The Glass Castle
Jeannette Walls (2005)
“A woman watches her parents dumpster-dive from a Manhattan taxi and realizes she has spent her whole life ashamed of the people who made her.”
EraContemporary Memoir
Pages288
Difficulty★☆☆☆☆ Accessible
AP Appearances4
familypovertyresilienceeducationforgivenessself-inventiondysfunctionlovemiddle-schoolHigh SchoolAP English
Characters in The Glass Castle
by Jeannette Walls · 2005 · 7 characters analyzed
Cast: Jeannette Walls, Rex Walls, Rose Mary Walls, Lori Walls, Brian Walls, Maureen Walls, Erma Walls.
Character Analysis
The memoir's central achievement is the gap between Jeannette as child and Jeannette as narrator — both versions are present in every scene, and neither explains the other away. Child Jeannette is pragmatic, resilient, and strikingly free of self-pity. Adult Jeannette is controlled, ashamed, and in the process of dismantling that shame. The book is the story of how those two people became one.