The Glass Castle, By Jeannette Walls

What defines a good parent? What defines a bad one? To what point do these terms become subjective? The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls Illustrates the impact that parents have on their children and how nomadic life does as well. The Glass Castle follows Jeanette's experience with nomadism and tells how it shaped who she is and how the members of her family molded her into who she is today. The text documents the struggles and challenges that she faced from childhood and how her upbringing correlated to her doing so. In the text, Walls characterizes her father as an arrogant man that struggles to juggle parenthood and alcoholism, frequently neglects and endangers his family, and does so all while instilling his philosophy and beliefs in his

One example in the book is when Rex takes Jeannette to a bar to attempt to con money from a regular customer. In the process, he knowingly puts Jeanette in a dangerous situation. He allows the man to take Jeannette up to his apartment, where Jeannette quickly escapes and confronts her father. When she confronts him she tells him that the man attacked her, only for him to say that it was a sensible risk and stating “I knew you could handle yourself” (Walls, Pg). This scene at the bar shows Rex’s negligence and inability to prioritize Jeannette’s safety over his booze money. This scene also indicates that Rex’s interests and goals are fueled by personal gain and interest and that he is willing to achieve his goals by any means necessary, even putting his own daughter at risk. From this scene, we can deduce that Rex is willing to even put his family members at risk in the interest of fulfilling his

It was his responsibility, he'd say, to handle the family finances. And he needed money to fund his gold leaching research”. Another example is when Rex had been asking Jeannette for money. When she asked him what it was for Rex reacted by stating "Goddammit, since when do I have to explain myself to my children?". The first example shows that Rex was willing to impede his daughter's recovery out of spite towards the medical system and out of pride. The second example implies that Rex holds on to the traditional masculine Ideologies that he was presumably raised with and sees himself in a place of authority due to him being the father of the household; He did this even when he was squandering the family's earnings on meaningless experiments and alcohol. The third example once again shows how Rex thinks that his “place of authority” trumps the needs and concerns of others. Throughout these examples, we see that rex