The book The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls tells the story of Jeannette and her family. Jeannette certainly did not have the easiest life growing up, but she may have had one of the most interesting. I enjoyed the book because the experiences that Jeanette and her family went through make for a very exciting read. These experiences are out of the ordinary and don't represent how a typical American family would live. Jeannette was born into a rather peculiar family. She had a mother and father, and two older siblings, but the way that the family lived made them peculiar. Her parents were not the most cautious of her well being. They believed that their kids should be able to take care of themselves, and that too much parental intervention would lead kids into becoming too dependent. This said, one can imagine how the kids lived. Jeanette and her siblings were constantly in dangerous situations since supervision was limited. Walls even writes that her first memory is being on fire (9). She was making hot dogs over a stove and caught herself on fire. Her mother thought that it was a good idea to let her three year old daughter cook hotdogs over an open fire. She was alright other than a few burns and was hospitalized. Six weeks into her hospitalization her father comes to "check out, Rex Walls-style". He picks her up out of her bed and runs out of the hospital (14). Anecdotes like these are frequent in The Glass Castle. They are not all as tragic as this, but they are all very interesting. During the book the reader realizes that Jeannette and her siblings must leave their parents in order for their lives to get any better. Their parents are holding them down with their ridiculous lifestyle. Jeannette and her siblings start to comprehend this during their lives and all the hardships and rigorous lifestyle build up to them leaving West Virginia and their parents to live out on their own. At the end of the story it seems like Jeannette is living a pretty good life. She lives with her second husband, John, in an old country farmhouse (285). Walls ends the story with the image of almost her whole family happily having thanksgiving dinner. The main characters of the story consist of everyone in the Walls family. Jeannette Walls is the author and protagonist of the book. She is portrayed as a strong person even as a young child. When her 'friend' Billy Deel came and shot up her house with his BB gun Jeannette was not afraid to take her father's pistol and shoot at him to scare him off (88). When she gets beaten up by a few of the other girls in her school she shakes it off and nonchalantly tells her dad that it was "just a little dustup" (88). Jeanette's older sister Lori is not as tough as Jeannette, but was not afraid of danger. She was the one that got her father's pistol when Billy Deel came and started shooting them. She even fired a shot at him (88). Lori did not like to go adventuring, something that Jeannette loved to do with her older brother Brian. Brian was a tough outdoorsy type who ended up becoming a detective. Him and Jeannette would always go outside and enjoy nature. Jeanette also had a younger sister, Maureen. Living in the Walls family would be hard for anyone, but Maureen took it the hardest. Early in life she would have terrible nightmares of people breaking into their house and her life just went downhill from there. While Maureen was living in her parents squat in New York, her mom said that she wanted her to leave. Maureen, being the unstable person that she was, stabbed her mother. She was sentenced to a upstate hospital and after a year of living there she immediately moved to California, never to be seen again in the book (276). The mother and father of the Walls family can be considered the antagonists of the book based on how they held down their children by deciding to live such peculiar lifestyles. Although they were not bad people, and did not mean to hold their children down, their destructive habits made them bad parents. Rex Walls, the father, was practically a deadbeat alcoholic who barely contributed to the family. He had odd jobs every once in a while but he never really had enough money to support the family very well. Most of the money he did have went to support his alcohol addiction. Mary Walls, the mother, was not really much better. Although she was not an alcoholic like her husband, she did not bring in much money either. Occasionally she would get teaching jobs, since she went to college and had a teaching degree, but normally she did not like having a job, so she didn't. She got in fights with her husband a lot, one time she ended up hanging out of a window screaming to the neighborhood that her husband was trying to kill her (70). Neither of them were very efficient parents. They did not pay much attention to their kids. Once, Jeannette tumbled out of the car while it was moving and her parents did not even notice until a few moments later (30). The characters in The Glass Castle all seem believable. Walls may have said some things that were a little bit exaggerated about the characters but I believe these minor things don't take away from the validity of the characters. The writing style throughout the book becomes more complex and advanced as Jeannette grows up, signifying that she is growing up. Although writing becomes more advanced, it does not make it harder to read. Walls writing style is very simple, with small sentence structures and small paragraphs. Small chapters make the book a more fluent read. There are many themes throughout the book. One of the major themes is that of alcoholism. Rex Walls alcohol dependency effects the entire family. He makes decisions that are not in the best interests of the family, mainly spending most of their money on booze. It came to the point where Mary would have to hide money from Rex. Once she had to resort to putting money in a sock and giving it to her daughter in order to have some money for food (77). I think the major theme in the book is forgiveness. The mother and father neglected their children in so many ways that it seems they should be punished for the hardships that they put their children through. Although the parents did this to the kids, they eventually forgive the parents for what they did. When Rex calls Jeannette to meet him to tell her that he is dying, he asks her to buy him a bottle of Vodka. Even though she knows it was her father's addiction that contributed to the uncomfortable life she had lived, she decides to indulge the father's wishes (277). Eventually she says, "despite all the destruction and chaos he had created in our lives, I could not imagine what my life would be like-what the world would be like-without him in it. As awful as he could be, I always knew he loved me in a way no one else ever had" (279). Overall, The Glass Castle was a very good book that I would recommend. Everything about the book is interesting. The way that the family lived their lives is very eccentric and different, and it makes their lives very interesting in the book. Furthermore, the characters in the book are very fascinating.