Homelessness in The Glass Castle
In the 1960s, according to American Civil Liberties Union, 20% of the United States population were homeless, and shunned from the rest of society because of stereotypes. The Glass Castle is a memoir written by Jeannette Walls, to tell the story of her life growing up as a homeless child with an alcoholic father and an artistic mother. Her memoir is a story about relationships, and how the outside world influences them. In The Glass Castle, by Jeannette Walls, homeless people are marginalized as uneducated, reckless and mentally unstable. Jeannette Walls shows that homeless people are marginalized as uneducated in The Glass Castle. “Dad would get a job as an electrician or engineer in a gypsum or copper mine. Mom liked to say that Dad could talk a blue streak, spinning tales of jobs he’d never had and college degrees he’d never earned” (Walls 19). For the most part, Jeannette’s dad, Rex Walls, was the money maker of the house. Wherever they moved to, he would find a job to do, but he could never keep his jobs for long periods of time. He
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“Dad jerked the steering wheel to one side and drove off the road into the desert after her. Lori, Brian, and I braced one another with our arms, like we always did when Dad went on some wild chase that we knew would get bumpy… We shot forward toward Mom, who screamed and jumped out of the way. Dad turned around and went for her again” (Walls 43). This is when Rex is chasing Rose Mary, who is on foot, in a car. She is pregnant with her fifth child, and was mad at Rex when he disagreed with her about how long she carried Lori for. It shows Rex as crazy because he is chasing his pregnant wife with a car. He has anger issues, and they escalate when he is drinking, which is most of the time. The combination of alcohol and anger make him dangerously reckless, which readers see in many scenes where Rex is