Jeanette Walls’ memoir, The Glass Castle, recounts the unconventional chronicles of Jeanette’s unusual childhood marked by tenacious poverty and a chaotic lifestyle embodied at the hands of her dysfunctional parents and their errant manner of living. Exceptional attention to Jeanette’s story arises as although her parents were observed as irresponsible, remiss, and inattentive, they did cope to instill their children's laudable qualities and rise them into well-balanced adults. Jeanette’s parents taught their children to withstand difficult situations, to be individualistic, and to have a love for learning. These are invaluable aptitudes that could last long term and portray triumph in the years to come.
All barriers, especially ones faced as a young child, are chances to mature pliability and resilience. The Walls children grasped at a young age the idea to depend upon one another for essential needs because both their parents were self-centered and preoccupied with their attentiveness. Jeanette’s father, Rex, was a persistent alcoholic and her mother, Rose-Mary, was stubbornly engrossed in her hobbies; painting, reading, and writing. Both parents although they gravely omitted their children, authentically cherished them, and the children were content despite their day-to-day obstacles overcoming poverty, despair, and adversities. The Walls’ children adjusted to their domain and situations of having dysfunctional parents by upending roles with them. The children cooperated to help their parents undertake outside the home. This turnaround of roles is evident when the children composed their mother to start up a teaching position. Since the principal threatened to fire her for her untrustworthy actions, the children took the responsibility to make sure their mother can continue to work. Jeanette mentioned“Miss Beatty threaten to fire Mom, so Lori, Brian, and I started helping Mom with schoolwork. (Walls 74). The children took the capacity to perform occupational activities such as walking, feeding, clothing, and organizing rides for their mother. They also took on the duty to clean her classroom, mark necessary assignments, cleaning her classroom, mark her assignments, and produce lesson plans for her students. In an ironic matter, with her unskillful actions, Rose-Mary furnishes her children with the fundamental experience of what follows to be a practicable adult.
Rex and Rose Mary’s continuous neutral attitude towards the children’s simplistic needs for safety and age-applicable intentions are imaged in the stories of Jeanette’s early childhood. When Jeanette was three years old, age three, she was painfully burnt while making hotdogs, and as she was asked by the nurse about her intentions to make a hotdog, Jeanette states that “Mom says I’m mature and lets me cook for myself a lot (Walls 18). Being only three years old, Jeanette was aware that she needed to be self-sufficient and learned the things she needed to eat whenever necessary. As the Walls Children grew up, they learned to flourish off their despair, and instead, became strong and determined. When Jeanette was young, Rex taught her how to swim by letting her break that dear until she was close to drowning, and he then said, “If you don’t want to sink you better figure out how to swim” (Walls 66). This quotation further emphasizes how Rex’s and Rose Mary’s careless motion toward parenting heedfully educated their children to uphold themselves because they didn’t have another option but to survive and fulfill their lives.
Lastly, neglecting the fact that Rex and Rose aren’t able to be reliable enough to hold down a job and bear on their academic acknowledgments, they coped to teach their children the essentials of having an education and instill a mature mindset. The Walls family was able to be unified as a whole by sharing the characteristics of enjoying learning and is the source of children’s lovable memories. They would read together and bond over learning. Jeanette remembers her joyful moments as “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 an expanded and matured; sharing knowledge was in fact how Rex and Rose Mary best communicated their love and affection towards their children. When Rex was clear-headed, he taught his children the knowledge of geometry, physics, astronomy, and how to change their math homework into binary numbers. Rose, a teacher herself, shared with her children the value of literature. In third grade, Jeanette and her siblings were honored for their affection towards literature and were all put in a gifted reading class. Because this expression of love from the parents was pure, they succeeded, to inculcate in their children the initiatives to become triumphant and live a fulfilled life.
In conclusion, Jeanette’s parents may have had a ton of blemishes and weaknesses, but when it was brought to how Wall’s children came along, they learned to be self-sufficient, tough, determined, and educated. It was their parent’s sincere compassion combined with ridiculous neglect, which empowered the Walls children with the implements to overcome the hurdle of their raised. It is because they were aware of their affection towards them, that the Walls children, together, modified their faltered blocks, created by their parent’s dysfunctionality into means, and allowed the children to venture and become victorious.