The Glass Castle is a memoir about a young girl’s hardships growing up, the trials she went through, and how she amazingly broke through her parent’s oppression and became the successful woman she is today. Jeannette Walls, the author and young girl of the book, tells of how she grew throughout the story and the book hints at how she became successful through her experiences, which was dependent directly on the lifestyle her parents unknowingly forced her in to.
The Glass Castle starts of by the main character Jeannette, As the precocious three-year-old, Jeannette often cooked herself hot dogs on the stovetop. One day while doing so, the gas flame catches on her dress and fire zips up her torso. She is immediately rushed to the hospital where she is taken for treatment and she describes how the food there is better than the food at home. Now while in the hospital, occasionally Jeannette’s family will come to visit her at the hospital and her Dad always complains to the doctors saying that he knows how to better treat her daughter. Unknowingly, Jeannette’s Dad comes to the hospital to grab Jeannette and he leaves with her and says, “You’re safe now” (2.1.48). After the burning incident, Jeannette then becomes astonished by the flames of the fires, and surprisingly melts her tinkle doll.
Jeannette’s Dad usually causes a lot of trouble so he tells his family which include, the mother, Lori (older sister) and Brian (younger brother) to leave because the FBI is supposedly chasing after him due to the unpaid bills that is said by the mother. The family is a poor family, and the Dad usually is on the lookout for some gold on the desert (where they spend most of their time at), he’s working on a machine called The Prospector that can uncover it. The father also has plans to build a wonderful home for the family which will include all-natural energy, water-purification and will be called Glass Castle if he ever can build it. Furthermore, we get to understand about more how the family came to one. We learn that the Dad was in the airforce while the mother was in USO, and they got married when the father said that he would like to marry her which, the mother didn’t really find that appealing. We also get to know that both the parents had a kid who dies named Mary Charlene which was really devastating for the family and ever since then the father ever acted the same.
The family later travels to Vegas where their father participates in Casinos and gets caught for doing some terrible things and are forced to be move to San Francisco where their motel is later burned completed by flames and this gives Jeannette a flashback of when she was burned as a kid by the flames of the stove, and they later move to a town in the desert called Midland. Lucky, the father finally gets a job at a mining company and is able to afford to rent a house where the family stays in for a while and the mother gets pregnant with a baby. The father of the family then gets kicked out of his job and is forced to move somewhere else due to the no income that the family is acquiring. They decide to go on a trip and move to a town named Blythe where Jeannette is enrolled in school and gets bullied by four mexican kids. In that same town, the mother gives birth to their new born and they name her Maureen. Soon after the family, goes to another town named Battle Mountain where they decide to rent a U-Haul and get a small wooden building in Battle Mountain where the Dad gets a job as an electrician. Since their father has a decent job they are allowed to go to restaurants sometimes to enjoy some good food and when there isn’t enough money for the family for food they gather around in a circle and read books beside the fire. The father, was able to keep the job for six months and keep the family in a decent lifestyle and now are forced to scavenge for food. This causes the father and the mother to fight about how much income they are not getting and it is really destroying their relationship slowly. 
Mom decides to get a job as a teacher at the Battle Mountain Intermediate School because the Dad can’t get a hold of one. The mom of the family is a very nice and kind person and when it comes along with kids she tends to let them do anything they want, so the kids in her class are very loud and did not learn quite a thing in her classes which caught the principles attention and Jeannette and Lori had to give lesson plans to their mother. The money that the mother gets from the family goes to the father and this makes the family feel like they have no money. Jeannette and Brian walk by the Green Lantern one day and there’s this lady that stands beside the Green Lantern named Ginger and apparently she is messing around with Jeanette’s Dad and that is supposedly where all the money is going to. Jeanette later transitions to being eight years old, town miscreant Billy will not leave her alone so Jeanette says that she will be his friend not girlfriend. Suddenly, Billy gives Jeannette a ring and puts his tongue in Jeanette’s mouth and claims that that was rape which puts Jeanette in a curious state ending up searching what rape means. Lori then shoots Billy with a gun that was their Dads and this alerts cops to swoop around the area which causes them to have to leave Battle Mountain during that night.
