The Glass Castle

In these chapters, the reader begins to sense the adventure of the Wallses’ lifestyle transform into a nightmare. The process is slow at first. Having finally settled for a prolonged period in one place, Jeannette is able to better observe how other families differ from hers. For example, her friend Carla’s mother hangs adhesive strips to get rid of the flies. Mom, however, is content to let the family’s increasingly large brood of stray cats eat the flies because it’s “the same as buying cat food, only cheaper” (64).

When Dad loses his job at the barite mine, the Wallses’ lives no longer feel like they consist of the fun exploits of a merely idiosyncratic family. Sleeping under the stars or living in a house full of wild animals can be romanticized, especially for a child, but starvation cannot. The fight over who will eat the last of the margarine is a particularly galling illustration of the devastating effects of hunger. That scene culminates in a telling exchange between Jeannette and Mom. At one point, Jeannette expresses the fact that she is hungry, yet despite the fact that this sentiment has been expressed millions of times by far more privileged children than her, Mom responds to it with outrage. The author writes, “I’d broken one of our unspoken rules: We were always supposed to pretend our life was one long and incredibly fun adventure” (69). Mom’s outrage, however, quickly dissipates into tears. True, Mom may be an “excitement addict,” as she says, but this exchange reflects the extent to which her tendency to view life as an adventure is a coping mechanism for maintaining a relationship with a man as toxic and irresponsible as Dad.

Still, Jeannette’s wide-eyed admiration of Dad persists undeterred. This admiration is put to the test when the family visits the Hot Pot sulfur spring. Dad is not the first parent to teach a child how to swim by tossing them into the deep end, but Dad’s persistence, combined with the fact that the water is full of a sulfuric irritant, makes this sequence of events arguably abusive. Dad’s reasoning is similar to that used by both himself and Mom at various intervals: that children must overcome their fears. Like many of Mom and Dad’s aphorisms, this is true and worthwhile on the surface, but in practice, it works to justify a raft of questionable parenting tactics for both parties. Jeannette is not yet so jaded as to question whether the Hot Pot incident is anything but a reflection of her father’s love. She recalls:

Dad kept telling me that he loved me, that he never would have let me drown, but you can’t cling to the side your whole life, that one lesson every parent needs to teach a child is ‘If you don’t want to sink, you better figure out how to swim.’ What other reason, he asked, would possibly make him do this? Once I got my breath back, I figured he must be right. There was no other way to explain it (66).

Jeannette’s skewed perspective on her father is also highlighted by the disgust she feels when Billy mocks his own alcoholic father. She even considers it a worthy comeback when she shouts, “My daddy is nothing like your daddy! When my daddy passes out, he never pisses himself!” (83).

Less tolerant of Dad’s behavior is Brian, whose attitude begins to diverge from Jeannette’s in these chapters. The tipping point for Brian arguably involves a far greater betrayal than the Hot Pot incident. It also coincides with a broader loss of innocence, as Jeannette intuits that since his birthday Brian understands more about what goes on at the Green Lantern than she does. As before, Dad justifies his cruelty under the guise of a life lesson, forcing Brian to give the comic book he receives for his birthday to Ginger because “it was the gentlemanly thing to do” (79). The difference between Jeannette’s opinion of Dad and Brian’s increasingly skeptical attitude toward him is illustrated when Jeannette defends the fact that Dad siphons off so much of Mom’s paycheck. She says, “It’s not all for booze. Most of it’s for research on cyanide leaching,” and Brian responds, “Dad doesn’t need to do research on leaching. He’s an expert” (78).

This series of events surrounding Ginger is also the first in a string of toxic incidents that shape Jeannette’s experiences with human sexuality. The second, when Billy attempts to rape Jeannette, is far more disturbing, both literally and symbolically. For example, after Billy tells Jeannette he raped her, she looks up the word “rape” in the dictionary. There is an upsetting symmetry between this scene and an earlier one in which Jeannette uses the dictionary to look up words she doesn’t understand from Laura Ingalls Wilder books. This callback emphasizes how quickly Jeannette’s innocence erodes under the circumstances of the chaotic life Mom and Dad build for her. It is not their fault Billy sexually assaulted Jeannette, but their selfish attitude toward the incident is laid bare by Mom’s characterization of Billy as a “blessing in disguise” (93), given her expectation that her art career will flourish in Phoenix.

The reader also gets a better glimpse in these chapters of Mom’s motivations. It is revealed that Grandma Smith compelled Mom to get a teaching degree in case her art career failed. As young artists are sometimes wont to do, Mom views this as a major affront reflecting a lack of faith in her artistic abilities. Thus, her reluctant decision to get a teaching job—and her poor performance of the duties of said job—are rooted in deep resentment toward Grandma Smith. Mom’s history with Grandma Smith is an important piece of context when considering her motivations. From her slavish devotion to art, to her lack of rule enforcement when raising her children, Mom seeks to exhibit all of the opposite qualities of Grandma Smith—an understandable impulse, perhaps, but one that becomes increasingly hard to defend as the family falls deeper into poverty.