IRB The Glass Castle

After reading half of The Glass Castle, I have definitely gained some new insight about Jeannette Walls' memoir. Walls first introduces her story as her adult self, in her most recent flashback. She is sitting in a taxi when she spies her homeless mother picking through trash in a dumpster. This prompts Jeannette to crouch down in the taxi so that her mother won't see her. Later, she faces conflictions of worry and guilt. She is embarrassed by her own mother's homelessness yet worried about her well-being. The introduction of this chapter not only shows the readers the authors successful life in the present, it also introduces a theme of Jeanette's conflictions about her family that appear throughout the memoir. The next chapter transitions into Jeanette's earliest flashback. At the age of three, Jeanette is cooking her own hotdogs when she gets burned and sent to the hospital. This is the first indication of her unusual life at home. Later, Rex, Jeanette's alcoholic father takes her from the hospital to escape from paying the bills. Most of her childhood consists of her family moving from temporary home to home because neither of her parents are able to hold a stable job.  Throughout the story, the reader develops a love-hate relationship with Rex. Rex is intelligent and charismatic but also extremely irresponsible at the same time. He lies, steals, and occasionally abandons his family, but in each chapter, Walls allows allows the readers a glimpse of Rex's soft, fatherly side, which allows him to redeem himself. Walls primarily appeals to pathos throughout the story. The way she describes herself as a child makes readers feel empathetic for her naivety, innocence and resilience throughout her poverty-stricken childhood. The fact that she hangs onto this for the rest of the story, inspires readers to keep on reading.