The Glass Castle

Rex Walls, referred to in the book as Dad, is the patriarch of the Walls clan. He is tall, handsome, intelligent, and charming, yet he is also constantly undone by his increasingly debilitating alcoholism, which exacerbates his natural tendencies toward paranoia and stubbornness. Like Mom, he is intensely distrustful of authority. He prefers a self-sufficient lifestyle as far away as possible from the levers of civil power. These preferences are embodied by his plans to build a solar-powered Glass Castle that would allow him and the rest of the Wallses to live entirely off the grid.

At the beginning of the book, Dad’s alcoholism is severe but not entirely unmanageable. He tends to repeat a similar pattern each time he brings his family to a new town: He gets a job, things are stable for a period of months or weeks, he loses his job under circumstances that are generally vague to the narrator, and then he spirals deeper into alcoholism, disappearing for days at a time until the family moves on to another community. He is fixated on turbulence, order, and the boundary in-between, where he says “no rules apply” (61). Dad’s life seems to be in a state of near-constant chaos, and every time he begins to teeter across the boundary into order, he sabotages himself and, by extension, his family.

When Dad’s mother, Erma, molests Brian, Dad angrily refuses to believe it. Jeannette wonders if Dad, too, was a victim of sexual abuse at the hands of Erma. Jeannette concludes, “It would explain a lot” (148), and indeed, Dad displays a number of symptoms associated with childhood trauma, including a need to self-medicate and severe anger issues, particularly when he drinks. That said, even at his worst moments, he is capable of genuine affection, particularly toward Jeannette, though these moments are fewer and less frequent as the book progresses.

At the age of 59, after years of heavy drinking and smoking, Dad suffers a fatal heart attack while living in an abandoned New York City tenement with Mom. 

Rose Mary Walls, referred to by the narrator as Mom, is Rex’s wife and mother to Lori, Jeannette, Brian, and Maureen. She was raised in Texas by her wealthy mother, Grandma Smith. Little is revealed about Mom’s relationship with her own mother except that Mom deeply resents her and strives to raise Jeannette and the other Walls children with very few restrictions or rules as a rebuke to Grandma Smith. A lifelong artist with major ambitions, Mom also resents Grandma Smith for all but forcing her to obtain a teaching degree to fall back on should her art career fail. For that reason, Mom is deeply reluctant to pick up teaching jobs, even when the family is penniless. She married Dad only when he refused to take no for an answer, and primarily to escape her own mother. She later tells Jeannette, “I had no idea your father would be even worse” (27).

Throughout the book, Mom displays codependent behavior with respect to Dad’s alcoholism. She is tolerant of the squalor and chaos he brings into their lives if it means she can spend her days painting and writing without any additional responsibilities. Early on in the book, Mom romanticizes this chaos as a reflection of the family’s indomitable sense of adventure. Whenever Dad displays especially severe cruelty or neglect, she tends to dismiss this behavior, adding that she is “an excitement addict” (188). She rarely nurtures her children, justifying this treatment with a belief that struggle makes children stronger and more beautiful, a notion symbolized by the Joshua trees she loves to paint.

After moving to Welch, however, Mom’s sanguine attitude toward life begins to erode. As their circumstances worsen and Dad continues to spiral into ever-deeper levels of alcoholism, she suffers wild mood swings. When she finally submits to Jeannette’s demand that she obtain a teaching job, she spends a disproportionate amount of her paycheck on luxury items like crystal vases, insisting that “self-esteem is more vital than food” (186).

Of all the characters’ behavior, Mom’s may be the most incomprehensible to Jeannette. For example, it is revealed late in the book that Mom owns a tract of oil land in Texas worth $1 million but refuses to sell it, despite the fact that she could have lifted herself and her children out of starvation-level poverty.

The eldest Walls child, Lori is roughly three years older than Jeannette. She is the one child who seems to have a close relationship with Mom, though the exact details of this relationship are often a mystery to Jeannette, much as the details of Jeannette’s relationship with Dad are likely a mystery to Lori. Because of the age gap, Jeannette is much less close with Lori than she is with Brian during their childhood. This relationship changes once Jeannette reaches high school and proves to be instrumental in facilitating Lori’s move to New York. There, Lori follows in her mother’s footsteps to become an artist, albeit one who is gainfully employed as an illustrator of comic books. When Mom and Dad move to New York, Lori initially opens up her home to them, but before long she is forced to evict them, a decision Jeannette supports. At the end of the book, it is suggested that Lori and Mom are still fairly close, as they arrive together to Jeannette’s Thanksgiving dinner.

Brian is Jeannette’s younger brother and her primary ally as they struggle to survive the family’s harsh circumstances. Though less intellectual than Jeannette or Lori, Brian is capable and loyal, particularly to Jeannette. Brian and Jeannette constantly look out for one another, both in childhood and in New York as young adults. Unlike Jeannette, Brian becomes disillusioned with Dad fairly early on after an incident in which Dad makes him wait outside the bedroom door on his birthday while he has sex with a woman from the Green Lantern. In adulthood, Brian becomes a police officer and has a daughter with his wife, whom he later divorces.