Essay on 'The Glass Castle': Rex Walls Character Analysis

I think that many Americans don’t trust the government. Maybe it's part of that breaking off from the British. I think for most people this is a cultural thing, but for Rex Walls, a character in the memoir, The Glass Castle, by Jeanette Walls it is a reaction to his life experiences. Rex is an interesting person who is sometimes a loving father and sometimes a neglectful alcoholic. I think that Rex Walls uses chaos to try to build a sense of control because of his upbringing.

Rex Walls met his wife and he basically annoyed her until she married him probably to get away from her mother. The life they start is one where they are constantly moving from town to town avoiding bill collectors and law enforcement. Rex’s famous Rex Walls-style exit is where he leaves without paying for something. There is always a big chase out of whatever said building and then they leave. Rex tells his children stories about what a great guy he is and tries to build up this positive image in their minds. “Dad always fought harder, flew faster, and gambled smarter than everyone else in his stories. Along the way, he rescued women and children and even men who weren’t as strong and clever.”(Walls, 24). He wants to make sure that in his children’s minds, he is the best Dad ever, even though their life is one where they are constantly on the run. “We were always doing the skedaddle, usually in the middle of the night.” (Walls, 19). Loyalty is one of the most important things to this family, seeing is all they have is each other. When Rose Mary’s mother tells her to leave Rex she says that due to her Catholic values, she can’t leave him. “Mom would shrug and say there was nothing she could do about it, he was her husband.”(Walls, 20). Rex spends much of his money on alcohol. When Rose Mary gets a job as a teacher at a school in a town called Battle Mountain, Rex continues to use his wife’s paycheck on alcohol never keeping a job for a long time. Rex feels he has to distribute the money as the patriarch of the family, all the while his children don’t have enough to eat. When the family moves to a family house in Phoenix Rex gets a job as an electrician. All the while he still spends money on liquor. After Rosemary and the kids spend a long time preparing a Christmas together, Rex gets drunk and yells at the priest and gets them kicked out of the church. Rex doesn’t like institutions in general and he had argued with the priest before. It seems like Rex enjoys taking on the church and maybe to him challenging the church makes him feel better about himself because of the chaos he creates he can control. When Rex’s alcoholism has gotten bad, Rosemary thinks that the only thing that might control him is his parents back in Welch. Rex doesn’t want to go back to Welch at all, and feeling like he is the leader of his family Rex just won’t go. It takes the whole family getting in the car and begging for him to give in. “‘Dad please come, we need you!’, I hollered...Dad stood there looking at us for a minute. Then he flicked the cigarette he was smoking into the yard, closed the front door, loped over to the car, and told Mom to move aside-he was driving.”(Walls 125). When they go home he lights the Christmas tree on fire. Rex likes the chaos he controls because he thinks that his family is better than conforming to normal Christmas traditions. All throughout this section he demonstrates his anti-institution beliefs and controls over his family.

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From what we learn about Rex in Welch I think is the most important to understanding his character. His Mother Erma is racist and very strict. She doesn’t even allow the children to laugh or run around. When Rex and Rose Mary drive to Phoenix to get the stuff they left behind, Erma sexually assaults Brian. Lori and Erma get in a fight and when Rex comes home he doesn’t want to hear about it. “I thought Dad would come around to our side once he’d heard what had happened, and I tried to explain. ‘I don’t care what happened!’ he yelled. ‘But we were just protecting ourselves,’ I said. ‘Brian’s a man he can take it,’ he said.” (Walls,148) Jeanette wonders whether Erma ever abused Rex. It suddenly makes sense why Rex never talks about his upbringing and doesn’t want to hear about Brian.”It was gross and creepy to think about, but it would explain a lot. Why Dad left home as soon as he could. Why he drank so much and why he got so angry? Why he at first refused to come to West Virginia with us and only at the last possible moment overcame his reluctance and jumped into the car? Why he was shaking his head so hard, almost like he wanted to put his hands over his ears when I tried to explain what Erma had been doing to Brian” (Walls, 148). Rex was abused but because he wants to remain loyal to his mother he doesn’t want to acknowledge that she did anything wrong. I think that another reason is that he has a hard time as a parent even thinking that his son went through abuse like he did by his own mother. He is still loyal to his mother after she is dead. At Erma’s funeral, Lori says “Ding dong the witch is dead”, and Rex yells at her saying that she is still his mother and they should respect her. Again while the family is in poverty Rex feels like he should be the distributor of the money. When Rose Mary goes to Charleston to renew her teaching license she leaves Jeanette with money to buy groceries. And Rex takes some of the money from her to go to the bar.

Lori has had enough of her family and Welch. She hears about New York City in school and Lori knows that's where she wants to go. Three years after All the kids have moved to New York Rosemary tells them that she and Rex have moved there too. Their car broke down on the highway and caused many people to be late for work. Even if it wasn’t intentional it seems like a very fitting entrance for her parents into New York City. In New York Rex gets tuberculosis and gets hospitalized. When he is in the hospital he reads a science paper that says that turbulence was really ordered and that might imply the existence of god. “If every action in the universe that we thought was random actually conformed to a rational pattern, Dad said, that implied the existence of a divine creator, and he was rethinking his atheistic creed”(Walls, 261). I don’t really know what to think about this part of the book. Maybe Rex coming so close to death has made Rex more spiritual or maybe Rex is trying to find a way to explain all the chaos in his life or the chaos he created.

I think why Rex does all the things he does, creating chaos and controlling people is to make himself feel in control or better about himself. I think from what we learn about Welch a town where people get trapped and stuck he would want to break out. I think that if he was abused as a child he would have felt like he wasn’t in control of himself and his body and that’s why he uses so many tactics to control people, to feel in control. It doesn’t excuse his behavior but you can see why he is the way he is. The book ends with the family getting together for Thanksgiving dinner. The last line is about the turbulence that Rex talked about.” A wind picked up rattling the windows, and the candle flames suddenly shifted, dancing along the border between turbulence and order”(Walls, 288). I think this is just like Jeanette’s life and the character of Rex. Always between chaos and can change very suddenly like a candle in the wind.