Throughout The Glass Castle, Jeannette’s relationship with her father evolves. At a young age, all her faith is in her father. She believes everything he says and believes he will always pull through for the family. This changes drastically as the novel progresses. Her faith dwindles in him until she has no faith in him at all. The biggest causes of this change is Rex’s drunkenness, his lying, and using Jeanette for his own benefit. These 3 things changed Jeanette’s view of her father completely.
In Jeanette’s early years, she paints her father as a hero of sorts. He is viewed in her naive point of view, leading her to believe that he will always be there and always support the family. “‘Don’t you worry,’ Dad said. ‘You leave that to me. Don’t I always take care of you?’ ‘’Course you do,’ I said” (Walls, 17) Jeanette never hesitates to take her father’s side, defending him no matter what. This pedestal that she has placed her Dad in soon dissolves as his true colors shine through.
Over the years in the book, Rex Walls drinking becomes a problem. After her gets intoxicated, he goes back to his home in a drunken rage. Until Jeanette had asked one thing from him for her tenth birthday; to quit drinking. It would seem that for the first time, Rex would keep this promise, when he goes through a painful alcohol withdrawal. Until he didn’t keep the promise. He comes home drunk once again. While the family celebrates the fact he did not seriously injury the mother during their fight, Jeanette is feeling disappointment. “After all he put himself through, I couldn’t believe Dad had went back to the booze” (Walls, 123) Her sadness leaps out of the page when her father broke his promise. After that, he constantly was drinking.
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This constant drunkenness caused him to start disappearing on the family. He would disappear with money the family needed and wouldn’t appear for days on end. A cold Winter had struck there small town of Welch and the kids had to fend for themselves; there father wasn’t there to help cut wood and they didn’t have the money to buy coal or wood. Jeanette then confronts her mother and insist that she has to leave Rex. “Dad seemed hell-bent on destroying himself, and I was afraid he was going to pull us all down with him. ‘We’ve got to get away.’” (Walls, 188) Jeanette’s faith in her father has dwindled to none as she starts to see that, no matter how much she loves him, the entire family would be better off without him. And yet still she holds the spot as his number one defender
This moment leads to a string of events that pushes Jeanette further from Rex. When she is left with two-hundred dollars to feed Brian and Maureen, Rex takes advantage of her. “Giving him the money pissed me off. I was mad at myself but even madder at Dad. He knew I had a soft spot for him the way no else in the family did, and he was taking advantage of it” (Walls, 209) Rex Walls took money from his own child to maintain his alcohol addiction. Jeanette becomes furious at him when he keeps asking for more money and refuses to take no as an answer. He then promises to pay her back the money.
His way of paying her back was using her. “‘Dad, that creep attacked me me when we were upstairs.’ ‘I’m sure he just pawed you some,’ Dad said as we pulled out of the parking lot. ‘I knew you could handle yourself’” (Walls, 213) Rex had offered up his daughter to give out sexual favors just to win some cash. He willingly let Jeanette go up into a room with a man, knowing very well that he would act inappropriately towards her. He knew what was going to happen and he let it for the money. He put booze and money over Jeanette’s well-being.
The last straw for Jeanette was the lying. She, with the assistance of her siblings, had been saving money for Lori to start her new life in New York. One day when Jeanette came home, she found her piggy pank smashed and all the money inside gone. Days later, Lori and Jeannette confront Rex about the money. “‘Someone sure as hell gutted old Oz, didn’t they?’ He turned to me. ‘Jeanette, do you know what happened?’ He was actually half grinning at me” (Walls, 229) He continuously denies smashing Oz, the piggy bank, but both Lori and Jeannette knew he did. Jeanette is furious at her father for messing with Lori’s money for New York. Jeanette needed Lori to escape to New York. “I knew that if Lori never got out of Welch, neither would I” (Walls, 229) Jeanette needed out of Welch and away from Rex.
In the end, Jeanette has little to no faith in Rex Walls. He broke all of the promises to Jeanette. However, she realizes that while he is lying, self-absorbed drunk, that he is her father. No matter what, she loved him through thick and thin. He might not have been the ideal father, but he was hers. “‘But you always loved your old man, didn’t you’ ‘I did, Dad,’ I said. ‘And you loved me.’ ‘Now, that’s the God’s honest truth’ Dad chuckled” (Walls, 279)
Furthermore, her trust and faith in her father evolved throughout the memoir, but her love for him was a constant. And after his death, she stops and appreciates her dad for what he is. “She describes her father, Rex, as a bipolar dreamer and alcoholic who showered his four children with love, but could not keep food on the table or a roof over their head” (People NOW) While he had his flaws, the love he felt for his children was real and she finally comes to terms with that in the end.
