September 3, 2014 ENG 130 G Professor Ady Response to The Glass Castle In Jeannette Walls’s memoir, The Glass Castle, she, despite everything, refuses to condemn her parents. It was very, very hard to remain equally nonjudgmental. I actually found myself unable to be so kind and generous in my opinion. Her attitude is, and to this day remains, extraordinary. Her parents treated her and her siblings with such neglect and had such a lack of responsibility. It’s hard to understand how she remains so nonjudgmental. However, there were times when I agreed with their parenting methods. Jeannette’s mother, Rose Mary, is an artist. No, she doesn’t sell her art. She paints and draws purely for the enjoyment of it. Rex, Jeannette’s father, is a …show more content…
In the memoir, Jeannette gets severely burned from accidently setting herself on fire. Originally, her mother and father don’t even want to take her to the hospital. They insist on taking her to a “witch doctor.” Reluctantly, they end up taking her to get professional help, just to end up basically kidnapping her out of the hospital before she has completely healed. The way her father speaks about it, spinning tales and calling it “Breaking out, Rex Walls style” makes it seems as though he is condoning such awful and illegal behavior. That whole incident outrages …show more content…
They would have to go days, even weeks without a proper meal because their father spent all of the little money he made gambling, on some more gambling, booze, and cigarettes. Rose Mary hardly worked as well. She had the occasional teaching job, which she was not very good at, and her children sometimes literally had to drag her out of bed for her to go to work. Jeannette and her siblings had to scavenge through dumpsters and trash barrels at school to find sustenance. That is such an awful way to grow up. I don’t understand how anybody could ever really be okay with that. Another thing that Rose Mary taught her kids was stealing. She would have them create a distraction in thrift stores or department stores so she could hide a dress or two in a bag while store employees weren’t looking. In my opinion, kids should never be taught that stealing is okay. They need to work for what they want and for what they need, not take it from whomever they please. That is definitely condemnable