The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls - Essay Example

 An Analysis of the Book "The Glass Castle" by Jeannette Walls “The Glass Castle,” is a memoir of Jeanette Wall’s childhood. Parents are responsible for the well-being of the children and providing them with right amenities and comforts at the right time. They cannot escape blame from the society if they fail in their duty. This is one aspect of the responsibility of the parents towards their children. If they abuse children and compromise with their safety it is unpardonable. On the other hand, as young children they may not be aware about the implications of true parent-children relationship but as they grow up, they realize how their parents failed them. Yet, children, whose inborn tendency is to love their parents, ignore the harsh treatment meted out to them and show affection in abundance towards them. Jeanette Walls of “The Glass Castle,” is one such character. She loves her father Rex Walls notwithstanding the fact that, at times, he behaved irresponsibly and wrought destruction to her on many counts. The most pathetic part of the story is, at the age of three Jeanette is asked to cook hotdogs, gets burnt in the process, and is sent to hospital. On recovery and returning home, she is asked to do the same job again. Her mother has no regrets about her getting burnt. Jeanette writes, “Mom says I’m mature for my age and let me cook for myself a lot.” (11). This is incredible! But the child still loves her parents. Jeanette asserts, “You should never hate anyone, even your worst enemies. Everyone has something good about them. You have to find the redeeming quality and love the person for that.” (144). This shows the level of her ethical disposition and how enlightened she is! The moments that should have been the happiest in the life of a child when they should have grown under the protective umbrella of their parents, were bitter and tortured their minds and hearts. Yet, Jeanette loved her father till his dying day. She considered him to be the perennial source of inspiration and she admired his ability to make her feel as someone special. The economic conditions of the family were poor and as Jeanette puts it, “Dad had lost his job at the gypsum, and when Christmas came that year, we had no money at all. On Christmas Eve, Dad took each one of us kids out into the desert night one by one.” (39). This indicates that the parents did not neglect the children on purpose. Her mother justified her neglect to children and that according to her work was a deliberate necessity to make them strong-willed. About the attitude of her mom, Jeanette writes, “Mom always said people worried too much about their children. Suffering when you're young is good for you, she said. It immunized your body and your soul, and that was why she ignored us kids when we cried. Fussing over children who cry only encouraged them, she told us. That's positive reinforcement for negative behavior.” (28). Poverty makes an individual frustrated and cynical and the resultant irritation is mostly directed towards the children by the parents. Jeanette took issues related to poverty as a matter of course, and she had no regrets as such on that count. She still admired her father and his fighting spirit. She defended poor people and argued how they are better off than the rich people. She makes mention of the idealism of her father and writes, “Those shining stars, he liked to point out, were one of the special treats for people like us who lived out in the wilderness. Rich city folks, he'd say, lived in fancy apartments, but their air was so polluted they couldn't even see the stars. We'd have to be out of our minds to want to trade places with any of them.” (39). The procedure through which Jeannette learns how to swim appears crude as her father purposely drops her into the water, and yet she defends his action by asserting that it is his style of inspiring her how to accept the challenges of life and argues, “you can’t cling to the sink your whole life and if you don’t want to sink, you better figure out how to swim.”(66). By normal understanding of the incident, allowing a child almost to drown for allegedly teach her how to swim appears to be the mindset of a cruel heart, and yet Jeannette accepts the interpretation of her father in good spirits. She equates her suffering as an occasion for enjoyment, and ignores her suffering. The summing up of the relationship with her father at the time of his death is a lesson for all children, and Jeanette says candidly, “But despite all the hell-raising and destruction and chaos he had created in our lives, I could not imagine what my life would be like—what the world would be like—without him in it…As awful as he could be, I always knew he loved me in a way no one else had” (279). She remains steadfast in her love to her father. I do not believe that Jeanette’s parents deliberately harassed or tortured their children. They had a set of beliefs, cultivated on account of their utter poverty, and they expected their children to grow strong to face the realities of life. Jeannette Walls argues, “People worried too much about their children. Suffering when you're young is good for you. It immunized your body and soul...” (28). They proved right as Jeanette shapes as a strong and successful individual in her later life, even though as children she along with her brother and sister suffered much. Rose Mary Walls and Rex Walls were not great parents. But they taught right morals to their children, though their style was rough and tough. They taught the children the art of dealing with hardships and not to accept defeat under any circumstances. All this is great. But not providing a proper place to the children to live, not providing them food and not providing education is bad parenting. On the top of it, the personal habits of the parents were not clean; they took to drinking and smoking. They expected too much discipline from the children and as such the joy of childhood was robbed from them. Work Cited Walls, Jeannette. The Glass Castle: A Memoir. Scribner, 2009. Print. Read More