The Glass Castle By Jeannette Walls

Does an individual's role in self-perception play a role in seeking to reconcile the conflict between illusion and reality? In Jeannette Walls "The Glass Castle," Rex displays hidden trauma from when he was a child, which leads him to create a false reality to shield them. In doing this, the false reality will lead them to struggle to find the difference between what is real and what is an illusion.

As an adult, Rex displays minimal remorse for anyone in his life when they are harassed. This is most prominently displayed after Rex's mother touches Brian, and when Rex gets back to hear about this, instead of taking his own son's side, he instead tells his kids "Brian's a man, he can take it". Even after Rex is grown up and has kids,

One prominent reason is that while the Walls family is jumping from town to town, they are broke; they could have a little money, but the only problem is that they realize that Rex "spends more than he earns on booze" If Rex's self-perception was less egotistical, he might have been able to see how much he is hurting the family, but instead he continues to drink their money away. As Rex continues down a destructive path of poor parenting decisions, his children grow further and further away from him. While living in Welsh, the Wall children are on their last straw. While any normal parent would see this, Rex is so caught up in his delusional illusion of perfection that he can't see it until one day when he and Jeannette are fighting and she finally breaks and screams at Rex, asking "Why [doesn't] he act like a dad". Up until this point, Rex has thought he was perfect, only ever telling his kids they must think he's a failure just as a guilt trip, not knowing that they actually think of him that way. Now that Jeannette has pointed out the one thing he thought could never be true, he begins to realize things are falling apart. Rather than acknowledging that he might be the reason for the family's troubles, his delusions keep him from the truth. Following Jeannette and Rex's fight, Rex begins to reminisce about the previous events, only to come to the conclusion that their "family is falling apart". But rather than acknowledge that he might have been the problem because of all of his drinking, gambling, cheating, and putting his children through a living hell of a childhood, he instead believes he is too good for that and believes his children aren't grateful and that it is their fault for