The Glass Castle Summary

The Glass Castle Summary

The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls

Setting

The novel is set in Welch, West Virginia.

Main Characters

Jeannette Walls- she is the Daughter of Rex and Rose Mary Walls, and the second oldest of four siblings in the Walls family. Jeannette is practical, rational, and thoughtful.

Rex Walls- he is the Father to Jeannette and her siblings, and the son of Erma and Grandpa Walls. Rex is primarily referred to as Dad in the story.

Rose Mary Walls- she is the Mother to Jeannette and her siblings, and the daughter of Grandma Smith from Phoenix. Rose is primarily referred to as Mom in the novel.

Lori Walls- he is the eldest of the Walls children. Lori is usually absent from the adventures of Jeannette and Brian, but is cool and calm in the face of crisis,

Brian Walls- he is the Brother to Jeannette, Lori, and Maureen, and the third-oldest sibling after Jeannette. Brian is the closest to Jeannette for much of their childhood:

Maureen Walls- she is the youngest of the Walls siblings. Maureen’s character is not as well developed as that of the other siblings.

Miss Jeanette Bivens- she is Jeannette’s teacher at Welch High School and her namesake. Miss Bivens was also Dad’s teacher when he was in school and was the first person to really believe in him.

Grandma Smith- she is Mom’s mother who lived in Phoenix until her death.

Erma Walls- she is Dad’s mother and lives in Welch, West Virginia. Jeannette catches her sexually abusing Brian, leading the kids to question whether Dad suffered the same.

Plot Summary

The story begins with the family living in Arizona. The children are called Jeannette, Lori and Brian. Their mother is Rose Mary while their father is Rex Walls who struggles to hold a job due to his alcoholism and paranoia. He often makes grand plans that never come to pass like the construction of a massive solar-powered home he calls the Glass Castle. Mom has a teaching degree but prefers painting and writing all day even if it means living in squalor.

After living in a number of different places, the Walls family finally settles down for six months. They have a new baby sister named Maureen and are relatively happy until Dad loses his job. He spends most days drinking and Mom gets a teaching job to take care of them again. One day Billy Deel tries to rape Jeannette but she shoots him with her BB gun and drives him away. The police come by the next morning because they heard about it from someone else. Dad does not trust them so he moves the family yet again to Phoenix, where Mom’s mother recently died and left her some money.

Dad has problems finding employment, and his drinking gets worse. He drinks a lot on Christmas Eve and ruins the holiday for everyone. Mom takes the kids away from Dad to West Virginia, where they live with their grandparents until Jeannette witnesses Erma molesting Brian. The family then moves into a house that’s falling apart because of all its leaks and holes in the ceiling. After a visit from a social worker, Jeannette makes sure that her mother gets a job as a teacher. Her father begins to use their money for his addictions and he ends up trying to rape Jeannette when she was only 13 years old. She, Lori, and Brian decided to move away from Welch because they do not want the same thing happening to them as it did with their parents. They work hard and save money by doing odd jobs over the next year. On the eve of Lori’s move out of state, Dad steals all their savings but Lori moves anyway but finds an apartment in New York City on her own while Jeannette follows after her about six months later. Maureen joins them shortly after that while Brian stays behind in West Virginia working at one job or another until he could join them again in New York City where they live together happily ever after.

Without warning, Mom and Dad come to New York. They stay at Lori’s until she forces them out. After that, they live on the streets and in abandoned buildings with other indigents. Meanwhile, Jeannette learns that her mother owns property worth a million dollars but refuses to sell it. Maureen also becomes ill around this time and is sent to a psychiatric facility upstate after stabbing her mom during an argument. The sisters barely talk for a year until their father reveals he is dying of a heart attack two weeks later. In his final moments, he asks if they are okay before passing away. The family then has Thanksgiving dinner together at Jeannette’s house which she shares with John, her husband.

During dinner, Mom says life was never boring when they were all together as one happy family because of how much drama there was between everyone in the household over things like money or work issues or even just simple arguments about what TV show to watch on Sunday nights after dinner when Jeannette wanted something funny and Lori wanted something more serious so their dad would have to choose between watching "Seinfeld” or "The Sopranos.”

Themes

1. Home. Constantly on the run from bill collectors or minor run-ins with the law, Jeannette’s family finds shelter in houses and towns across the country, while Jeannette continues to seek the one place where she can feel most "at home.” In The Glass Castle, this search mirrors Jeannette’s process of growing up. Jeannette idealizes her grandmother’s house in Phoenix, for example, as well as her father’s plans for the Glass Castle.
2. Possessions and Ownership. Jeannette finally links her own sense of home to ownership, investing in a country home with her husband. The importance but also danger of ownership recurs often throughout the story. In The Glass Castle, physical objects often become symbolically significant, standing in for a character’s personality or dreams, from Jeannette’s rock collection that signifies her desire for an order to Brian’s army soldiers that foreshadow his eventual choice of career.