In The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls addresses the concept of family and shows that through self-discipline and perseverance, a child can overcome her difficult upbringing and create a successful future. One example of this can be found in Walls’ memoir narrating the story of her dysfunctional childhood. She illuminates the often unspoken-of world of child neglect and dysfunction and explains the severe inconsistency and daily troubles experienced by the Walls parents, both of whom face their own demons. Through small anecdotes about various childhood incidents-her parents, their poverty, their unorthodox beliefs-Walls makes clear how easy it would have been for all four of the Walls children to grow up with severe psychological problems, or possibly not even live to adulthood.
One particular event, which she uses to begin her story, graphically outlines an accident in which Walls experienced third-degree burns and a six-week hospital stay after trying to cook hot dogs as an unsupervised threeyear-old, because her mother expected her to provide food for herself. It is apparent from the beginning that the Walls parents should not have legal custody of their children, and this makes it all the more difficult to read her story knowing she lived with her parents until the age of seventeen. Walls tells the tale of her life not as a sob story, but as a great adventure and learning experience in the area of independence and self-sustainability. Through all of her experiences and harsh living conditions due to her extremely unstable parents, Walls is able to somehow create her own structure and expectations to live up to- expectations that were not placed on her by any outside force, only an intrinsic drive to succeed. In school, Walls was an outstanding student, making straight A’s, constantly volunteering in class, and running the school’s newspaper club. No one in her household pushed her to do any of this, it was her own innate sense of purpose and motivation that caused her immense success.
