The Glass Castle symbolizes the false hopes and dreams that Rex had for himself and his family, always pushing them out of reach. Over the course of Jeanette’s life, her father had told her about how he was going to build the Glass Castle and they were going to live in it and everyone would be happily ever after. Sadly, Rex’s promise to her was just as flimsy and breakable as the Glass Castle’s foundation.

Ever since she was a kid, she’d been looking for someone to take care of her. In Welch, the Pentecostal neighbors provided for her, and now in New York, with her long blond hair and wide blue eyes, she found various men who were willing to help out.

--All of the time Maureen had spent at her neighbors’ houses dependent on them to provide for her foreshadowed what she would become when she was an adult. Because Maureen never learned how to be independent as a child, it became evident that she would not know how to develop that trait in her adult life. In order to sustain her lifestyle, she then had to rely on the many men she dated, something foreshadowed from her childhood.

New York city posed as the perfect place for Lori and Jeanette (and later on Brian and Maureen) to escape to from Welch and their parents for a number of different reasons. The bustling and diverse city provided them with a fresh start and a new found hope to do great things, and it was full of fast paced people, tall skyscrapers, and culture, all things that attracted Lori and Jeanette to the city initially. Also, NYC was very lively and filled with purpose, attributes that completely evaded Welch. They did not want to stay in Welch and become nobody’s (or their parents), so moving to New York served as a solution to that fear.

After Jeannette burned herself from cooking hot dogs, she was taken to the hospital which immediately juxtaposed her surroundings. At home, Jeannette lived in a crowded and dirty trailer, unsafe and unsupervised. The very freedom that Rosemary and Rex had given to their kids instantly translated over into Jeannette injury from cooking at the age of three. After being rushed to the hospital, Jeannette’s surroundings did a complete 180 degree turn. She was now in a safe building full of people who wanted to make her safe and feel better. The hospital and Jeannette’s trailer were on opposite sides of the spectrum and truly highlighted the flaws in her upbringing.

She kept looking over her shoulder, her eyes wide like a hunted animal’s.

--

Jeanette Walls (page 43)

After Rex and Rosemary had gotten into one of their heated battles, Rosemary fled the car in a fit of rage, clearly insulted. Jeannette compared her mother’s eyes to that of a hunted animal’s to represent how vulnerable Rosemary was in that instance, as if Rex was the hunter and the Green Caboose’s headlights were the gun. This simile also highlighted Rosemary and her trivial and childish antics (like jumping out of a car and staring down her family, bewildered).

One night in Welch, Rosemary was caught munching down on a chocolate bar in front of her own starving children.This scene is very ironic (and also very sad) because the majority of at least sufficient and good-hearted mothers would put their children’s needs before their own. Yet of course Rosemary had to be different and think out of the box because she did the exact opposite: she put her needs before her children. The fact that Rosemary would do something like this to her own kids is not only very ironic, but also very upsetting because these kids are stuck with such a selfish mother who cannot provide for them.

At times I felt like I was failing Maureen, like I wasn’t keeping my promise that I’d protect her—the promise I’d made to her when I held her on the way home from the hospital after she’d been norn. I couldn’t get her what she needed most—hot baths, a warm bed, steaming bowls of Cream of Wheat before school in the morning—but I tried to do the little things.

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Jeannette Walls (Page 206)

This passage characterizes Jeannette as a responsible and trust worthy person who has too much responsibility put on her shoulders even though she is still a kid. The fact that Jeannette feels the need to take on the roll of the mother for Maureen even though her own mother should be doing that not only shows Jeannette’s level-headedness and maturity, but also the lack of all of those attributes in Rosemary. Because of the circumstances Jeanette was raised under, that forced her to grow up too quickly, to develop tough skin, and to be the responsible one in her family. These traits naturally created the mother-daugter relationship between Jeannette and Maureen, though Maureen is her sister.

After fleeing Las Vegas, the Wall’s next stop was San Francisco. Once there, Jeannette managed to get her fingers on a set of matches, lighting toilet paper on fire and flushing it down the toilet. Because of this, a couple of days later the hotel room they were staying at caught on fire, destroying the hotel. In the video above, fire is pure destruction and chaos, just like the fire Jeanette started. The fire caused in the hotel room represents the disorder and chaos that is currently consuming the Wall’s family. They are directionless, naive, and confused, which is doing nothing but dragging them down. Jeannette lighting the matches and starting the fire epitomizesthe craziness of the Wall’s family in a tangible form.

You don’t have to worry anymore, baby,” Dad said. “You’re safe now

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Rex Walls, Jeannette’s father. (p.14)

A couple of days after Jeannette was recovering in the hospital, the result of burning herself from cooking hot dogs, her father said the words above, right before stealing her back to their home without the hospital’s consent. The dramatic irony in this scene is almost obnoxious because Rex, her supposedly loving and protecting father, was taking her away from one of the safest places in the world, a hospital built to keep Jeannette’s being alive and well, and back to the unsafe and irresponsible household that hosted the event that brought her to the hospital in the first place.

When the Walls lived in Phoenix, Rosemary made sure to go to church every Sunday to excercise her Catholicism. Unlike Rosemary, Rex completely despised religion, constantly talking back to the priest in church, yelling scientific contradictions, and causing a scene. Rex was very similar to the Atheist in the video above who was not afraid to question Christianity. At one point in the novel, Rosemary said, “Dont worry, God understands, He knows that your father is a cross we must bear.” This metaphor was used to have Rex symmbolize the cross that Jesus had to carry on his back as he walked towards his death. Rosemary saw Rex as a weight on her shoulders, truly revealing the flaws in their marriage.