The Glass Castle #4

Why is Walls' mother so helpless?

As the story progresses, it becomes more and more evident that Walls' mom, whose actual name is not revealed, is completely pathetic. She can't seem to do anything by herself; she can't even spell. This is sad. She tries to instill intelligence and independance in her children, when she can't do the same for herself. As the story goes, she gets a job teaching her oldest child's class at school. These kids can't be more than ten years old, but the mother proves to be completely incompetant. She employs the help of her daughter, whose class she is teaching, to help her with lesson plans and to keep the other children obedient. The mother even beat her daughter, who had done nothing wrong, with a spoon in front of the entire class just so she wouldn't have to beat any of the other students. The mother is so easily confused that she spelled Halloween, "Halowene". Her main goal is to be an artist, but she is not able to sell any of her paintings. One would think that she wouold be upet by her obvious lack of capabilities, but she remains ignorantly blissful to this fact, causing other people to pick up the slack for her. I don't know why Walls' mother is so helpless, one would think that years fending for herself and her family would give her some common sense, but apparantley not. It is a feat within itself that Walls turned out the way she did with such bad parenting. She somehow recieved a good education in the end to turn out to be a bestselling author. Seeing her parents' failure at success may have caused Walls to realize their mistakes and make better decisions for herself.