Jeannette Walls Continues to Have Faith in Her Father Because He Beleives in Her
DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.
This essay analyzes The Glass Castle, a memoir written by Jeanette Walls. In writing my analysis, I examined Walls' use of the glass castle as a metaphor for her life. This forced me to look at the issue of poverty and how it affects families. Jeanette's parents were very capable of living comfortably, yet they chose not to work, giving their family a life of starvation.
This related to the goal becasue poverty is an issue facing the world today and this essay caused me to further examine the psychological reasons some people decide to live poor.
Jocelyn Pearce
INST 1500H/Gilbert
The Glass Castle critical analysis 
October 23, 2012
Fragile Childhood Fantasies
Throughout The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls traces her journey to overcome and escape an unconventional childhood to become a successful, independent adult. While growing up, she and her siblings rarely had a consistent home and frequently endured days of hunger and bad hygiene. All of this came from the unique parenting style of the mother and father. With neither adult holding a steady job, the children were taught at a young age how to fend for themselves, by finding lunch out of the bathroom trashcan at school, or doing classmate's homework in order to earn a couple dollars. Jeannette's father, Rex Walls, a drunk, had an unusual connection to Jeannette. No matter how many times he went back on promises or let down the family, Jeannette still believed he could do no wrong. One specific example of his wild plans is the glass castle, a castle Rex would build that was made of glass and the family would live. Through the memoir, the glass castle functions as a metaphor for the childhood fantasies of Jeannette cultivated by Rex, and it also serves as a contrast to the life of the Walls: clean, rich, and clear compared to a life of dirt, poverty, and grime.
At the start of the memoir, the glass castle symbolizes the dreams Jeannette and her father share. It strengthens their relationship to collaborate on something of great importance. Walls introduces the reader to the glass castle by saying,
When Dad wasn't telling us about all the amazing things he had already done, he was telling us about the wondrous things he was going to do. Like build the Glass Castle. All of Dad's engineering skills and mathematical genius were coming together in one special project: a big house he was going to build for us in the desert. It would have a glass ceiling and thick glass walls and even a glass staircase…He carried around the blueprints for the Glass Castle wherever he went, and sometimes he'd pull them out and let us work on the design for our rooms. All we had to do was find gold, Dad said and we were on the verge of that. Once he finished the Prospector and we struck it rich, he'd start work on the Glass Castle. (25)
Walls is showing how her younger self, young Jeannette, looks up to her father. She believes in the glass castle as well as the promises of Rex. It allows young Jeannette to build up dreams and fantasies about the future, ones that we discover never materialize. Jeannette has such unwavering trust in her father that she defends him whenever anything degrading is said. For example, a boy teases Jeannette one day, calling her father a drunk. Filled with emotion, Jeannette thinks of her response: "I hated Billy at that moment, I really did. I thought of telling him about binary numbers and the glass castle and Venus and all the things that made my dad special and completely different from his dad, but I knew Billy wouldn't understand" (83). The writer is showing how Jeannette's view of her father is based on his promises and dreams. When she thinks of what makes Rex special, the glass castle immediately comes to her mind. The glass castle is one of the bonds between Jeannette and her father and it acts as a symbol of their father-daughter relationship.
In years to come, after the family moved from the desert to Welch, West Virginia, and no progress had been made on the glass castle, Jeannette and her brother Brian decided to initiate the project by digging the foundation. They spent every free second on this daunting task, and after a month, the children believed it was large enough to pour the foundation. Like every other excitement and glimmer of hope in Jeanette's life, the start of the glass castle was temporary. Not being able to afford the collection of trash by the town, the family decided to use the glass castle's hole as a garbage receptacle. Jeannette recalled the disappointment of the trash by saying; "He [Rex] explained that he was going to hire a truck to cart the garbage to the dump all at once. But he never got around to that, either, and as Brian and I watched, the hole for the Glass Castle's foundation slowly filled with garbage" (155). The foundation for the glass castle filling with the trash represents the dreams of Jeannette shattering. She had such enormous hopes for this castle and her future, so while the garbage covers the glass castle, her parents and their level of poverty buries Jeannette's opportunities to succeed in life. While Walls shows the destruction of this dream, the scene also serves as another example of how Rex is constantly letting his family down.
