Reading Response #1, "The Glass Castle"

Reading Response #1, “The Glass Castle”

           

            In literature, the personality of a character is determined by their actions. In the case, of Jeanette Walls’s book, The Glass Castle about girl’s struggles through childhood living with two very do-it-yourself parents, her father needs to feel like he is in control of his life, and her mother is an artist who ignores problems within the family instead of fixing them. Rather than discussing the changes in the main character, Jeanette, as a young girl, I think the father, Rex walls, has a very interesting personality and changes along the course of the story.

            At first, Rex seems like the boss of the family. He takes care of them in a way and feels as if he has everything under control. Starting on page 9, Jeanette gets burned by cooking hotdogs when she is 3 years old. When she is in the hospital, her family comes to visit her. They walk in laughing and singing loudly causing all the nurses to stare. Jeanette writes, “Everyone always turned and stared at dad. I couldn’t figure out if it was because he was so handsome or because he called people ‘partner’ or ‘goomba’ and threw his head back when he laughed.” This is a good example of Rex’s happy-go-lucky personality at the beginning.

            Later on in the story, when Jeanette and her oldest sister Lori’s hunger becomes unbearable they eat the only thing that can be found in the refrigerator, a stick of margarine. When their mother returns home she is furious saying that she was saving it to eat with bread, which they have no money for. Walls writes, “’it was the only thing in the house,’ I said. Raising my voice I added ‘I was hungry.’ Mom gave me a startled look. I’d broken one of our unspoken rules; we were always supposed to pretend out life was one long and incredible adventure” when the mother gets into a fight about how her children are “starving.” Rex starts screaming and throwing his wife’s paintings and art supplies claiming that she isn’t making any money. The family’s money problems make Rex feel like he is not in control and his family is falling apart and there is nothing he can do about it. This causes him to act violent.

            Nearing the end of the book, Rex begins to drink. A lot. When his mother, Erma, dies he goes missing for four days and is found by his daughter in a bar completely drunk. On page 182, Walls writes, “He staggered off to the bathroom, came back, ordered one for the road, slammed the shot glass down on the bar, and walked to the door. He lost his footing trying to open it and sprawled on the floor. I tried to help him up, but he kept falling over.” This is another great example of how immature and pathetic he acts when he feels he is powerless over the death of his mother

            Overall, Rex’s actions show that he is very unstable. This means that if something doesn’t go his way he can’t function, making him an unsuitable father to Jeannette and her siblings. He goes from a very happy guy, to lashing out at his wife, to becoming an irresponsible drunk. All that was determined by what he did and didn’t do through his daughter’s eyes.

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