In the memoir The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, a father, Rex Walls, prevents his family from amassing substantial wealth. Rex buys soft drinks whenever the family starts making money. When he returns home, he unleashes his anger on his family by destroying the few things the family has. Yet, while sober, he helps his family immensely and loves them immensely. Rex's good attributes and leadership make his place in the family indestructible, but cannot overcome personality issues. Le Château de Verre thus depicts an irremovable father who unjustly imprisons his family for irresponsible consumption. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay Rex Walls' inability to lead his own life and take responsibility prevents him from meeting the needs of his family. As a poor man, Rex often lacks the financial capacity to drink hard alcohol due to his lack of funds. Lack of drunkenness forces Rex to perform productive tasks that ultimately earn him money. In this state of increased wealth, Rex chooses to squander his earnings on alcohol because of a deeper problem in his life. When he was young, Rex's mother molested him. This trauma scarred his entire life and forced him to try to hide this problem and act as if it never happened, rather than confronting this problem head on. This is why he never completely stops drinking despite numerous attempts. Because of his choice not to deal with his youthful problems, Rex lives in a cycle of poverty and wealth synchronized with sobriety and drunkenness. Rex's drunkenness also drags his family down, causing the entire family to become poor again every time they earn enough money for Rex to go to the bar. Rex fails to fulfill the role of father by irresponsibly controlling the family's wealth and property, thus leading to poor leadership of the family. Rex's deep, unresolved problems drive him to drunkenness and in turn render him incapable of fulfilling his role as a father. Due to Rex's drunkenness, his wife finds herself stuck in a circle of depression and ignorant optimism. She sees through Rex's elaborate stories that justify his use of money to research and build new inventions as simply another way to earn money for drinking. She knows the poverty in which she lives and sometimes works to provide for her family. She detects Rex's external drinking problem and reads books to try to help end this problem. This hopeful attempt to permanently change Rex never succeeds, and after enough tries, his hope for change shatters. She sees that there will never be any positive or upward movement and that she will live in horrible conditions for the rest of her life. Afterwards, she spends some mornings in bed instead of teaching at school and eventually quits her job to spend her time alone painting while her children scavenge for food to survive. In an attempt to resolve her depression problem, Rose Mary (Rex's wife) adopts a very optimistic lifestyle. She tries to always see the bright side of things and forget her despair rather than face it. Rose Mary decides not to recognize the horrible house she lives in and naively believes that she exists in a wonderful life, not one of deprivation and abuse. Rex's addiction to alcohol drives Rose Mary into a despair terrible enough to lead her to find.