Final Reflection

                After reading The Glass Castle I feel as if I have gained some knowledge of the way families interact and how these interactions impact our lives. Jeannette Walls tells her story so that other people can understand her background, not to pity her hardships. She sees the positive effect her childhood had on her character and is proud. The memoir forces the reader to look past the poverty, hunger, and pain the Walls kids endured and instead see the moments that stayed in their minds as adults. Walls remembers the good times-when her father gave her Venus as her Christmas present or when they would draw out the blueprints for the Glass Castle-rather than dwelling on the gloomy days. This is what makes the book so easy to read. The author’s compassion and devotion holds the reader until the end.

              The Glass Castle is the kind of story that you hope you’ll understand and when you do, you realize you’ve experienced a strong connection to the author. In my Initial Impression entry, I expressed the possibility that I would connect to Jeannette Walls. Surprisingly, I did feel like there were similarities between the way Walls grew up and the way I did. While Walls obviously lived in a more extreme household, I saw so much of my mother in Rex Walls, her father. His idea that one should embrace life fearlessly and understand the world around them is a constant in my home.

              Most of my initial ideas about the book were off, though. I thought I’d be hearing about how hungry they were, or how cold it was, but instead I read the other side of an unfortunate childhood. Walls only expanded on the parts that were memorable to her, which happened to be when she was happiest. This is probably why the novel was more impactful than previously read memoirs. Elie Wiesel’s Night and Art Spiegelman’s Maus depicted only the terrifying realities of the Holocaust. It’s understandable because there weren't a lot of joyful times to write about, but that is the main reason why The Glass Castle stands out. Overall, The Glass Castle gave insight into the value of life, love, and family. The resilience and openness that Walls expressed prove to create a truly inspiring story. 

Connections

            Numerous works involve dysfunctional families and their problems, but The Glass Castle is about more than a dysfunctional family. It is about the ability to fulfill dreams despite your past. The play, Death of a Salesman, by Arthur Miller connects to The Glass Castle in this way. The play shows a father’s relationship with his sons and with his wife. The main character, Willy Loman, is a salesman who had the one dream to be successful and for his kids to be successful. He is a traveling salesman “riding on a smile and a shoeshine” (138). He’s an old, rather irritable man that has lost much of his life to his job. Loman reminds me of Rex Walls, even though they are outwardly different. Loman is an average man living in an apartment in a city whereas Rex “skedaddles” from one tiny town to the next without the slightest wish to settle down and conform. But both men have the same dream, to get somewhere in their life and to give their children the chance to accomplish what they couldn’t.

From Death of a Salesman:

“All right, boy. I’m gonna show you and everybody else that Willy Loman did not die in vain. He had a good dream. It’s the only dream you can have-to come out the number-one man. He fought it out here, and this is where I’m gonna win it for him” (139)

                

              The main theme in this play is “The American Dream”. Loman in unable to accept the discrepancy between the dream and his own life just as Walls’ father is unable to look at his life realistically. The Walls’ dream of a better, normal life is a waste of time. They never reach the place where they exactly wanted to be, but they get pretty close. A big difference between the two works is that in Death of a Salesman the main character never realizes that he did succeed and he wasn’t childish to dream. In The Glass Castle Walls knows that in the end she found her place and was happy with the way her dream turned out. Both works express the desires that everyone has. The common wish of the world is to be successful, but it’s each person’s idea of what success is that defines the wish. 

Title Significance

                The title, The Glass Castle, is repeated throughout the memoir as never more than a dream. Jeannette mentions her father’s long-time plan to build a “great big house for us in the desert” (25). It was his special project that he was working towards. A mansion made entirely of glass, with solar power and its own water-purification system. All he needed was to find gold-it was an expensive proposition. Jeannette in particular pushed her father to build the majestic house. She alone kept him going, kept the plan alive. This was a constant reminder of the strong, although often unusual, connection between Walls and her father. The kids dreamed of living in the Glass Castle, but those dreams never came true. The house was never completed, or even started for that matter. Throughout the years, the idea drifted farther and farther away. After countless get-rich quick schemes, the Glass Castle remained a mere wish, and then no one believed in it at all.

                The house’s significance to the book holds a much deeper meaning. The Glass Castle is symbolic for the Walls’ kids’ dream of a better life. They hoped they would all be together in the future, living grandly in this big beautiful house. The Glass Castle’s image, in Walls’ mind, was constantly changing. When she was young and hopeful it was plausible, it was the Walls’ future. But, times when her father was completely unreliable proved to be times when the Glass Castle was a joke. When it held a definite prospect, they built the foundation for the house, but “the hole for the Glass Castle’s foundation slowly filled with garbage” (155). As the foundation was covered with trash, so did the hope of the Glass Castle ever being built. When it became obvious that the castle wasn’t being built, the wish still didn’t die. In a sense, they did all end up together and happy. It’s just that the big house was New York City. To them, The City is their Glass Castle because it is the place where they all came together and learned how to be content in their own ways.

