The Villain In The Glass Castle By Rex Walls

Children need a safe and steady place to grow up in. Kids looked up to their parents and aspire to be just like them when they grow up. Rex and Rosemary Wall have different beliefs when it comes to taking care of their children. Although they seem to love each other, Rex and Rosemary, from The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, create chaos and instability in their home with their volatile relationship. Creating an unstable environment making it difficult for the entire family, it always made the children terrified when they fought because it usually ended up Rosemary getting injured physically or mentally, as time passed by Rex began to leave more frequently and not come back for days, making Rosemary and the children without money for food and just worried about Rex in general.

Towards the end of the memoir, Jeannette was in high school and was getting ready to graduate and get as far away from Welch and her broken family as possible. Jeannette decided to follow in her older sisters footsteps and move to New York. Jeannette is passionate about writing and believed New York was a perfect place to get her career started, along with college. Jeannette’s family was upset that she was leaving them, especially Rex. Rex felt as if he was losing

The novel, The Glass Castle, exhibits the human tendency to be selfish. This is manifested in both Rex and Rose Mary. Rex is characterized as a selfish father throughout the novel, and his paternal image is consistently skewed because of his actions. His addiction to alcohol ruins countless family events. One year the family’s Christmas is ruined when Rex drinks a great deal of alcohol and burns their tree and presents. Jeanette remembers, “Dad sat on the sofa [...] telling mom he was doing her a favor [...] no one tried to wring dad’s neck [...] or even point out that he’d ruined the Christmas his family has spent weeks planning” (115). Jeanette and her family are always left cleaning up their father’s drunken mess. Even when Rex is sober he does not apologize for ruining sentimental family events and continues to put alcohol before his family. Selfishness can also be seen in Rex’s relationship with money. He takes Jeanette into a bar in order to get money from his friend, Robbie. When Robbie asks if he can take Jeanette upstairs, Jeanette recollects, “So, with Dad’s blessing, I went upstairs” (212). Rex is so self-absorbed that he allows his daughter to go into a strange man's apartment, fully knowing his intentions. During Jeanette and her siblings’ childhood, they experience dangerous situations with their parents’ knowledge and approval. While Rex’s selfish nature is typically derived from his addiction, Rose Mary’s selfishness is simply a reflection of her personality.

Jeanette represents Rex as a reasonable and loving father through Christmas time during which he gave the presents stars to them. She describes the memory with admiration and love towards her father. Although Jeanette says “we had no money at all” her family showed no regret, she instead showed how they absolutely admire him, by capitalizing “Dad”. Rex has an ability to brave the cold times because ”the cold never bothered him” as he said ( Glass Castle 39). Jeanette holds onto her father when other people ignore him because he makes her feel unique, as it gives her one of the most important moments of her life. It's clearly obvious that Jeanette admiration is growing as she continues to describe the experience in positive terms. The final quotation at

With no limits or boundaries, Walls is thrown in a big body of water without knowing how to swim. Rex and Rosemary has a sense of doing it by yourself or not at all asserting “But the Hot Pot didn’t have any ehat edges like that swimming pool. There was nothing to cling to. I waded up in my shoulders. The water above my chest is warm and the rocks i was standing on felt so hot [...] Dad who watched me unsmiling[..] “you’re going to learn today”(65). Rex, in athrows Jeanette in water with no edges, knowing she can’t swim.He puts Jeannette in a live or die situation. Rex shows the faults of parenting because the parents have no regards on Jeannette’s safety or life and wall states”You’re going to learn today’ declaring “Dad pried my fingers from around his neck and pushed me away. My arms flailed around and i sank into the hot smelly water. Water surged in my nose and down my throat. My lungs burned[...] He pulled back and did it again” (65-66).Putting a child in a dangerous situation to show them a lesson shows bad parenting.Rex and Rosemary causes the reader to reflect on their lack of responsibility as being a parent so that they can understand from both sides of view of the poverty situation.

One of the most important theme in The Glass Castle is forgiveness. Jeannette and her brother and sisters spend their whole lives forgiving their parents for their irresponsibilities. They still love them and welcome them into their hearts even though Rex and Rose Mary didn't deserve it. By forgiving them, she feels less angry and her attitude as a whole is much more positive. When she is three years old, she burns herself cooking and her mother doesn't take care of her. After being in the hospital for 6 days, she let her cook again and says “Good for you, you have got to get right back in the saddle (15). ” Another example of forgiveness, is when she is trying to learns how to swim and her dad drops her in the water making her almost drown. She thinks he did this so she can learn, so she forgives him. Jeanette says, “I figured he must be right, there was no other way to explain it(66).” This means that she thought he didn't have an intention to harm her, but he tried to make her learn. At the end of the story, she meets her father for the last time and forgives him for all the bad things that had happened in her life and all the chaos. Although all of these bad things happened to her and her brother and sister because of him, she says she knew he loved her like no one else ever had. Jeanette said she forgives him for “all the hell-raising and destruction and chaos he [has] created in [her life].” On the other hand though, she says, “I could not imagine what my life would be like- without him in it. As awful as he could be, I always knew he loved me in a way no one else ever had(279).” This means that she knew that he made all those mistakes throughout his life, but she still found a way to forgive him and look on the brighter side of things.

