The Glass Castle

By the time the Wallses reach Welch, any vestige of adventure left in the family’s journey is eliminated from the narrative. There are no cheetah exploits, no stars as Christmas presents, no outdoor pianos. The chapters set in Welch are almost entirely the stuff of American tragedies, as the struggles of the Walls clan in West Virginia resist any efforts to romanticize them. This is in part due to the fact that the family’s usual pattern—Dad gets a job, fond memories are forged, Dad loses his job, the family falls into indigence—is largely waylaid here because Dad never even attempts to find steady work.

For the Wallses at least, life in Welch is depicted as truly nightmarish, particularly in comparison to the Southwest. In a simple but telling observation, Jeannette explains why it was easier in Arizona than in Welch to go long periods of time without baths: “We were also always dirty. Not dry-dirty like we’d been in the desert, but grimy-dirty and smudged with oily dust from the coal-burning stove” (140). The relative cleanliness in the desert finds a particularly stark foil in the Tug River and its high levels of fecal matter contamination. Moreover, extreme poverty manifests differently in Welch than it did out West. While Jeannette is no stranger to violence, the violence in Welch is pervasive, cascading on down from overworked miners to their wives to their children to other wives’ children. Equally pervasive is racism. Though Jeannette acknowledges that racist attitudes existed toward Mexican and Navajo communities out West, racism is particularly vile and visible in Welch. Multiple characters casually drop racial slurs, and the town is far more segregated than the Wallses’ diverse neighborhood in Phoenix.

Jeannette’s horrific recollections of the poverty in Welch are supported by the historical record. While the town was a prosperous coal mining community during the first half of the 20th century, a post-World War II shift from coal to oil, combined with greater mechanization of the coal industry, decimated Welch’s economic prospects. While Dad is right that the first modern recipients of food stamps received them in Welch, the individual who personally handed them over was in fact Kennedy’s Secretary of Agriculture Orville Freeman, not Kennedy himself. Kennedy did visit Welch, only he did so a year earlier as a presidential candidate in the West Virginia primary. A 2014 New York Times article reflects on the role in the War on Poverty played by McDowell County, of which Welch is the county seat:

McDowell County, the poorest in West Virginia, has been emblematic of entrenched American poverty for more than a half-century. John F. Kennedy campaigned here in 1960 and was so appalled that he promised to send help if elected president. His first executive order created the modern food stamp program, whose first recipients were McDowell County residents. When President Lyndon B. Johnson declared ‘unconditional war on poverty’ in 1964, it was the squalor of Appalachia he had in mind. The federal programs that followed—Medicare, Medicaid, free school lunches and others—lifted tens of thousands above a subsistence standard of living. (Gabriel, Trip. “50 Years into the War on Poverty, Poverty Hits Back.” The New York Times. 20 Apr. 2014. https://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/21/us/50-years-into-the-war-on-poverty-hardship-hits-back.html)   

There are some fleeting moments of connection between the characters in Welch, but these connections are generally forged through that same violence that is an ever-present part of life in that community. Consider what Jeannette calls “the Battle of Little Hobart Street” (165), during which Jeannette and Brian heroically conquer their nemesis, Ernie Goad. It is one of the few moments in these chapters when the author musters real excitement in her writing, as she recalls the ingenious mattress catapult she builds with Brian—yet the anecdote ends with a passage that, though exaggerated, highlights the degree to which violence has become an important driving force in the lives of the Walls children: “It was, we were convinced, enough to kill Ernie Goad and his gang, which was what we fully intended to do: kill them and commandeer their bikes, leaving their bodies in the street as a warning to others” (166). Elsewhere, Jeannette details one of the few intimate moments she shares with Dad in Welch, yet it comes as she sews up a deep gash he received earlier in the evening, another act of bonding over violence.

While in Welch, Jeannette is once again in proximity to sexual assault on two occasions: one directly, when Uncle Stanley masturbates while touching her leg, and the other indirectly, when she witnesses Erma molest Brian. This disturbing scene is pivotal in terms of both narrative and character development. From a narrative perspective, it causes the family to be evicted from Erma’s basement. In terms of characterization, it reveals the strong likelihood that Dad, too, was a victim of sexual abuse at the hands of Erma. Jeannette recalls her feelings in the wake of the assault:

It was gross and creepy to think about, but it would explain a lot. Why Dad left home as soon as he could. Why he drank so much and why he got so angry. Why he never wanted to visit Welch when we were younger. Why he at first refused to come to West Virginia with us and only at the last possible moment overcame his reluctance and jumped into the car. Why he was shaking his head so hard, almost like he wanted to put his hands over his ears, when I tried to explain what Erma had been doing to Brian (148).

There is a common saying that people who inflict violence were usually first the victims of violence. While Dad’s behavior does not extend to what Erma does to Brian, he has a great deal to answer for in terms of his treatment of Mom and his children, so Jeannette is right: “it would explain a lot” (148). However, the book resists simple explanations for Dad’s dysfunction. This logic—that Dad was abused, therefore Dad is an alcoholic, and therefore the family’s lives are terrible—is an oversimplification not only of what makes Dad tick, but also of the family’s broader relational dynamics.

As for the assault committed by Uncle Stanley, this is one of multiple events in Welch that reveals the extent to which Mom’s supposedly progressive ideals crumble when she is faced with necessity and hardship. The other is when Jeannette tells Mom about the racial slurs used by Erma. In both cases, Mom dismisses the events as inconsequential, in large part because she relies on Dad’s family to survive. Jeannette recalls, “Situations like these, I realized, were what turned people into hypocrites” (144).

Perhaps the most symbolically rich portions of this section surround the family’s first weeks at the dilapidated house on Little Hobart Street. Dad continues to insist that he will build the Glass Castle, and his purchase of the house was driven in large part by the fact that there’s enough land on the property to construct it. Moreover, the fact that Jeannette eagerly takes up the task of building a hole for its foundation is evidence that, despite everything, she still hangs onto her innocent childhood illusions about her father. These illusions are cracked—though not yet shattered—when Dad instructs Jeannette to use the foundation of the Glass Castle as a hole for garbage because they cannot afford trash pickup. In essence, Dad wants Jeannette to repurpose the symbolic container for all her hopes and dreams about her father into a literal trashcan. If this symbolic construction occurred in a work of fiction, one might be tempted to call it glaringly, almost comically, obvious, yet this is based on the author’s real-life experiences.

In that same chapter, the characters’ reactions to improving the exterior of the atrocious-looking house all reflect the innate qualities of each family member. As an optimist, Jeannette tries to paint the house yellow, but the task is too difficult for an 11-year-old, and she ends up making it look worse than before. Mom, habitually more concerned about aesthetics than quality of life, refuses to help because she believes yellow houses look “tacky.” As realists or even fatalists, Brian and Lori say they do not have sufficiently sturdy ladders to complete the job. Most tellingly, Dad advises Jeannette not to waste time on projects other than the Glass Castle, once again falling back on an impossible dream to avoid the hard work of real life.