The Glass Castle Bad Parenting

In the Memoir, The Glass Castle, the author Jeannette calls the book The Glass Castle even though it's never built. This is because the glass castle is symbolic. The glass castle was a plan that was never built, just like how throughout Jeanette’s life her father always had a plan that never came together. This includes when her father would move and start new jobs that never became anything. Castles represent wealth, but the glass suggests that this dream can break, like his promises. The glass castle symbolizes her father’s promise for a better life and how it never materializes.

When her father moves to Arizona, he promises to find gold, which is one of his many failed promises for a better life, but ends up just drinking the time away. The dad claims “Once I get the money for a prospector, then we’ll become rich and find gold.” As it turns out he never finds the “Gold” or saves money to buy a prospector. He just spends his family's money on beer and cigarettes. Once the Walls move to Phoenix Jeanette's father holds a job for about 6 months or more but eventually gets fired. During that 6th month stretch the walls are never hungry, they always have water, gas, and power, the father buys his kids gifts and becomes sober. But once he loses that job he claims it was because “the corrupt mining workers union” was the reason. He loses his sobriety, uses money from his wife and kids claiming that it was to “stop corruption in the mines” when he's really using it on cigs and beer and going out late at night. Instead of helping his family and getting a job to support them he takes there money and there belongings to get things for himself like alcohol and drugs. Another false promise he makes to his kids perfectly representing the glass castle.

To get money, he lets a man sexually assault his daughter so he can keep drinking. The father asks jeanette for 20$ she reluctantly gives it to him. He “promises” to pay her back. One day he comes home early in a car jeanette has never seen before. Jeanette asks “where are we going”, the father says “you’ll see.” He takes her to a bar where an older man gives her father 80 dollars and tells Jeanette to come upstairs. She looks at her dad and he just motions her to go upstairs. She still doesn't understand until the man begins to take of her clothes and attempt to go on top of Jeanette. Jeanette eventually gets out and tells her dad what happened and he doesn't even care about it. .This just shows how bad of a father he is, sacrificing his underaged daughter for money is horrible. About now is when Jeanette starts to realize how bad a of a person her father is. She starts to get how her dad is dragging her family down and how she needs to leave and not live with him. The glass castle fades for her as she loses faith in her father.

To conclude Jeanette's father was an awful person who cared about his family while also dragging his family into the ground. He was a drunk physco who took more from his family then he gave. He dragged his family through places with no power, no water, no gas, no money, and homelessness. While his kids were getting jobs and getting married he was forcing his wife to be homeless with him. The Glass Castle was an illusion of her father actually doing things to help her family instead of driving it into the ground.

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