The Glass Castle itself serves as a significant symbol in the memoir and though it is not mentioned very often, it reveals a great deal about Rex’s character. The Glass Castle is an architectural dream of Rex’s that he spends his life designing and trying to build. Realizing that he first needs to fund the project, Rex uproots his family a countless number of times in search of gold in order to become rich enough to build the castle. This continuous movement causes further chaos in the lives of the Walls children and only brings Rex further away from accomplishing his goal.
The Glass Castle symbolizes a shattered dream in that it is an example of happiness and perfection, but can never be built because the lives of the Walls are far too chaotic and unconventional to allow for the completion of such a major undertaking. It seems as though throughout the whole novel Rex is making promises that he can not keep, getting jobs that he can not hold, and establishing relationships with his children that he can not sustain. The Glass Castle serves as the ultimate symbol of this idea of a stable and happy family that can never be achieved or carried out. It also represents the disappointment, suffering, and neglect that the Walls children experience for a majority of their life. Ironically, the Glass Castle was supposed to be the most amazing home the Walls would ever see, but instead of building and living in the castle, the family traveled constantly and never even established a permanent home of any kind. The Glass Castle was nothing but another broken promise made by Rex regardless of his detailed, well thought out, and supposedly genius plans.
I thought about writing about this one too! Obviously, it's very important, being the title of the book, and it's interesting to see how many ways it is like the idea of a "perfect family." Although pristine, clearly defined, and without anything to hide, it would also be delicate and easily breakable, showing how although a beautiful and wonderful ideal dream, it would also be near to impossible to maintain that status due to how anything could break the image or the "perfect family" itself. I really like how you said it was a broken promise, since a glass castle would be very breakable in reality. :)
ReplyDeleteAnother thought branching off of that idea is that (at least according to my inference) Rex never even planned on building the glass castle. Many people give up on family before they really begin, which can obviously be very dangerous. In addition, the glass castle, like the perfect family, only serves as a distraction of the problems that lie within. There are always problems there, and the pursuit of perfection only leads to another problem that blinds the family of their many other problems.
ReplyDeleteI just wanted to let you guys know that..
ReplyDeleteI loved both of these comments !
You guys are good at analyzing symbols and eloquently describing their deeper meanings.
Going off on what Sienna wrote, the epigraph in the beginning of the book parallels to the glass castle. What is so interesting is that from my interpetation of the epigraph, Walls is trying to parallel the "heaven that never was; Nor will be ever is always true" to the idea that Rex created the illusion of the "glass castle" as a paradise that was only there for show, but it will never actually be something tangible.
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