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OK, I actually finished this book soon after I wrote the last post. At that point, I was only about 100 pages into the story and the family had not yet moved into squalid conditions. In is one thing when parents are unfettered by societal constraints but it is another thing when they are irresponsible and negligent parents. I did associate my mom with Jeanette’s mom because they had a lot of similarities. My mom is also an artist. My mom also has no qualms with living anywhere at all. She loves everyone. Well, I shouldn’t say that. My mother can’t stand snobby people. She likes real people and you often can’t get truly real people unless those people have little of life’s “tangible” comforts. So many times people seem real and genuine and “good” because they’re very religious or they give much of their time or for some other reason, but put in a situation where they had to choose between helping themselves or using those same motivations to help those other people they seemed to care so much about, (breath), they would choose themselves every time.

This reminds me. When I was coming back from Florida a couple weeks ago, I turned on the radio because I also was getting very tired. I found Bill O’Reilly’s talk show. Since I don’t listen to conservative commentary and never watch Fox News, I had heard his name but had absolutely no idea what he stood for. I learned quickly that he is a conservative. So then finding that was even better because it was sure to keep me awake. I must admit that the first few points he made I actually agreed with. I thought that perhaps it was possible for me to agree with both the conservative media and the “liberal left-wing” media that everyone calls it. But, O’Reilly quickly went downhill – way downhill. He was making a point about people being concerned about losing their jobs and about how we should all spend money with the “locals” to help keep our local businesses afloat. The BEST part of this whole bit was where he prefaced all of his altruistic comments with “my contract is stable and I shouldn’t have anything to worry about”, so I think I’ll help the “little” people. He was openly showing disdain for other people after prefacing that he had nothing to worry about. I wanted to laugh but I was so disgusted.

Anyway, back to The Glass Castle. So my mom is “real”. She doesn’t call the people who have not – “little”. OK, actually she does but it’s when calling herself little also – something to the effect of “we, the little people”. But, parents have a responsibility to try to provide for their children – especially when they have the ability. We all have the ability unless there is mental illness involved. I don’t believe Jeanette’s parents were incapable and I don’t believe they were mentally ill. I believe they just had no interest in bettering themselves and had no concern over squalor. To them, it was not squalor it was just living. But there are points in the story where the mother is feeding herself and not the kids. Then the father takes the kids money to get booze for himself and doesn’t see that his kids won’t eat if he does that. He even goes so far as offering his daughter up for prostitution to help him win some money for more booze. Then the mother tells the kids to cut off the part of the meat with maggots and that the rest is just fine. The father steals the money that the kids worked so hard to earn – to get out of the terrible conditions. He uses it for himself only.

At the end of the story, the parents are happy to live homeless. So part of me wants to go back and have compassion for them because of what I reference in part I of this post. We are as poor as we feel. They don’t feel poor. Our life is as bad as it feels. But they don’t feel it’s bad. They actually seemed to be happy. At that point they were no longer hurting their kids. Actually their kids ended up doing ok.

I guess after this long wandering rant, I believe they were not responsible parents but they are living the phrase “money can’t buy love” and “money can’t buy hapiness”. Like Bill O’Reilly, he prefaced that he would have money before he considered the fate of the little people. They were just happy as can be as the little people. I guess Bill can keep his money and his lucrative contract and his hypocracy and the little people are going to continue to be just fine without his “little” handouts. Huh.