glass Castle,
When the Walls family just moved into their house in Welch and the future wasn’t looking promising, Jannette and Brian looked to the Glass Castle as an escape, “Seeing how Welch was our new home, Brian and I thought we’d make the best of it. Dad had shown us the spot near the house where we were going to put the foundation and basement for the Glass Castle … It was hard work, but after a month we’d dug a hole deep enough for us to disappear in” (155). This scene shows that when times were hard for the Walls family that the Glass Castle was what distracted the children. They put about a month into the hole for the foundation of the Glass Castle because they had hope that the Glass Castle would actually be made, and their time of struggles and hardships would be over. The hope for a better tomorrow is often the motivator and distractor for how hard life is at the moment, they work harder because they want to change they way life is
Once Jannette had told everyone who she really was; and once her father died she was then able to fully appreciate the gift of hope and dreaming that her parents have game her, Rex said, “Never did build that Glass Castle”, ‘No but we had fun planning it’, ‘Those were some damn fine plans’” (279). This shows that even though Rex and Rose Mary’s ways or raising their children were unconventional, they still had a good life and they are grateful of what was given to them. So, when life was finally okay and they are able to look back to their past and remember what had happened, that is when people are able to appreciate things that their family had given them that they weren’t able to appreciate