In my opinion I think that there are numerous of circumstances that can occur in the short and long term. One of the long term circumstances that can happen is that the mother can potentially end up knowing about the cheating and the affairs that are occuring between the father and Ginger and she could end up having to leave their family and take the kids to live somewhere else where the father doesn’t have too much possession over her “own” money and she can probably live a happier life somewhere else. Something that can happen in the short-term is that we see that the father gets in trouble a lot with the FBI and with the cops and this is partially due to the kids as well and their possession over the gun, killing Billy. This can mean in the short-term of the book the family will have to move somewhere else in order to live a sustainable life for a decent amount of time until they will have to move again.
There are numerous of questions that I am asking for right now from the text. Some of them being; How did the very first baby die? Why is Lori rarely in the text? Was there anything else that happened in the fathers and mothers past that made them be put in the situation they are today? Why is there no background information about the father and mother in their childhood times? Will there be another crime, other than the death of Billy? Will this family survive through their heartbreaks and situations?
Events in the Glass Castle make me connect with similar human life experiences. A particular experience is when the father loses his job as an electrician and the family is forced to gather around and scavenge for some food. I connect with this because I know one of my friends named Damien that lives in Nigeria and his father repeatedly loses his job on an average per month and the time to get another job akes around a week so, they have to scavenge to keep themselves alive throughout those tough times, similarly to the family and their each family members part to scavenge for food. Another connection I can create is from numerous of romantic books that I have read and romantic films that I’ve watched that included lots of affairs with other womens prior to the women that their dating. This is similar to the father having affairs and cheating with his wife, having affairs with Ginger and wasting all his wife’s money on having affairs with her which can totally be harmful for the family in the long run.
The father of the family is giving me a hardworking and an idiot type of feel and this is because of all the things he has done in the past to get himself in trouble with the FBI and the cops due to not paying off rent for numerous of homes. I think though because of his drive and his hope he will get to where he wants the family to be one day which is in a big mansion called Glass Castle but to make this happen he will have to stop taking money from his wife and being so possessive about it and using it on affairs. He seems trapped, depressed and probably his low point in the book so far however, this can obviously change and he can finally realize that he was been doing terrible things and make up for it to become a better person which may lead in a more successful future for the family! These thought I think are purely pictural because of the affairs he has been doing with Ginger but I do believe that the “feelings about things” aspect comes to play when I believe that he will come out of this stage in his life and become a better person to formulate a better future.
I think it is really easy to sympathize with Jeannette Wall’s story because it includes numerous of events that various of people are struggling with today in the real world such as having hope, believing in yourself, self perseverance, the low points in people lifes and the way they get out of their situation which is the beauty of life.
I think that the type of reader the author had in mind was the type of person that is struggling in the real world and is facing lots of issues. I think that what Jeanette Wall i trying to demonstrate is that she is trying to formulate one of the worst scenario possible which in this case was the problems with the family and the husband, that there are people in worst scenarios than what I am in which in a sense gives me hope knowing that I am not the only one suffering in real life circumstances. Jeanette Wall is an intelligent author because she is building up my confidence in accomplishing things and giving me hope to reach my goals. The book is working on me on a deep way because it is forcing me to believe in myself to pursue what I want to become and it gives me a slight push to go and chase for it! This novel speaks to people today because most of people doubt their self capability to accomplish great things since people think they are in positions in which there is no way in arriving to that level of success where in reality it still is. This is one of the main issues of society today because when they doubt their goals they end up being in a state that’s even worse than what they were in before and making themselves regret their whole lives which is exactly what Jeanette is going for, to reach to the readers soul and give them a sense of hope.
After reading this section of the novel im finding out more about myself that I didn’t even realize before. One of them being how I always make excuse to accomplishing my homework, see this family has a unique drive where they make no excuses to keep on moving forward no matter what situation they are in. As for me, I always make excuses to not do my homework such as, I have basketball practice or I have to go workout. I’ve realized that these are only excuses and that I still have some time to finish my homework afterall.
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