                Before leaving Welch for N.Y.C. Walls’ father tries to talk her out of going: “And I’ll build the Glass Castle, I swear it. We’ll all live in it together”(238). The Glass Castle isn’t really some amazing house where they’ll live happily ever after. It is the place where the entire family is together. Rex Walls doesn’t want his family to fall apart. He’s hoping that the Glass Castle will keep them close to him, but in the end, they do find their way to the same place. They each find the places where they belong. 

Emotional Reaction

              After moving to Pheonix the Walls’ “expeditions” became less frequent, but one very memorable adventure took place. Walls’ father took the kids to the zoo. Here, he had decided to teach them that “no animal, no matter how big or wild, is dangerous as long as you know what you are doing” (106). He tells them that man is supposed to live in harmony with animals. They passed by the lion den and settled on the cheetah. Rex studied the animal and finally invited the kids over. When Jeannette pets the animal she is cautious, but not scared. Her parents had taught her that it was important not to surrender to fear. She gasped once when the cat first licked her hand and it was only out of amazement. Soon, the other people in the zoo forced the family to leave. Walls writes: “I could hear people around us whispering about the crazy drunk man and his dirty little urchin children, but who cared what they thought? None of them had ever had their hand licked by a cheetah” (109).

              This seems like an insane thing for a ten-year old to do, which is probably why it caught my attention. When I read this passage, I wasn’t thinking about how dangerous it was or how embarrassing it must have been to have such strange parents. I was jealous of Jeannette Walls. She had been licked by a cheetah! This is not something little girls on a family trip to the zoo usually experience. I felt myself wishing I could have felt what she felt. To have looked straight into the eyes of a wild animal and be filled with excitement and nervousness would be an experience I would never forget. This particular memory is one of those that Walls probably looks back on when she thinks about how it wasn’t all bad living with her parents. She got to do things that most people won’t do in their entire life. Her childhood may have been tainted by her free-spirited parents, but it also opened her eyes to a beautiful world.  

Passage Analysis

"It's the Joshua tree's struggle that gives it its beauty" (38).

           When the Walls family moved out towards the Mojave Desert, they stopped near the Eagle Mountains. Jeannette's mother had noticed an old Joshua tree that had been so beaten down by the wind that it was stuck in a twisted, gnarled shape. Jeannette's first impression was that it was an ugly, sad-looking tree. Walls recalls the time when she suggested replanting a Joshua tree sapling near the house so that it could grow normally- tall and straight. Her mother was displeased with this idea and said the above quote to her daughter.  She claimed that the tree is beautiful the way it is because the suffering makes it special. The trouble the tree went through to grow and survive was made it unique. To change this and try to fix it would be taking away the tree’s best trait. Growing tall and straight would make it like any other tree.

                This quote has figurative meanings that relate back to the entire book. Firstly, it gives an indirect characterization of her mother. The short sentence allows readers to see that Jeannette’s mom had the ability to see beyond outward appearance. She can tell that the tree’s beauty does not come from the way it looks, but from the things it has endured in life. The Walls family has had to endure a lot in their lifetime as well. Those experiences are what make the children so unique and successful. Their individuality is pronounced by their unconventional background. The struggles that Jeannette and her siblings went through in their childhood ended up shaping them into more beautiful people on the inside. And that, to her mother, was more important than having the secure, average life that Jeannette wanted for herself.

Initial Impression

                Jeannette Walls’ memoir, The Glass Castle, is about her life growing up in an unconventional family. My mother recommended it to me after she read it herself, which seems appropriate seeing as much of the story is centered on the relationship between mother and daughter. Often in life, the experiences of being a part of a dysfunctional family end up building that person into one with unique ideas and outlooks on the world. I am interested in seeing how her difficulties surviving helped shape her into such a successful writer. This particular theme of family and the loyalty involved with it has a very strong effect on me, so I hope that this very real human story will open my eyes to the many different ways that people around me grew up.

I’m afraid I will see a lot of grief as Walls tells her trying tale because it is clear that she had her share of suffering as a child. Maybe I’ll see how grateful I am to be living the sometimes boring, average life I lead. I could be motivated to take my experiences and write my own memoir. In another sense, I might find a connection to this woman who seems to have come from a completely different world, thus setting a new picture for me on the idea of family in general. Jeannette Walls’ feelings towards her unusual family could be similar to my own, so that I might be able to understand that all of our ideas about family are essentially the same, even if you come from totally different walks of life.