Heartbreak. Parental ties. Poverty. Jeannette Walls had experienced all three, and in her memoir The Glass Castle, Walls describes the life in which each played a notable role in her development and aspirations.
Her memoir is a compiled stack of the various brief yet heart-shattering vignettes of her upbringing. Her father, Rex Walls, was an alcoholic who pushed for sobriety but had the addiction consume him. Her mother, an aspiring painter named Rose Mary Walls, often released her frustrations onto her children from not being able to pursue such artistic passions due to the responsibilities of motherhood.
Walls’ parents did not hate their children but rather, they had no safe outlet to exhaust their emotions. Although they let their respective addictions take over them (Rex Walls, alcohol; Rose Mary Walls, art and passivity) for many, it’s the only way out. This led them to unintentionally build habits such as the family frequently living a nomadic lifestyle, running from authority, but dreaming big. Such hope led to over-empiring promises for a better life that soon warped into false ones.
The extreme circumstances under which the Walls family lived turned hope into a form of escape. Each address change and new life set out for the Walls family was always an “adventure,” never a misfortune. The Walls parents painted their life as one of excitement and privilege, with new bundles of discovery just awaiting them. For example, Rex Walls planned out the ultimate endeavor he’d promised to bring to life from his engineering sketches: The Glass Castle. The Glass Castle would be their dream house, where they could seek refuge, and genuinely label home. But where exactly is the line between white lies and manipulation? And is it moral to label your parents as manipulators? Though the answers to those questions are nebulous, one can conclude that the Walls parents simply did what most parents do: instill gratitude into their children and shield them from the darkness of the world.
Jeannette Walls and her siblings (from eldest to youngest: Lori, Brian, and Maureen Walls) endured their parents’ emotional and physical outbreaks because they had a rooted love for them between the strings of their hearts. But they stood their ground when in need of it. For example, when her mother refused to work at the local high school to be able to pay bills, Jeannette told her to start acting like an actual mother and find work. When her father got hold of this, she was whipped and punished for back talking to the parents who tried their best to be ones under their complicated lifestyles. When the pressure and complications of unstable income and poor living conditions became overwhelming, the four children came up with a plan that would change their life prospects in the coming years- one of escape.
Starting from eldest and moving down the age rank, each Walls child slowly hopped onto a bus and went their way to New York City after they finished their junior year of high school. Each Walls child felt free amidst the tall steel and rattling trains of the city. They felt they could start their lives anew, where running water was ubiquitous and her father’s intoxication didn’t trouble the household. Until a small issue arose.
Their parents had followed.
By this point, Jeannette and her siblings had invented new lives and branched off from their unfortunate beginnings. She was taking classes at Barnard College, Lori was a children’s book illustrator, and Brian went into the police force after numerous odd jobs. So to see their parents living on the streets of New York, sleeping on park benches, and continuing their habits, was soul-crushing. Jeannette had felt a sort of guilt – she was enrolled in an Ivy League college while her parents had to get by with minimal food and housing. But even if one of the siblings tried to take in their parents, they’d take advantage of the situation such as Rex Walls stocking up on alcohol or Rose Mary Walls recklessly hanging her paintings everywhere in her new living space. The traces of their old life they could never escape. Because they were family.
What does this novel tell us about families? Do the intertwined ties of family bring people together or strangle them? Similar to the answer to most questions, it depends. But Jeannette Wall’s impactful memoir teaches us an important lesson: one is connected to their family and the luck and misfortune it brings develop our character.
