Generosity In The Glass Castle By Jeannette Walls

Generosity has the potential become a detrimental effect on an individual’s prosperity. Excessive compassion in tolerating one’s reluctance to improve their life intensifies the complexity of recovery. It lessens the individual’s incentive to revise their habits. In the memoir The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, the author portrays her parents as highly intelligent yet irresponsible individuals who persistently forgive themselves for the negligence of their obligations. Therefore, lacking compulsion, the family never succeeds in sustaining a comfortable lifestyle. If Rex and Rose Mary Walls motivated each other to find a balance between pursuing passions and cultivating responsibilities, they could have achieved a life that met both their

This enforced optimistic ideology manipulates her children’s perceptions of their lives which takes any accountability for their misfortunes away from her. She chooses to neglect her children but enlightens it to be a generous gesture because “suffering when you’re young is good for you… It immunized your body and soul” (28). She influences her children to be accepting of their misfortunes so she may restrict the necessity of providing care for her children. The children are used to being deprived of simple needs such as food and health care so they do not mention to their parents when their difficulties have increased. Because of this conditioning, Rose Mary does not feel obligated to take away time from her paintings to care for her children. Additionally, the semblance that her children are taking care of each other allows Rose Mary to reject the notion of her sacrificing her artistic passions to obtain a sustainable income. She praises herself for raising such capable children and continues to neglect her children’s needs. Rose Mary’s compassion towards her own negligence impairs her family's ability to

Rose Mary tells Jeannette that she married Rex Walls because “she had to get away from her mother, who wouldn’t let her make even the smallest decision on her own.” (27) Rose Mary’s limitations in making her own decisions while she was a child developed an inability to oppose the will of others. Rose Mary’s passivity enables her husband’s destructive behaviour which restricts the recovery of her family’s prosperity. Whenever Rex exhibits disruptive behaviour Rose Mary claims that there’s nothing any of them can do. They have to accept his father for who he is. Her expression of compassion for her husband involves accepting the life of poverty he has inflicted on the family. The lack of opposition from Rex’s family allows him to continue to indulge in his destructive habits. His alcoholism becomes irreparable, and without personal recovery, Rex Walls cannot control the devastation of his family’s progress toward