The Glass Castle Thesis

You Can Always Find the Good in a Bad Situation

In Jeannette Walls’ memoir, The Glass Castle, Jeanette’s unconventional childhood is characterized by constant poverty and the chaos and confusion of having dysfunctional parents along with their nomadic lifestyle, moving from neighborhood to neighborhood. What is exceptional about Jeanette’s story is that although her parents were irresponsible, neglectful and careless, they were still able to manage to instill admirable qualities in their children and raise sane adults. Jeanette’s parents, Rex and Rose Mary, taught her and her siblings, Brian and Lori to be independent, strong, and to love gaining knowledge and learning.

All obstructions overcome, especially those encountered as a child,
are opportunities to develop resilience and the strength to overcome all obstacles that are thrown at us. The Walls children learned at a very young age to depend on each other for their most basic needs because both of their parents were egotistical and concerned with their own lives and own interests and hobbies. Rex, Jeanette’s father, was a severe alcoholic and her mother, Rose-Mary, was too focused on her own activities such as painting, reading and writing to worry about the wellbeing of her three children. Although both adults in this situation severely neglected and deserted their children, they authentically loved their children. The children were content with certain aspects of their life at the end of the day despite their day to day struggles with poverty, neglect and hardships. Jeanette and her siblings learned to adapt to their surroundings and circumstances of having dysfunctional adults as parents by trying to change roles with them. They partnered up to try help their parents operate in the real world outside of their home. This change of roles is made clear when the children forced their mother to take on a teaching position. When the principal threatened to fire her, because she was consistently unreliable, the children took charge of making sure their mother could manage to stay employed. Jeanette remembered when “Miss Beatty threatened to fire mom, so Lori, Brian and I, started helping mom with school work"(Walls 74). The children took on the role to wake up, feed themselves, clothe themselves and organize a ride to and from school for their mother. They even went as far as, cleaning her classroom, correcting her assignments and creating lesson plans. Ironically, Rose-Mary provided her children with the hands-on experience of what was needed to be an employable adult.

Rex and Rose Mary’s traditional attitude towards the children’s basic needs for safety and age appropriate expectations is evident in stories of Jeanette’s early childhood. At age three, Jeanette is severely burned while cooking hotdogs and when asked by the nurse why she was cooking hotdogs by herself, Jeanette states that “Mom says I’m mature and lets me cook for myself a lot" (Walls 18). Clearly at the young age of three, Jeanette knew she had to be independent and had already learned to look after herself if she wanted to eat. Growing up, the children found determination from their neglect, and became tough and resilient. When Jeanette was younger, Rex taught Jeanette how to swim by literally letting her struggle until she was close to drowning then said, “If you don’t want to sink you better figure out how to swim" (Walls 66). This proves that Rex and Rose Mary’s reckless approach to parenting inadvertently taught their children to sustain themselves because they truly had no other choice but to survive.

In spite of Rex and Rose Mary's inability to be reliable enough to hold down a job and apply their own academic knowledge, they did manage to teach their children the importance of education and instill a determined mind-set.
The joy of learning is what unified the Walls family and is the source of the children’s most favorable memories .They would read together and bond over learning. Jeanette reflects on her happier moments “after dinner, the whole family was stretched out on the benches and the floor of the depot and read with the dictionary in the middle of the room so we could look up words we didn’t know" (Walls 56-57). Sharing knowledge was how Rex and Rose Mary best expressed their genuine love and affection towards their children. When Rex was sober, which wasn't very often, he taught his children geometry, physics, astronomy. Rose, a teacher herself taught her children to value literature. In third grade, Jeanette and her siblings were recognized for their love of literature and were all placed in a gifted reading class. Rex and Rose Mary loved their children and expressed their love by sharing with them the joy of learning. Because their expression of love was somewhat evident, they succeeded in instilling in their children the drive and ambition to be successful and live accomplished
lives.

Jeanette’s parents may have had a ton of flaws, but when it boiled down to how the Wall’s children were brought up, they learned to be tough, resilient, independent and educated. There were several instances of vibrancy, however. There were moments where actual family values were present.