Assignment #8 Commentary on Glass Castle pg 105 to end
Hey everybody, just finished reading this incredible book which I recommend for all those with a crazy family. Since I know this means everyone I know I hope I have alot of comments to posts about this memoir in the coming weeks.
PS
Still awaiting a grade on a pop quiz we got in class last week on this book. Keep your fingers crossed.
A life with neither parent being a role model is hard enough but it’s a situation a lot of children go through. What really makes this book intriguing however is the parents’ total lack parental instinct. The Zoo incident is a case in point. The Father, Rex, to prove a point to his children puts them in harms way when they visit the cheetah in the Zoo. The writer as a child of course had a ball being licked and petting the cheetah but clearly this was an act of a lunatic. Rex’s lack of fatherly instinct becomes clear when he leaves his children with his sexually abusive mother Erma.
The mother is one in name only. While she sees her children deprived of food she hides under the covers and eats chocolate bars. She is essentially a child hating responsibility and loving chaos. This is perhaps why she stays with her husband after he turns out to be abusive toward her and unable to care for his family. The mother’s decision to move the family to West Virginia to live with her husbands parents after he had tried to stop drinking is a destructive one whose outcome should have been foreseen. Both his parents are hateful abusive alcoholics who make his slide back into alcoholism predictable. All this happens while her children grow up like wild animals fending for themselves right in front of her.
More than any one episode, what must have been devastating for the children is their losing faith in their parents. Children in general expect their parents to put the child’s needs ahead of their own, and to be taken care of. These expectations were never met in the Walls household. Constant deprivation and neglect were the rule not the exception. Most people would think that this qualifies as abuse but the author seems to think that abuse and neglect isn’t the whole story.
When Jeannette writes about her father one can see that, though all the drunkenness and the abuse, she still marvels at his love for nature and animals and his intelligence. Instead of clearly seeing his ruses (doing “research” at bars on the mob so he can take down organized crime) for what they were, half assed excuses, she saw a certain charisma to it. Perhaps she needed to see it in this light, it probably saved her sanity. The mother also seems to her saving grace as well, her artistic abilities. She is constantly painting or reading and writing. Her ability to find the silver lining is legendary especially in West Virginia. During a winter there the children realize that their house is the only one without insulation. When approached by this problem the mother explains that this will make the family closer because now they have to huddle together.
Despite all these horror stories the children end up for the most part ok. I would have thought Maureen’s fate (living with a mental disorder) to be a typical one for the Walls family but ironically the survival skills they learned fending for themselves made them escape West Virginia and one by one arrive almost as refugees in New York City. There seems to have been an evolution in thought from the parent’s generation to the author’s. The parents were all about surviving and coping, their children added escaping and succeeding to that notion. That’s essentially what the book is about learning from an impossible situation then winning against all odds.
Lastly what stands out for me in this book is its point of view. The author writes as though she is Jeannette Walls age 10 or 13 depending on the chapter. This makes the memoir wonderfully descriptive and a very easy read.
PS
Still awaiting a grade on a pop quiz we got in class last week on this book. Keep your fingers crossed.
A life with neither parent being a role model is hard enough but it’s a situation a lot of children go through. What really makes this book intriguing however is the parents’ total lack parental instinct. The Zoo incident is a case in point. The Father, Rex, to prove a point to his children puts them in harms way when they visit the cheetah in the Zoo. The writer as a child of course had a ball being licked and petting the cheetah but clearly this was an act of a lunatic. Rex’s lack of fatherly instinct becomes clear when he leaves his children with his sexually abusive mother Erma.
The mother is one in name only. While she sees her children deprived of food she hides under the covers and eats chocolate bars. She is essentially a child hating responsibility and loving chaos. This is perhaps why she stays with her husband after he turns out to be abusive toward her and unable to care for his family. The mother’s decision to move the family to West Virginia to live with her husbands parents after he had tried to stop drinking is a destructive one whose outcome should have been foreseen. Both his parents are hateful abusive alcoholics who make his slide back into alcoholism predictable. All this happens while her children grow up like wild animals fending for themselves right in front of her.
More than any one episode, what must have been devastating for the children is their losing faith in their parents. Children in general expect their parents to put the child’s needs ahead of their own, and to be taken care of. These expectations were never met in the Walls household. Constant deprivation and neglect were the rule not the exception. Most people would think that this qualifies as abuse but the author seems to think that abuse and neglect isn’t the whole story.
When Jeannette writes about her father one can see that, though all the drunkenness and the abuse, she still marvels at his love for nature and animals and his intelligence. Instead of clearly seeing his ruses (doing “research” at bars on the mob so he can take down organized crime) for what they were, half assed excuses, she saw a certain charisma to it. Perhaps she needed to see it in this light, it probably saved her sanity. The mother also seems to her saving grace as well, her artistic abilities. She is constantly painting or reading and writing. Her ability to find the silver lining is legendary especially in West Virginia. During a winter there the children realize that their house is the only one without insulation. When approached by this problem the mother explains that this will make the family closer because now they have to huddle together.
Despite all these horror stories the children end up for the most part ok. I would have thought Maureen’s fate (living with a mental disorder) to be a typical one for the Walls family but ironically the survival skills they learned fending for themselves made them escape West Virginia and one by one arrive almost as refugees in New York City. There seems to have been an evolution in thought from the parent’s generation to the author’s. The parents were all about surviving and coping, their children added escaping and succeeding to that notion. That’s essentially what the book is about learning from an impossible situation then winning against all odds.
Lastly what stands out for me in this book is its point of view. The author writes as though she is Jeannette Walls age 10 or 13 depending on the chapter. This makes the memoir wonderfully descriptive and a very easy read.
posted by djshoghi at
3:40 PM
