The Castle Reading 2

"I would have been happy staying in that hospital forever" (Walls 12)

The first chapter is about the main character Jeanette Walls, she is married and living in New York City. While in a taxi on the way to a party she saw her mother dressed in rags digging in the trash. She hasn’t seen her mother in months; embarrassed by this scene she tells the taxi to take her back to her home. Jeanette, knowing that she has money has tried to help her parents out finically many times. Although, they would always refuse the help from their daughter, they would tell her that this is the way they wanted to live there life and that she needed to accept it. After seeing her mother like that Jeanette decides to contact her, and meet up with her. While out to eat at her mother’s favorite Chinese restaurant, she brings up the subject of helping her and her father out. Her mother still refuses; Jeanette says how she saw her digging through trash the other day. Her mother’s response is that people in this country are too careless, so that is her way of recycling. 

I think Jeanette is facing many difficulties in her life that she experienced so far. While being three years old she was burned while cooking hotdogs and spent six weeks in the hospital. For her, she loved being in the hopital. Her parents weren’t responsible adults. Being at the age of four her family has already moved around to eleven different places. Her father was a drunk, the one day he was driving them with a beer one hand and a cigarette in the other. While driving recklessly and taking a turn to sharp, the door flew open and Jeanette rolled out of the car. Her parents kept driving; she thought they didn’t realize that she was missing. They eventually came back for her.

I really do not think Jeanette knows of any ways to cope with these situations that she has been placed in. In the book, it sometimes seems as though whenever something bad happens she somehow turns it around into something funny or not so serious. I think she is still too young to really know what is going on and how bad the situations that she is in are. I think this book is excellent, although if I was in her shoes I would not really know what to do. I would probably react the same way she is, being so young and all.