Review: The Glass Castle By Jeannette Walls

The best-selling memoir, The Glass castle by Jeannette Walls was recently made into a movie. It was released in the spring of 2017. The movie did an amazing job representing the memoir and its characters. The character Rex whose describe as a tough, hard headed man and intelligent was played by Woody Harrelson.

After reading The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, I realized that some bad things that have happened to me aren’t really that bad. Jeannette Walls had been through a lot throughout her childhood, and that has made her a very strong person now days. For example, when Jeannette was very young she had dealt with adversity with when she burned herself and went to the hospital for 6 weeks. She also went through some tough times when her father was drinking and wandered off and she was all alone by herself.

The JFK Profile in Courage Award was created by the Kennedy family in 1989 to honor President John F. Kennedy and recognize the quality of political courage which he admired the most. The award recognizes a public official who demonstrates the qualities mentioned by President Kennedy in his, Profiles in Courage. In order to win this award one must be a living person who are or were elected officials, must stand strong in their beliefs that are for the good of the country, risk their career, and risk getting re-elected. Many people like Daniel Webster, Thomas Hart Benton, Sam Houston, and every other character named in JFK’s book portrayed the acts of political courage which is to have the courage to stand up for what they believe is right no matter the consequences. However, when asked if Jeannette Walls could or could not be a candidate for this award the three requisites must be taken into consideration.

Throughout the story the Walls were constantly on the move traveling across the United States mainly because Rex was unable to keep his jobs because of addiction, of course Rose Mary also contributed to their dysfunction as parents. In their adventures the kids saw many aspects of life that most people would never even imagine to live at such a young age and they also learned many important life lessons. Jeannette grew up to be a successful person by most people’s standards but she was still not happy with herself and felt ashamed because she was living a life of wealth while her parents were homeless but even through all this chaos she

Walls also shows us that even though families fight and are abusive, at the end of the day they are still a family. Shortly after Jeannette got out

“One benefit of summer was that each day we had more light to read by.” The Glass Castle is a spectacular forthcoming book, it is a true eye opener by showing people a look into the life of Jeannette Walls. She didn’t have it easy at all, she reveals growing up poverty-stricken living in harsh conditions, her family could barely afford food and sometimes went days without eating or drinking anything. However Jeannette Walls’s father was an alcoholic who couldn’t hold down a decent job and her mother well, she was nonchalant and free-spirited who seemed to not care of what happened to her children. The memoir allows readers to be able to step into someone else’s shoes and see what it was like to be in the same situations the author went through

Nicholas Sparks once said, “I don’t know that love changes. People change. Circumstances change.” In the memoir, The Glass Castle author Jeannette Walls shows how her father Rex Walls changes with everything thrown at him as a father or four. In the beginning of being a parent Rex shares his intelligence with his children.

The joy of learning is what unified the Walls family and is the source of the children’s most endearing memories. They would read together and bond over learning. Jeannette recounts 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) The Walls not only believed in a growth mindset; sharing knowledge was in fact how Rex and Rose Mary best expressed their genuine love and affection towards their children.

Since the Walls family is so poor and homeless it seems that Rex and Rosemary are not always there to give their children the support and comfort that kids need at a young age. Instead of giving love and comfort, they decide to teach their kids how to be tough and how to learn to do things themselves. Unlike most parents, who focus on supporting, caring for their children first, and then teaching them how to live on their own once they get much older. This attentive parenting method is not visible in the Walls’ family. For example, when Jeannette has her accident with fire and explained it to the nurses she gets rather surprised and

According to Jeannette Walls, Rex was a very fun and loving father while she was growing up. Alcoholism affects the good people and the bad people, many in the same ways. However from an outside perspective, Rex Walls' behavior put his children at risk. In The Glass Castle, Rex has many moments where he puts his family's lives in risk, maiming Jeannette's. In one scene, Jeannette and the family go to a water hole to go swimming.

The walls parents consider themselves to be their kids’ friend rather than a concerned parent. “’ Good for you, Mom said when she saw me cooking. You’ve got to get right back on the saddle”’ (15)… Friends tend to encourage you to do stupid things but in this situation Jeannette’s mother is the one encouraging her to do something not so bright. Rex and Rosemary do not expect their kids to become any greater than they are.

In the memoir, The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, Jeannette manages to overcome her obstacles by realizing her independence. She is impacted by her parents’ incapabilities because she realizes that she has to do things differently than other children. Her father was a stubborn alcoholic who believed that: “[they] were all getting too soft, too dependent on creature comforts, and that [they] were losing touch with the natural order of the world”(Walls 106). He believes that every human should be independent and fend for themselves. By using the term “creature comforts”, her father is trying to separate himself from what he calls the civilians.

lIn the book “The Glass Castle” there are examples of many different Family Developmental periods, however I will discuss one that stuck out to me the most. Family development according to the textbook “Family Theories: Foundations and Application” by Katherine R. Allen and Angela C. Henderson is “a longitudinal process of going through a hierarchical system of age and stage related changes” (Allen & Henderson, 84). This means that as a family there are various stages at different ages that result in different changes. For example, this can be seen within the book The Glass Castle in many ways. One way that stuck out to me the most was when Lori and Jeannette are making plans to transition into adulthood.

When Rex Walls would announce that they had to leave, the children would not become irritable because, to them, this meant a new adventure was ahead. As she grew up, Jeannette brought

In this world, there’s learning things the hard way and the easy way; in Jeannette Wall’s world, there’s only learning things the hard way. The Glass Castle is an adventurous story that reveals the painfully miserable story of Jeannette Walls. A selfish mother, a careless father, and terrible social encounters- these are some of the elements of a harsh reality Rex and Rose Mary Walls failed to shield their children from. Growing up poor was already difficult, but growing up with a selfish parent, specifically an unfeeling mom, made life hell for the Walls children. The family barely had one source of income from Rex Walls, and instead of helping out with the family’s finance issues, Rose Mary spent her days at home painting.