Short Story: The House On 93 Little Hobart Street

The house on 93 Little Hobart Street is a small, broken down home to a family of six. The steps leading to the front deck have holes in them and look dangerous for the smaller child to walk on. There is no working electricity or plumbing, with holes in the roof, making the entire house freezing cold at night. Four children live in this house with both parents, still married. The youngest of them is Maureen who is eight years old, Brian, the second youngest, is twelve, Jeannette is thirteen, and Lori, the oldest, is sixteen. All of the children have raggedy, worn-down clothing, with crazy, nappy hair. They all are extremely thin due to the lack of food in the house, and seem to not have bathed in an extended amount of time. Jeannette Walls was the first to be interviewed out of the children and claims that the family has many problems with obtaining and keeping money. Over the summer she had been given two-hundred dollars, which should have been enough to support her father, brother, and herself, until her father started asking for money to buy alcohol. She ended up having to get a job to
make money for food, while her older sister and mother were away. She wasn’t making enough money to get food for the three of them, only having twenty dollars to spend on food a week if she continued to pay for her father’s alcoholism. This shows the lack of physiological needs that are required to survive. In the past, the family would have to go days without eating enough, and Jeannette and her brother would go searching for food in their classmates’ bags during school (Walls 68). Sometimes, she states, she still believes that her father can become clean, and if he did, they would not have the many problems that they do now. Brian, the second child to be interviewed and the second youngest of the four, strongly believes that his parents both fail to fulfil any of their needs. Once again, searching for food is mentioned by Brian, saying that Jeannette and himself looked through trash cans at school to get food (Walls 172). Another complaint was the temperature of the house at night or during the winter. The house has no insulation and multiple holes in the roof, and Brian’s bed was placed directly above one of them. This makes him and the other family members extremely cold and is an example of how there are no safety needs met for any of the family members (Maslow’s eight stage hierarchy of needs). Brian attempted to convince his mother to get insulation, but she responded by saying that although there is no insulation, they still have each other (Walls 176). He claims the reason the family cannot have basic necessities like food and a warm shelter is because of his father’s addiction. Next was Maureen, the youngest child, who says she is not home much. She mostly spends her time with her friends and their families, partly because they provide her with food. Another reason is because her own family does not notice when she is around most of the time. There is no bond between her and her siblings, like there is between Jeannette and Brian. She basically feels left out and as if she is not a part of the family. She may have many of her physiological and safety needs fulfilled by friends, but she does not have the feeling of belongingness or love, which is the next stage according to Maslow. One day she hopes to move to California to live like her siblings when she was only a baby. They describe their old life in California as if they were living luxurious lives and making that part of their lives seem like it was the best and happiest time. The last interview was with Lori, the oldest of all of the children.
In a few words, Lori basically had the same comments as the rest of her siblings, but she had one story that stuck out. She says that as a child she was stung by a scorpion and should have been taken to a hospital, but instead she was taken to a witch doctor (Walls 12). This doctor cut open her wound, put some sort of mystery substance in it, and chanted words in another language. This, once again, is another example of the safety needs of these children being unprovided (Maslow’s eight stage hierarchy of needs). In another instance, Jeannette was about three and cooking hotdogs with no supervision, and she ended up on fire and being seriously burnt. This time the child was taken to a hospital and left with only a few scars, but Lori believes this situation could have been avoided if a parent was watching
her. It has been proven that children of alcoholics have an altered brain chemistry that gives them the higher probability to become alcoholics as well (John Hopkins Medical Institution). This means that the environment the children are in everyday is not safe for them mentally It can be easily said that this home is not fit to raise children in. These kids are not having their physiological or safety needs that Abraham Maslow theorized are needed to have feelings of acceptance and love. It is also important to point out the fact that Lori, Jeannette, and Brian’s life must have been much better at some point as Maureen said they would describe it. In the past, their father’s addiction was not as bad as it is now, and Jeannette still shows her belief in her father beating his addiction. Sending the children to foster care is out of the question since they need love and attention as much as they do food and a better place to live. The best option for this family would be to send the father to a rehab center, and to give the mother government handouts and put them in government housing. This way, as long as the family is bringing in even a very small amount of money, they have a warm home, and enough food.
Works Cited
Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions. "Alcoholics' Children: Living With A Stacked Biochemical Deck." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 31 March 1999. www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1999/03/990330141757.htm. Maslow, Abraham. “Maslow’s 8-Stage Hierarchy of Needs.” www.nsd.org, www.nsd.org/site/handlers/filedownload.ashx?moduleinstanceid=52841&dataid=65205& ileName=Maslow%20Eight%20Stage%20Hierarchy%20of%20Needs%20in%20The%2
Glass%20Castle.pdf
Walls, Jeannette. The Glass Castle. New York, Scribner.