Violence in The Glass Castle Literature Essay Example

📌Category: Books, The Glass Castle
📌Words: 1327
📌Pages: 5
📌Published: 22 April 2022

Today alcoholism affects many families, but it's hard to beat how it’s affected the Walls family. The Glass Castle revolves around Jeannette Walls as she grows up within a family with many issues. At the start of the book, Jeannette’s father was like a hero figure, but as she gets older he slowly becomes less hero-like. With Rex’s alcoholism making his family’s living conditions worse he slowly loses the trust of each family member from a combination of both violence and financial issues.

Rex’s violent behavior had caused some of the most turmoil within the Walls family. “Scientists and nonscientists alike have long recognized a two-way association between alcohol consumption and violent or aggressive behavior” this is often made apparent in The Glass Castle (National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism 2000). The first time you learn of Rex’s violent tendencies is found early when Jeannette stated whenever he drank liquor “[d]ad turned into an angry-eyed stranger who threw around furniture and threatened to beat up Mom or anyone else who got in his way” (23). At this time, Jeannette should’ve been too young to have to worry about this, but maybe it was better that she learned of this young.

There were numerous times that Rex was violent toward his family. Some while he was drunk and other times sober. Regardless, each time resulted in some trauma for the kids. There were three, however, that may have affected Jeannette and her siblings more than the others. Before Marueen was born and while Mary was pregnant, Rex, who was drunk, and Mary got into a fight while driving, Mary got out of the car and Rex started driving at her trying to hit her. The kids all cried out for Rex to stop but he would just ignore them and keep driving. It finally ended with Rex cornering Mary and forcing her back into the car. Jeannette and her siblings all thought that Rex was going to kill their mother and their unborn sibling. Going through something like this is something nobody should go through especially at they’re age and as they grew older it didn’t get any better. 

While they lived in the Battle Mountains, Rex got in a fight with Mary, eventually leading to holding her out the window. This ended up being a bit traumatic for the kids with Lori taking care of Mary, Brian just shaking his head leaning against the wall, and most of all Jeanette who kept repeating that “everything will be okay now” (73). Even though Rex wasn’t drunk at the time, his drinking problem led to this. What little money they had, he would spend on alcohol leaving the family with no food, causing this fight between them. Later on, Jeannette asks Rex to stop drinking. He promised that he would and he does for a good amount of time, but one day he comes home drunk and gets in a knife fight with Mary. This amounts to about nothing besides Jeannette finding out that he broke his promise. This was the first time Jeannette realizes that she may not be able to trust Rex.

Going back to the lack of money, Rex’s alcoholism also created many financial problems for the family. Between stealing money or just spending most of what he earned, it was his fault that Jeanette and her family had no money. When Mary started working Rex made sure that he would get her paychecks, making excuses like how he’s the head of the household and that he should be in charge of the family’s finances. Mary tried many ways to keep the money, saying “she hadn't cashed her paycheck yet, or she'd pretend she'd left it at school” however eventually, Rex started showing up to the school on payday, making all of them drive to the bank (76). After Mary would cash the check from the bank Jeannette stated that “[b]ack in the car, Dad would go through Mom's purse and take the money out” (77). Once Rex got the money he primarily used it for alcohol leaving the family with little to no money for food. As time passed, Rex never got any better with handling the family's money. 

Once Jeannette got old enough she got various jobs to help manage the family's finances. This helped for a bit of time but after getting into a fight with Rex, resulting in him whipping her, she decided to leave as soon as possible. To save money she bought a piggy bank and named it Oz. After hearing about New York City, along with Lori, she started doing multiple tasks rewarding her with money. The two of them had come up with a plan. Get as much money as they could before Lori graduated, Lori takes the money and moves to NYC getting everything situated for Jeannette, finally Jeannette would graduate and move too. They would eventually get Brian to help save and after nine months they had a decent amount of money. However, Jeannette came home to discover that Oz was missing. Once she found it she learned that it was cut open with all the money missing. She told Lori about it and they waited for Rex to return to confront him. After a couple of days, Rex finally came home, denying everything. Jeannette realized that during this exchange “He was actually half grinning at me” (229). It’s quite apparent that Rex stole the money and doing so he almost ruined their plan to move. Regardless, Jeannette and Lori devised a new plan and while Rex didn’t ruin this plan he may have forsaken what little trust they had for him. No matter how bad their living conditions were, Rex ended up making them even worse concerning money. Healthline states that “continuing to drink even when legal, social, or economic problems develop” is a sign of alcoholism. Financially speaking, Rex has created many problems for his family so he could continue to drink, resulting in loss of trust from his wife and kids.

Over the course of Jeannette's childhood, Rex has hurt the family both financially, and physically. Between drunken violence and stealing the family’s money he slowly lost the trust of his family. At one point or another each of the kids are shown to lose trust in him. Brian loses trust when he mumbles that his father has let him down while Lori loses it when she complains to Jeannette that Rex needs to do more than spend their money. The most significant family member to lose trust, however, is Jeannette because through all of it she was the last one who trusted him. This is illustrated when Jeannette asks her mother to leave Rex so they could apply for welfare. This depicts Jeannette finally starting to believe that Rex was the reason why their family had so many problems. Mary, of course, refused her, leaving Jeannette to think “Dad seemed hell-bent on destroying himself, and I was afraid he was going to pull us all down with him” showing that she has finally come to the realization that Rex was the reason the family couldn’t succeed (188). During the book Rex knew that he had a drinking problem but he neglected that it was the source of their financial problems. Drugrehab states that “[n]eglect can also have a negative impact on loved ones” in this case was the loss of trust from his family.

Rex had also been violent at times, enough times in fact that it most likely resulted in some emotional damage for the kids. Each time resulted in the kids crying for him to stop. Putting emotions aside though, Jeannette had one experience with Rex that furthered the loss of trust she had. This was when Jeannette had gotten into a fight with Mary and while Jeannette was  in the right, Rex took his wife’s side. Trying to get Jeannette to back down, Rex threatened to whip her. However, Rex had never hurt her before which had made Jeanette believe that he was bluffing and that he wouldn’t. Rex didn’t back down and went through with it in the end. This event caused Jeanette to lose what little trust she had in him left and ultimately what made her decide to move away as soon as she could. 

Through thick and thin the Walls family managed to get through tough times. However, Rex’s drinking problems did not make this any easier for the family. With his violent tendencies and being unfit to handle the family’s finances, Rex slowly lost whatever trust his family had for him.

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