Jeannette, during her childhood, always looked forward to building "The Glass Castle". Her and her father would always talk about how it would be self sufficient in the desert with solar panels and made completely out of glass. This gave Jeannette hope for the future. When Jeannette is an adult, she loses sight of believing in her family and tries to push them out of her life causing her to be more unhappy. But, by the end she came to her senses and went and visited her father while he was sick.

A few times in the book she would be inappropriately touched, or beaten up, and her father would do nothing to avenge or just protect his daughter. Brian came to her side a couple times and defended her against bullies, but Rex would never be empathetic. She had a little brother, but what she needed, was a preventive father. When Rex came home drunk most of the nights, he was violent and rude to his children. To try and make a difference for the whole family, and to get them to believe in Dad again, her birthday present she wished for was for her father to stop drinking. He lasted a couple months, but the disappointment and betrayal she felt of her father was immense and “...she couldn’t believe Dad had gone back to the booze” (Walls 123). She was the last to believe in him and with the overwhelming dishonesty and deception, at last, she had finally lost faith in her Dad.

While her father’s dismisses his destructive nature, Jeannette becomes conscious of his actions which motivates her to make amends in hopes of leaving their desolate life. Instead of getting help for his childhood trauma, Rex immerses himself in alcohol causing him to become

This book starts with Jeannette going to a party in New York. When she spots her mother rummaging through trash cans. Embarrassed, Jeannette goes home changing her mind about going to the party. I guess that was a place to start or a good place to wonder how she got to the point of embarrassment of her parents. The Walls family was always on the move. Rex Walls would depict these sudden moves as “the skedaddle.” In all actuality, once paranoia set in or Rex Walls’ job ended the family picked up and moved everything. The children had to learn that family stuck together no matter what. The family slept in cars and hotels for majority of the Walls children lives. Jeannette was the favorite of all the Walls children. Spending little time in many different places the Walls children could not rely on making friends. Brain Walls spent time exploring the dessert while on the move. Moving around was what Walls family did a good portion of Jeannette’s life.

There are many conflicts present in the book The Glass Castle. To begin, there the external conflict present between the Walls family and where they live at any given moment. The Walls family, not having a lot, are forced to adapt to the less than ideal situations wherever Rex would take them. While they are at Battle Mountain, there were excess animals there and Rose Mary, “refused to kill the flies that always filled the house; she said they were nature’s food for the birds and lizards” (Walls 64). The Walls family face external conflicts with where they are located.

Everyone has secrets they stash below the surface, sorrows they bury deep within their hearts, and dreams they lock up behind hopeful tongues. In The Glass Castle, the main characters all hide behind a mask that conceals their true intentions and identities. To begin, Rex appears in the novel as a father that has good intentions sand great ideas to make his family wealthy. He falls short because of his addiction to alcohol and an upsetting past that suggests that he was likely sexaully abused by his mother as a child. Rex struggles to prove his manhood as he fails in providing his children with a good father figure and a stable life. At first glance, his mother is a grouchy, older woman who doesn’t like Rex’s family. However, her actions

In her younger years, Jeannette was an smart and imaginative child. At first, she enjoyed moving around, and had a lot of faith in her father, which created a good relationship between them. “All we had to was find gold, once we’d struck it rich, he’d [Rex] start work on our Glass Castle” (Walls, 25). The tremendous faith that she has in Rex creates a strong bond because she is the only family member who trusts his ideas. Unfortunately, he is a raging alcoholic who can’t hold a job, so most of his promises are broken. As Jeannette gets older, he lets her down more and more. One time he brought her to a bar where she was then sexually violated. When the two had a talk after, he said “I knew you could handle yourself” (Walls, 213,) instead of defending her. It was upsetting to watch their relationship grow apart and to see how poorly he provided for his family, yet they still loved him.

Walls was left to her own devices for the majority of her childhood. Rex and Rosemary  put their wants before their children. Rex was an alcoholic whose addiction became worse over time. Rosemary was an artist who seemed like she didn't even want to be a mother. Both parents

The life of a parent is a difficult journey. To be an acceptable parent, the parent must complete different tasks such as being employed therefore providing needs of children. Oftentimes, society judges a parent on their ability to provide for their children. For example, if the father determines to abuse his daughter, society will rebuke him. However, it only takes a child to show their love towards their parents for society to accept that he is able to provide for that child’s needs. In the book The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, the relationship between Jeannette and her father projects throughout the book due to the attachment they have towards one another. Despite the destruction her father have placed in her life, Jeannette continuously