Blog #5 – Personal Review

The Glass Castle, a memoir written by Jeannette Walls about overcoming and adapting to hardships, is really a very good book. The themes were strong and the story was riveting, leaving me reading the book for hours at a time longer than I set aside. Yet despite all the put off homework and lost hours of sleep, I found myself feeling that it was entirely worth it.

The beginning of the story was very Davy-Crockett-like, pioneering and making their own in a world they know nothing bout, yet are adapting to every day. I do not know why this appeals to me so much. Must be my manly side coming out… The Walls family deals with everything that comes their way completely without the aid of anyone, and (at least in the beginning) seemed almost invincible. As the story went on, character flaws became more apparent, which disillusioned me quite a bit. Before the switch I felt like the parents were nearly invincible, teaching their children valuable life lessons in creative ways that no one had tried before. However, it became clear that their parenting style was… ahem… less than ideal.

Rex Walls’ was a character that stood out to me throughout the story. He was intelligent. He was strong. He was charismatic. But he was also a crippling alcoholic. Growing up, my parents never drank, and I was never around drunken people, which means that I didn’t really know what alcoholism could do to a person – to a family. To me, what started off as a way to cope with life became his life. It enveloped him, becoming an obsession that wrote the story of his life for him, and giving those around him little chance of writing their own story as well. Rex thought that because he was the alcoholic, that he was the only one it affected, but obviously this was not the case. With every beer he drank he became less himself and more the manipulative son money whore that pulls his entire family down with him. For the majority of second half of the book, he doesn’t even have the courtesy to earn his own drinking money; he takes it from his family, going so far as to take (and, of course, lie about taking) Lori’s money that she has been saving up so that she could make a life for her in New York.

I really liked this book. It is a phenomenal story that is intriguing the entire time. But at the same time, I hated it. I hated how the parents were never there for their kids. I hated how much hardship they had to endure. I am a little perplexed by these conflicting emotion, of liking the book and hating it at the same time, however, I think it was because it produced such strong emotions from me. One thing I did not like, however, was the ending. I know that it is a memoir, so it couldn’t have really been changed, but at the same time I just didn’t agree with it. I don’t think that the children should’ve forgiven their father so easily after all that he has put them through. He cares about them, but so what?? He continues to take advantage of them, even as they’re all grown up. He never changed his ways, and therefore should not be forgiven, even in death, or if so, then he should have had to crawl back on his hands and knees begging for forgiveness.