The Glass Castle is a wrenching memoir of Jeannette's
childhood. Jeannette's father Rex is a bright man and teaches an abundance
of knowledge to his kids, and constantly talks about the importance of
learning. Even with this, Rex is probably the worst father I have ever read
about. He is a raging alcoholic and would use
the messily earnings that he procured from various odd jobs for
his alcoholism instead of putting food on the table for his four
children. The Walls family has to move from place to place trying to
find some type of accommodations that they can afford to live in.
Rose Mary is a hopeless artist that loves the adventure of the life that she
has with Rex. She tries to give this over to her children, but as they grow
older they understand more and more how their parents are not providing for
them. Their High School experience seems to be the last straw,
when Jeannette is fondled by multiple men including her uncle, and is
forced to eat leftover food out of the trash to become satiated. When Jeannette's
older sister Lori decides to move herself to NY, and Jeannette decides to
follow her a year later, the reader is pulling for them, hoping that they can
procure a future in which they can provide for themselves. And as we are reading
her book, we know that they will.
Rex and Rose are
fascinating. They lead awfully hard lives, but don’t want help when it is
possible. They don’t want to accept things like welfare and will also not take
help from their children. Rose is always able to look at the best of the
situation when the situation really is dire. Everything is an adventure, and
not a problem. I think this shows how the human spirit can really overtake the
situation it is in. While this is positive in many aspects, it has negative
consequences as well. Rose sees no reason to get out of the situation that she
is in because there is no reason to. While living homeless on the streets of
NY, she even remarks that if the government didn’t want them to live on the
streets, then it wouldn’t be so easy. This type of thinking concerns me. Of
course we want to help people that need help, and G-d forbid it for me to be
chastising those that argue to help people that are in need. At the same time,
to what extent are some of the social reforms merely helping those that would
have to get their lives together if they did not have the welfare. My mother is
a substance abuse counselor for hardcore heroin addicts, and she observes her patients
being content with their lives, which they live purely off welfare. They never
bother finding better jobs because they are happy the way things are. I hope
that soon someone will be able to figure out how to resolve this issue.
Next to one of
the abandoned houses that the Walls live in is a tree called the Joshua tree
that due to wind, has a distinct curve. Jeanette “told Mom that I would protect
it from the wind and water it every day so that it could grow nice and tall and
straight.” Her mother responds “Mom frowned at me. ‘You’d be destroying what
makes it special,” she said. ‘it’s the Joshua tree’s struggle that gives it its
beauty.” Parents always want the best for their kids and want to separate them
from harm. At the same time it is all
that Jeanette went through that made her so successful. Hard work and some pain
are what makes people great, but certainly there is a limit to what we would be
willing to take.
Seeing as the
Walls children rarely are in a place long enough to go to the schools, yet they
come out knowledgeable and have an exceptional relationship with learning,
reading and creativity. Even though they didn’t get it at school, their parents
do show them the importance of these fields. Rex is always teaching his kids
facts, reads with them and teaches them skills. Rose is acts as a personal
always wanting to create more and values high level thought. The Glass Castle proves something that I
always knew to be true. While the garnering of knowledge can be left to school,
it is incumbent on the parents to cultivate a relationship with learning for
their children. I find this becoming an ever more important issue in the
Orthodox community. We are expecting school to display to children how to love
Torah and how to be a religious Jew. What I find that if children learn with
their parents, they are far more likely to have a positive relationship with
learning then if they go to a school that teaches more Torah. Seeing our
parents day in and day out performing their religious duties cannot be
replicated in any other fashion.
The Glass Castle was a thought provoking
and exciting memoir. It is definitely worth a read.
