Senior Year - A Collection of Work

Why Is Daddy Drinking?

Addictions are always a terrible thing. They can destroy families and causes the user to become a ticking time bomb. Being addicted to food, or sensual encounters are one thing, but it's different when the addiction is alcohol. Many children in the United States have at least one alcoholic parent that they are raised by, many has both parents who are addicted to alcohol. This is no different in Jeanette Walls' The Glass Castle; Jeanette was raised by both her parents, but her father was an alcoholic. With Jeanette's father, Rex Walls, being a predominate role in her life his alcoholism is shown very heavily.

Throughout The Glass Castle Jeanette Walls shows a very close and personal relationship with her father, Rex. He promises her all her hopes and dreams, he promises her that he will make them their Glass Castle. Their relationship is built on her trust for Rex and his appreciation of having someone in the family actually looking up to him. Jeanette understands that Rex has a drinking problem and calls him out for it on multiple occasions, but as a child she really didn't understand the issue. Rose Mary Walls, Jeanette's mother, talks to the kids about their deceased sister, Mary Charlene, and how Rex "wasn't the same" after her death. According to Rose Mary, Rex started having dark moods, stayed out late, and came home drunk. That alone wasn't the end of it; only 28 pages into the book, it mentions how Rex pawned off Rose Mary's wedding ring not long after Brian was born.

As the family grows older Jeanette begins to realize that Rex's drinking problem has gotten worse as the years go by. The Christmas before her 10th birthday the family was able to gather up the means of celebrating the holidays. This was to be her first year of actually celebrating Christmas on Christmas day, but it was to be ruined by Rex's drunken tendencies. With him being the drunk he was, he took his new lighter that Rose Mary got him as a present and burned the tree and presents to a crisp. It was at that moment Jeanette realizes that her father isn't this great person she idolizes. For her 10th birthday Rex pulled her aside and asked her what she would like for her birthday because "It's a special occasion, seeing as how it puts you into double digits". She seemed hesitant about answering him, she was scared, she didn't want to make him mad. It wasn't until Rex told her that "if it's humanly possible, I'll get it for you. And if it isn't humanly possible, I'll die trying," she gets the courage to answer him....she asked him to maybe stop drinking. When she asked that Rex seemed different, even telling her that she "must be awfully ashamed". It worked....for a while....he started to drink again, breaking that promise, because their car broke down on their way to the Grand Canyon and some stranger had picked them up.

His drinking only seemed to worsen from there. During their stay in Welch he had dragged Jeanette to bars to help the family make money, he was never home, or when he was home he was drunk. It always gotten out of hand. It wasn't until Jeanette leaves for New York and lives with her older sister, Lori, things started showing their true light. When Brian and Maureen moved to New York they thought that they would maybe finally have a peaceful life without their parents holding them down. Lo-an-behold, Rex and Rose Mary moves to New York to be with their kids, and that only led to Rex's drinking problem to worsen. He had asked Jeanette to buy him a bottle of vodka one day during a time of the parents struggles. The only time he "quit" drinking since was when he was admitted to a hospital and diagnosed with tuberculosis. Though it didn't last. As going back to a previous statement of him asking Jeanette to buy him some cheap vodka, he had asked her to do it so he was able to have the "energy" to tell her about how he was dying.

With all that he has done to the Walls family, his alcoholism has made them stronger. This reoccurring thing and the severity of it caused the family many issues and problems with money and led them to live a life of struggle. Despite it being a struggle for the family, it has helped them become who they are today, it has shaped them to the people they dreamed of being. With the father now deceased, and the kids still surviving and remembering all his drunken actions, he is still their father. If it weren't for the alcoholism their painful lives would have taken a different toll and could have prevented them from doing what they are doing now. All that can be said about alcoholism and Rex is that their relationship was a love-hate reaction. Their time was long, and it was fun at times, and terrifying at other times, just shows how much it affected the father and the kids. So, was a good thing or a bad thing? All that can be and ever will be is neither good nor bad. Just a life changing experience.