Tolog Review: The Glass Castle

The Glass Castle 
by Jeannette Walls
reviewed by Julia Powers

The memoir The Glass Castle follows the struggles of young Jeannette Walls, our author. She grew up in a life of poverty; from running out of hospitals without paying the bill to living in a leaking shack in Welch, West Virginia, without plumbing or electricity. Although this life doesn’t offer our main character much, she grows in unexpected ways throughout the novel. She and her other siblings eventually escape destitution but her parents are forever trapped in it. In the first couple of pages, Jeannette is riding in a cab in New York City “wondering if she was overdressed for the evening” (Walls 3). She glances out the window to see her mother on the street, rummaging through the trash, probably looking for something to eat.

Jeannette Walls was raised a tough and independent little girl from birth. We follow her from the age of three where she is making herself a hotdog in her favorite pink dress. Soon enough the flames that were boiling water, jump onto the cotton fibers, scarring the whole side of Jeannette’s body. She is rushed to the hospital, and a few weeks later her father, Rex Walls, scrambles out of the hospital with his favorite daughter in his arms, skipping the bill and forcing the family to move out of town once again. They travelled from a small town to the desert, to her mom’s house in Phoenix, and then to Welch with other places along their journey as well. Several events in The Glass Castle show how Jeannette was forced to grow up too quickly. In a desert town she was molested by the neighborhood pervert and for her tenth birthday all she asked for was that her father stop drinking. As they moved to Welch, and as Jeannette progressed through high school, she itched to get away from her family. Her older sister, Lori had gone to New York after her high school graduation and Jeannette soon decided she would move in with Lori after her own graduation. The struggle of having an alcoholic father who couldn’t hold a job and a nearly deranged mother helped to shape Jeannette into what she would later become. 

The Glass Castle is a novel about unfinished plans for a better life. Jeannette’s parents sketched out all sorts of blueprints in each of the towns they lived in hoping for a better life. A glass castle was what Jeannette and her dad wanted to build when she was young. But throughout these failed ideas, Jeannette drew up her own dream of how she wanted her future to be. It would be the opposite of how her parents lived and the biggest difference between Jeannette’s dreams and those of her parents is that they came true. When things got tough she didn’t simply up and leave like her parents did. She put effort both in her life and in her future, and remembering the past, she continues to drive forward in that cab in New York City.