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1-Page Summary of The Glass Castle

Overview

The Glass Castle is the memoir of Jeannette Walls and her family. They constantly move around, have little money, and don’t have enough food. However, they are humorous about their circumstances.

The book begins with the family living in various mining towns on the West Coast. The first half of the story is characterized by frequent moves from town to town. As Jeannette grows up, she’s enchanted by nature and her father’s dreams for her. She collects rocks and explores everything around her with her brother Brian. Life in the desert ends when Rex’s alcoholism worsens and they run out of money, so they move back to his hometown in Welch, West Virginia, where he grew up as a child.

The Walls family’s life in Welch, West Virginia is very different than their previous life. They have to adjust to the cold and snow, which they weren’t used to at all. The children are eager to move back to California because of how much they hate living there. But eventually things get so bad that they realize if they want a better future for themselves, then they need to leave their parents behind and move out on their own.

The siblings eventually move to New York, where they are able to live independently. At first, things go well until Rex and Rose Mary show up in a van. The couple ends up poor and homeless once again, but the children cannot take on the burden of hosting their parents anymore. Consequently, Rex dies after having a heart attack while squatting in an abandoned apartment.

The memoir ends with Jeannette feeling liberated from her past. She can now communicate openly and honestly about herself.

Part 1: A Woman on the Street

On a night in March, Jeannette Walls is riding in a taxi when she sees her mother digging through the trash. She has not seen her mother for months and she is struck by how much the woman who raised her looks like any other homeless person on the street. People are walking past without noticing that it’s even a person they’re seeing. From inside the cab, Walls can see that this is still her mother; she recognizes those mannerisms from childhood stories and Shakespeare readings.

However, she stops herself from thinking about her mother because it would raise suspicions. She is only a few blocks away from the party and doesn’t want to risk being seen by anyone who knows her or has been invited to the party. She tells the taxi driver to take her home on Park Avenue so that no one will see her talking with someone who appears homeless. The driver turns around but passes by Jeannette’s mother without saying anything.

When Walls returns home, she feels ashamed of her behavior and guilty for having things that her parents do not. However, she also remembers past offers to help them but they always denied it or asked for excessive items like a gym membership. Nonetheless, Walls is so embarrassed by the incident that she decides to invite her mother out to lunch at a Chinese restaurant. She leaves a message with another woman who knows her mother and waits until the other woman tells her mother about it before scheduling anything.

As predicted, Jeannette’s mother denies that she needs help and then asks for treatment. Jeannette insists that her mother improve the quality of her life, but she refuses to do so and accuses Jeannette of being in need of help because “her values are all confused”. She says that instead of hiding her past and feeling embarrassed about it, Jeannette should tell the truth.

To Analyze

The beginning of the memoir reveals Rose Mary’s insecurities about her past. She had escaped the circumstances that characterized her childhood and was now living a successful life, but she still feared that those painful memories would be exposed by someone at any time.