Jeannette Walls' Guilt in The Glass Castle

 Jeannette Walls' Guilt in The Glass Castle

    In Jeannette Walls’ The Glass Castle she shares her suffering over the guilt of her past life. Guilt was what Jeannette felt as she couldn’t help her parents and guilt is what she felt in lying about her life, about who she really was. She felt guilty for her parents’ living digging through the garbage while she was surrounded by many powerful people and high society. She hated who she was, what she possessed, and the fact that her mother and father were homeless. It wasn’t until she published The Glass Castle that Jeannette was able to free from her guilt and truly said who she really was.

    The first time we saw Jeannette’s guilt was when she slid down in the seat anxiously as the thought of her mother would notice her in the taxi. With the action, she abhorred herself and she wrote “After ducking down in the taxi so Mom wouldn’t see me, I hated myself – hated my antiques, my clothes, and my apartment.” She felt guilty that she lied to everyone she knew, she couldn’t help her parents and couldn’t explain to anybody about her life.

    Not very long after she suffered from the second guilt by the sight of her mother digging through the garbage, she decided to ask the driver to take her home instead of the party. The thought of her being a liar creeps into her mind as the feeling of guilt and anxiety doesn’t ease out of her mind. When the author walked in, looking around the room decorated with ornate vases and leather armchair where she like to sink into, her own apartment made her feel uneasy with the thought “I’d tried to make a home for myself here, tried to turn the apartment into sort of place where the person I wanted to be would live.” Although Jeannette left her home and family to New York for several years, she still doesn’t feel comfortable living in her place and who she was now.

    Keeping her secret away from everyone causes a guilty to devour her mind. Jeannette spoke in the interview about her feeling of guilt she faced from this secret, and she said, “I felt I couldn’t possibly explain to anybody why my parents were living like that and moreover, what kind of monster would let her parents live on the street while she was living on Park Avenue?” She couldn’t resist the guilt for her well-being and luxury apartment while her parents owned nothing and had to pick things from the garbage.

    From what the author had written in the memoir, Jeannette’s guilt stems into 2 things which are from the inability to help her parents a better life and from lying to others about who she was. However, in the end she was able to free herself from the guilt she had felt for a long time when she decided to understand, accept and tell the truth about who she really is.