The Glass Castle Themes

The Walls family in The Glass Castle is more like a traveling circus than the Family Circus. We're talking dysfunctional. With Mom and Dad as the ringleaders, the family bums around the country…a...

The Walls family lives a nomadic lifestyle. Their home, home on the range isn't where the deer and the antelope play; it's in cheap shacks across the southern and southwestern United States, where...

There are only so many times you can fall through your own living room floor or get electrocuted by your own kitchen appliances before you throw in the towel, right?Not if you're Jeannette Walls. W...

Our theme for The Glass Castle is actually lack of wealth, if we want to get specific. Like the kids in Dickens novels, the Walls tots come from the raggediest rags before they achieve their modest...

There's no such thing as "normal," but society often expects certain things from its citizens—things like holding down a job, responsibly raising children, and giving back in some way.In The Glas...

The Glass Castle is like Huck Finn or To Kill a Mockingbird for the Baby Boomer generation. Even though The Glass Castle is non-fiction instead of a novel, it tells a story similar to those told in...

It's easy to judge a by its cover: we all do it. But do we ever stop to think that our first impressions might be way off? That homeless woman digging through the trash could be someone's mother; s...

When Jeannette Walls listens to John Mellencamp's song "Small Town," she probably has heart palpitations. That song is a nostalgic look at small-town life, but John's small towns are not Jeannette'...