The Glass Castle

Credibility in the Glass Castle:

This is my second time reading this story and again I was hooked from the start. To enjoy this story, I think the reader needs to suspend absolute belief in the narrator that all things occurred exactly as written in this text. (After all, this is memoir or creative nonfiction for a reason. Which means that events are created as the writer remembers or constructs according to what is best for the story.) The main reason why I believe Jeanette Walls began her story with the fire at the age of three is to introduce the world to us that she lives in. Once we get the set up of this world- the irresponsible parents, the near abandonment of the children and their ongoing struggle to even have a decent meal, then we as readers know that anything is possible in this story.

Walls is very skilled here at making readers believes what seems to be impossible. Some of the more shocking events to me include the gunfight between children at the house in the desert town, the bucket used as a bathroom and kept in the kitchen when they lived in Virginia, and Jeanette’s brother Brian building his own bedroom on the porch when the ceiling caved in after bad weather. These are events that would have felt unbelievable or exaggerated if the author hadn’t created the world from the first page of her boiling hot dogs and catching fire at three.

This also speaks to the talent of the writer. She creates these worlds so thoroughly and engrosses us in the story so that we’re too busy being in the world to question it. I think it also helps that there are more realistic moments so we don’t feel the story is a fantasy all the way through. “I loved the desert too...we’d catch snakes and scorpions and horny toads...there’d be a cool spell come sundown, when the mosquitos would fly in so thick the air would grow dark with them...there were fierce sandstorms...when you saw batches of dust devils swirling and dancing their way across the desert.” (Walls, 21) She constructs the story by creating scenes that engage all of our senses, establishes who the characters are and drops us into this world, and at the point I’m pretty much ready to believe whatever the narrator tells me.

The other thing Walls does skillfully is have other characters confirm that these children are more mature and intelligent than is expected. This also contributes to us being able to trust the narrator of the story, although she’s a child for most of the book. One example is when Jeanette’s mother signs her up for third grade in Phoenix. Once she reads aloud for the teacher, she is moved into the gifted group at school, as are Brian and Lori. Later on, when the mother becomes a teacher and the kids grade her students papers and plan her lessons, we already know that they’re gifted children and are ready to believe that they’re intelligent enough to essentially help their mother keep her job.

At the end of the book, when teenage Lori moves to New York, followed by Jeanette in her senior year of high school and then 12 year old Maureen, readers already know this is an unusual family, and to expect and believe that these children would move to a huge city alone and create a home for themselves. In fact, by this time, instead of worrying about the narrator’s credibility, I’m actively rooting for her and her siblings. The way Walls handles this piece, and slowly draws the reader in to believe and even empathize with these characters, is a testament to her skill in weaving a great story.

Rashida