The View of Home for Jeannette

Introduction

Oh hey, this is the first blog post, so I feel like I should say hi. My name’s Ben, I’m a freshman at University of Oregon studying computer science. This will be where I write my ideas about what I’ve read in my ENG 250 class. There might be random stuff, but there’ll be a focus on the idea of home. Hopefully this blog proves somewhat insightful, or at least a little enjoyable. Now let’s start on The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls.

Intensity

Jeanette’s situation was pretty abnormal, to put it lightly. From intense burnings from boiling hotdogs to drowning kittens because there are too many, Jeannette’s situation could aptly be called…intense. This is just her experience from when she was three and four years old. Most of us haven’t been in as intense as situations in our entire lives that Jeannette had to go through in her extremely early childhood. Most of us can’t even remember that long ago, let alone have such impactful events from then to call back to. Most of these situations are terrifying, and as they’re a majority of the book, it’s important to analyze them.

Childhood Innocence

Jeanette’s reaction to these events and to her situation in general is one of the more interesting parts of the novel, at least to me. From the perspective of a relatively normal adult (I have to roleplay a bit here), there is a lot that should make one miserable. Jeannette at one point literally “tumbled out of the car…[and] rolled several yards along the embankment,”(30) which is just one random early example out of numerous injuries and countless struggles. But while there was the slightest bit of resistance here, “Dad got out of the car, knelt down and tried to give me a hug. I pulled away from him,”(30-31) it ended with, as it usually does, happiness from Jeannette (after a joke about her helplessly bleeding nose): “I started laughing really hard…they all started laughing as hard as me…it was hilarious.”(31). This is honestly one of the examples that is the most critically written in my opinion, and yet even it does not directly conclude to it being terrible. Jeannette and her siblings generally are talked about having a great time, talking about how they didn’t have much so “we invented our own games.”(54) At a couple points, there are even explicit conservations about how the kids assure that they were happy specifically despite their strange and often dangerous situations (I wish I had written some page numbers down). This childhood innocence of having a good time despite all the chaos is one of the most engaging parts of the book for me, and highlights some of the most important themes of the novel.

Justification

The only reason why one can read this book and not just see Jeannette’s parents as horrible monsters is because of the great ways that Jeannette justifies their behavior. This isn’t to say that Jeannette is being dishonest and misconstruing information to try to reaffirm the way she was raised – instead, the bleak reality of the parents situation is oftentimes justification enough to not be able to judge them as harshly as normal. A perfect example is the dad’s alcoholism. He is constantly drinking, making terrible decisions while drunk, driving drunk, getting angry while drunk, and all the other classic alcoholic dad things (except beating or targeting the children). On a surface level this is just outight reprehensible, and even on a deeper level it is terrible, but there is justification. Jeannette had a sibling, Mary Charlene, who died very young of crib death. Jeannette’s dad is the one who found her, and it is the main cause of the extremity of his alcoholism: “Mom said Dad was never the same after Mary Charlene died. He started having dark mods, staying out late and coming home drunk, and losing jobs.”(28). While it’s hard to accept his crippling alcoholism that causes major problems for the family, it becomes hard to blame a father to be messed up from finding his child dead. This is just one, and probably the most extreme, example of this justification, but it’s an extremely common theme throughout the novel that deserves a lot of attention as the main reason the book is bearable.

Conclusion

All in all, it becomes hard to judge the situation and people in The Glass Castle. Should the parents be only looked at as monsters, for subjecting children to such atrocities? Or should the children’s genuine love and the parents’ tragic flaws justify a lot of the situation? Feel free to comment your thoughts, and hopefully see I read more I’ll develop my own opinions even stronger and talk about it in the next post.