Essay on The Glass Castle: The Memoirs of Jeannette Walls

The Glass Castle is Jeanette Walls' memoir of her unusual childhood, which was marked by constant poverty and the chaos and confusion of her parents and their wandering lifestyle. Jeanette's narrative is noteworthy in that, despite her parents' irresponsibility, neglect, and carelessness, they were able to instil in their children fundamental praiseworthy attributes and create well-adjusted adults. Jeanette's parents instilled in their children the qualities of resilience, independence, and a desire to study. These are priceless gifts that provide achievement and last a lifetime.

All challenges, particularly those faced as a child, present opportunities to develop flexibility and resilience. Because both of their parents were self-absorbed and sidetracked by their own interests, the Walls children learned to rely on each other for their most basic needs from an early age. Jeanette's father, Rex, was a habitual alcoholic, and her mother, Rose-Mary, was obsessed with her own hobbies of painting, reading, and writing. Despite their daily challenges with poverty, neglect, and hardships, both parents genuinely loved their children, and the children were happy. The children of the Walls adapted to their environment and circumstances by reversing roles with their dysfunctional parents. The kids banded together to assist their parents outside of the house The children drove their mother to become a teacher, demonstrating this role reversal. When the principal threatened to fire her for being repeatedly unreliable, the kids took initiative of ensuring that their mother kept her job. "Miss Beatty threatened to fire mom, so Lori, Brian, and I started helping mom with schoolwork," Jeanette recalled. The children took on the responsibility of waking, feeding, clothing, and transporting their mother to and from school, as well as cleaning her classroom, marking her papers, and making lesson plans. Rose-Mary, ironically, provided her children with hands-on experience of what was required to be an employed adult by being useless.

Rose and Rex. In Jeanette's early childhood recollections, Mary's continual laissez faire attitude toward the children's basic requirements for safety and age-appropriate expectations is clear. When questioned why she was cooking hotdogs by herself at the age of three, Jeanette responds, "Mom says I'm mature and lets me cook for myself a lot." Jeanette realised she had to be independent at the age of three, and she had already learnt to feed herself. The Walls children grew up to be tough and resilient as a result of their maltreatment. Rex taught Jeanette to swim when she was a child by basically letting her struggle until she learned. "If you don't want to sink, you better figure out how to swim," she said as she was about to drown. This quote further demonstrates that Rex and Rose Mary's rash parenting style unwittingly trained their children to fend for themselves because they had no alternative but to survive.

Finally, despite Rex and Rose's inability to keep a job and apply their academic skills, they were able to inculcate a growth mindset in their children and teach them the importance of education. The love of learning brought the Walls family together and provided the children with some of their fondest memories. They'd read and learn together. "After supper, the entire family was stretched out on the benches and the floor of the depot, reading with the dictionary in the middle of the room so we could look up terms we didn't know," Jeanette recalls. Not only did the Walls believe in a growth attitude, but they also believed in sharing their expertise and Rose Mary were the most genuine in their love and affection for their children. When he was sober, Rex taught his children about geometry, physics, and astronomy, as well as how to turn their arithmetic homework into binary numbers. Rose, a teacher, instilled in her children a love of reading. Jeanette and her brothers were identified as talented readers in third grade because of their love of literature. Rex and Rose Mary adored their children and shared their enthusiasm of learning with them. They succeeded in instilling in their children the drive and ambitions to be successful and live fulfilled lives since this manifestation of love was pure.    

In conclusion, Jeanette's parents may have had many flaws and shortcomings, but their children learned to be tough, resilient, independent, and educated as a result of their upbringing. The Walls children were given the means to overcome the obstacles of their childhood by their parents' real love paired with ludicrous neglect. Because they knew they were loved, the Walls children turned their stumbling blocks into stepping stones, allowing them to strive and succeed. The importance of this is almost lost within the plot due to a conflict between the parents' love for their children and their capacity to neglect them.