Summary Of The Glass Castle

The Glass Castle is unlike any other ordinary book. This true story holds almost every detail of a poor family’s life. It holds in its pages hardships, adventures, fighting, longing, and loving. With an artistic mother named Rose Mary, a smart daughter named Lori, a beautiful daughter named Maureen, a country son named Brian, a drunk father named Rex, and herself, an adventurous hard-working daughter named Jeannette, they were those very people who made up the Walls family. They faced more challenges than the average family would. Some challenges, for example, would include living in a lifestyle that always kept them in poverty, moving around and escaping more than a few times, surviving multiple raging fires, living in a crumbling house, and

They would “skedaddle” often. They lived everywhere from a trailer park in Arizona, to sleeping on the ground in the desert, to a motel in Las Vegas, then San Francisco on the beach. After that, they moved to a two-bedroom house in the Mojave Desert, and then to an old depot next to some train tracks on Battle Mountain. After a while in Battle Mountain, Rose Mary received news that her mother had died and she inherited a house on some land in Phoenix and the family decided to move there. When they became more financially unstable then before, they moved to Welch, a small city in West Virginia enclosed by mountains. They lived in Rex’s mother and fathers house until they were kicked out and were forced to find a crumbling house with no electricity, hot water, fireplace, or even a bathroom. Their crumbling house in Welch was where the Walls children had spent most of their life until all of the kids, now older, decided to finally leave Welch and move to New York City. They decided to move after their dad became a raging drunk and their mom would no longer take care of her children. Jeannette was accepted into an Ivy League school and paid her own way through. She became a very successful journalist. This is a good example of how this is a very unusual and different life than most people would live. Not many people can relate to, or even fathom the experiences that the Walls family had to live through, living place to place, paycheck to

They often would eat in small portions, eat rotten food, or not eat at all. Even though Rose Mary had a teaching job in Battle Mountain, Rex would always drink away the paycheck. Sometimes, Rex would have “odd jobs” and bring home bags of groceries, however, they wouldn’t last long in their big family. One day, Jeannette came home and found Lori eating a half of a stick of margarine with some sugar because there was nothing else in the house to eat. During the school day, Jeannette would have to rummage through the trash bins in the bathroom and forage for food other students had thrown away. She would wonder how kids could be so wasteful with their lunch. When Rex lost his job in Battle Mountain, they “…quickly ran out of food… Sometimes one of [their] dad’s odd jobs would come through, or he’d win some money gambling, and [they would] eat for a few days. Then the money would be gone and the refrigerator would be empty again”, and they would go back to being hungry (Walls 67). This is a very unfortunate situation because kids count on their parents to provide and feed them but Rex and Rose Mary weren’t trying very hard to ensure that their kids were fed. This is another example of why the Walls family’s story is unlike any