Broken Dreams

As a child, I always dreamed of building up the perfect world where I could live happily in my dream house with no problems and everything I wanted in the world would be sturdy and strong. I would live forever in peace in my own imagined castle. Rex Walls had a similar dream for his family. He had a plan to build the Glass Castle. His daughter's biography references this many times, so many that she named the book after it, titled The Glass Castle. As the book progressed, the idea for the glass castle became so much more than a dream for a house. It was a safe-line. Whenever times were tough, the blueprints for the castle would show up, and it would reassure them that better times were ahead. Unfortunately, as time progressed, Jeannette and her siblings realized how unrealistic these dreams were. They knew that the Glass Castle would never be built. Later on in life, Jeannette could see her fathers dream for what it truly was. A metaphor symbolizing not a house or castle, but happiness. Happiness that he wanted his family to have. Happiness built in a sturdy environment.

Broken Glass

Once I thought about it, I could see that even the words themselves could describe Jeannette's life. The Glass Castle. A castle made of glass. With a quake in the foundation, the whole thing would become unstable and be destroyed. Many times Jeannette and her family found themselves in an unstable environment, and were on the brink of destruction. I believe that glass is the perfect metaphor for this family because at first glance it appears good and beautiful, but very easily can it become cracked or broken.

I think Jeannette chose to title her memoir The Glass Castle because it symbolizes all the happy and sad memories of her childhood. It made her remember to always have faith and be happy even in the worst of situations.

Lost

Jeannette's parents, Rose and Rex Walls

This is a passage from The Glass Castle:

"He told me I was his favorite child, but he made me promise not to tell Lori or Brian or Maureen. It was our secret. "I swear, honey, there are times when I think you're the only one around who still has faith in me," he said. "I don't know what I'd do if you ever lost it. "I told him that I would never lose faith in him. And I promised myself I never would."
The Glass Castle, page 79.

When reading, this particular quote struck me because I saw toward the future of the book, and couldn't help but think that this would only last so long. In the future, I could only see Rex Walls getting worse. This passage also stood out to me among many others because, to me, the faith the author had put in her father was beautiful and showed the love both persons felt toward each other. For this reason I always had mixed feelings toward Jeannette's father Rex. He clearly loved his family and wanted the best for them, I wanted the best for them. But there was nothing anyone could do when Rex quickly deteriorated into his drunken shell, and as this happened, there was nothing anyone could do as Jeannette struggled to hold that beautiful faith she had in her father, the faith she promised to never lose.

Jeannette Walls

Author Jeannette Walls

As a child, Jeannette Walls could never see herself as she is now, as successful as she is in life. After reading her memoir, I see how she could have thought that way. Her story is an admirable, captivating story that griped my heart and made me think differently.

There were happy times in her childhood, but also times of great need, where she and her siblings were constantly hungry, cold, and depending on themselves because of their parent's way of living. Jeannette only wrote the Glass Castle after a conversation she and her mother had. Jeannette was saying she was ashamed, and didn't know how to tell people about her past. Her mother simply told her to tell the truth. So she did.

After The Glass Castle, she wrote two other novels, Half Broke Horses, about her grandmother's life, and The Silver Star, which is her first work of fiction. Her biography, The Glass Castle has been a New York Times bestseller for more than six years. You can find Jeannette today living in her own glass castle with her second husband John Taylor.

A Memoir to Remember

 

The Glass Castle

 The Glass Castle

        

The Glass Castle is a biography written by Jeannette Walls. It is about her upbringing as a child with her parents, Rex and Rose Mary Walls, and her three siblings: Lori, Brian and Maureen. While throughout the book, you discover that they were an extremely dysfunctional family, with an alcoholic for a father and a mother with selfish intentions who was not responsible enough for a family, you also see the hopes, dreams, and love present within the family. The book starts when Jeannette was three, and had set herself on fire while making hot dogs. She stayed in the hospital until her father pulled her out "Rex Walls style." Not soon after, they were on the road. The Walls family did not stay in one area for long, and were always on the road during Jeannette's early childhood. They stayed in Las Vegas, Battle Mountain, Phoenix and more, before moving to Welsh by their paternal grandparents. It got particularly bad for them in Welsh. Their mother refused work, and their father was always drunk, leaving the kids mostly to fend for themselves. They struggled to remain fed and to pay the bills. As Jeannette got older, she began losing faith in her parents, which led her to leave Welsh for New York at 17. New York was good for her, and she lived a successful life from then on out, but never stopped loving her crazy, stubborn parents.