As The Glass Castle progresses, it chronicles Jeannette's coming-of-age. She grows from a naïve child into an independent, successful adult. The fantasy of the glass castle guides the growth of Jeannette. As she begins to lose faith in the glass castle and subsequently her father, Jeannette finds her calling in life and finally obtains freedom. When analyzing coming-of-age memoirs in The Art of Time in Memoir, Sven Birkerts uses Annie John by Jamaica Kincaid as an example. Birkerts explains that "The saga of Annie's slow and painful coming-of-age is achieved, then, by the carefully situated scenes, each of which can be seen as plotting another point on the line leading to the inevitable separation" (124). Jeannette Walls in The Glass Castle frequently uses scenes and she is able to attain the same result as Kincaid. Since the glass castle plays a large role in Jeannette's coming-of-age, she succeeds in showing the reader her journey to adulthood by tracing the shifting relationships she has to the glass castle and her father. When Jeannette outlines her growth, readers are able to engross themselves her life story because of the usage of scenes.
Towards the end of the memoir when Jeannette decides to move to New York, a breaking point occurs between Jeannette and her father. Since this step in her life signifies the leap from childhood to adulthood, Jeannette is forced to abandon her young fantasies, which are represented by the glass castle. Before Jeannette leaves, her father talks with her one night. He brings out the plans for the glass castle, plans that had not been seen by either of them for years. This floods Jeannette with memories, but she can finally see the reality of the situation and responds to her dad by saying "'You'll never build the Glass Castle'" (238). This marks the first time Jeannette comes to the realization that their dream will never come true. She finally voices what has been lingering over her head for years. Here Jeannette leaves behind her childhood, symbolized by the glass castle, and moves on in her life. After Jeannette stood up to her father by discrediting the glass castle, Rex tries to win Jeannette back by asking her the question he had asked every time she had a reason to not trust him, "'Are you saying you don't have faith in your old man?'" (238). Jeannette responds in a way she never had before, "'Even if you do [build the glass castle], I'll be gone. In less than three months, I'm leaving for New York City'" (238). Each time Jeannette had faced that question before, she routinely responded by reaffirming her belief in Rex. This time, she sees her father for who he truly is and Jeanette voices her disappointment. Unable to process the fact that his daughter no longer shares his fantasies, Rex continues trying to convince Jeannette to stay:
'What I was thinking was you don't have to go right away,' Dad said. I [Jeannette] could stay and graduate from Welch High and go to Bluefield State, as Miss Katon had suggested, then get a job at The Welch Daily News. He'd [Rex] help me with the articles, like he'd helped me with my piece on Chuck Yeager. 'And I'll build the Glass Castle, I swear. We'll all live in it together'...'Dad,' I said, 'as soon as I finish classes, I'm getting on the next bus out of here…Go ahead and build the Glass Castle, but don't do it for me.' (238)
This is the final straw for the father-daughter relationship. After Jeannette finally makes her father see she is leaving for good, their relationship is never the same. Since the castle symbolizes the bond between father and daughter, Jeannette has to break the dream of the castle in order to break away from her father and ultimately become an adult. After she denounces the glass castle, Jeannette can finally look forward to her future and forget her past.
As a writer, Walls uses the glass castle is used to represent and symbolize many things. It contrasts the life of the Walls family while also serving as a metaphor to childhood fantasies and it also shows the relationship between Jeannette and her father. Walls employs it throughout the memoir to depict the changing dynamics in Jeannette's life. As she grew, Jeanette came to the realization that the glass castle was just one of many broken promises from her alcoholic father. She saw how unhealthy the relationship became and was able to break away leading to a successful adulthood.
Works Cited
Birkerts, Sven. The Art of Time in Memoir. Minneapolis: Graywolf Press, 2008. Print
Walls, Jeannette. The Glass Castle. New York: Scribner, 2005. Print
Source: https://otterbein.digication.com/jocelyn_pearces_eportfolio2/Evidence2
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