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Definition of Motif
A motif is an element or idea that recurs throughout a work of literature. Motifs, which are often collections of related symbols, help develop the central themes of a book... read full definition
A motif is an element or idea that recurs throughout a work of literature. Motifs, which are often collections of related symbols, help develop the... read full definition
A motif is an element or idea that recurs throughout a work of literature. Motifs, which are often collections of... read full definition
Motifs
Explanation and Analysis—Animals:
Throughout their travels and adventures, the Walls family encounters a number of animals, from pets to pests. This motif showcases Mom and Dad’s unconventional code of ethics and ambivalence toward caregiving.
For example, during one of the family’s many moves, Dad chucks their unruly cat, Quixote, out the car window, reasoning that “anyone who didn’t like to travel wasn’t invited on our adventure.” Later, when the family has rescued more cats than they can care for, Dad puts a few in a burlap sack and drowns them in a pond. Mom defends him, saying, “We gave [the cats] a little extra time on the planet […] They should be grateful for that.” As a young child, Jeannette perceives Mom and Dad’s cold treatment of pets as an extension of their parenting style, so much so that when she falls out of the family car, herself, she worries no one will return for her.
Though Mom will condone drowning kittens, she refuses to kill the flies that swarm around the Walls family’s house in Battle Mountain. She reasons that the flies provide food for the birds and lizards, which in turn provide food for the cats. In this way, Mom respects the natural order of things, which is, perhaps, an extension of her esteem for self-sufficiency and her desire to live outside the system. Later, in Welch, Mom expresses sympathy for the rats that have overtaken her home. “Rats need to eat, too,” she says, almost appearing to care more for rodents than for her own children, who often go hungry, themselves.
In general, Mom and Dad’s treatment of animals reflects their inconsistency as parents. They welcome and respect wild and domestic animals alike, so long as they aren’t an inconvenience; likewise, they take an interest in teaching and caring for their children, so long as it doesn’t get in the way of their own desires and needs.
Related Themes:
Part 2: The Desert
Explanation and Analysis—Demon-Hunting:
The idea of hunting demons recurs throughout The Glass Castle . This motif begins with an early childhood scene from Part 2 in which Jeannette, like many young children, is afraid there’s a monster under her bed. Rather than reassure her that monsters don’t exist, Dad claims he knows the monster, Demon, and takes her out into the desert to hunt “that old ornery bastard” down:
Dad said he had been chasing Demon for years. By now, Dad said, that old Demon had figured out that it had better not mess with Rex Walls. But if that sneaky son of a gun thought it was going to terrorize Rex Walls’s little girl, it had by God got another think coming. “Go fetch my hunting knife,” Dad said.
Dad’s unconventional approach doesn’t deny that life can be scary. Instead, he acknowledges the reality of fear while empowering Jeannette to face it. He also casts himself in the role of a hero, as usual.
Later, the demons Jeannette hunts become real. While living in Phoenix, she is groped by an intruder in her sleep. With Mom asleep and Dad nowhere to be found, she and Brian take on the task of hunting the man down, a quest they refer to as “Pervert Hunting.” This scene shows how, as Jeannette gets older, the fantastical fears of her childhood crystallize into immediate, tangible dangers. Dad’s demon-hunting game has made the children feel self sufficient, true, but his failure to protect them has also made them vulnerable to harm.
Later, Dad suffers alcohol withdrawal while trying to get sober as a birthday gift for Jeannette. Horrified by his anguish, Jeannette asks Mom for help:
I looked at Mom, who was stirring her soup as if it were an ordinary evening, and that was when I lost it.
“Do something!” I yelled at her. “You’ve got to do something to help Dad!”
“Your father’s the only one who can help himself,” Mom said. “Only he knows how to fight his own demons.”
Here, the idiom “fight his own demons” calls back to the demon-hunting of Jeannette’s childhood. Though back then Dad claimed to have defeated Demon in a glorious victory, it’s clear that heroic story isn’t entirely true. In this way, Dad’s withdrawal represents a moment of disillusionment for Jeannette. Seeing him struggle, she realizes the story he’s always told about himself isn’t the only narrative that exists.
Related Themes:
Explanation and Analysis—Houses:
Jeannette describes each place she lives in painstaking detail, such that houses become a motif throughout The Glass Castle. Each time the Walls family moves, a description of their house grounds the reader in that new location. One can imagine how carefully taking stock of her physical surroundings helped ground Jeannette, too, within the chaos of her family’s nomadic lifestyle.
Several houses stand out, like, for example, the adobe home the Walls family inherits from Grandma Smith in Phoenix in Part3 of the memoir:
When we pulled up in front of the house on North Third Street, I could not believe we were actually going to live there. It was a mansion, practically, so big that Grandma Smith had had two families living in it, both paying her rent. We had the entire place to ourselves. Mom said that it had been built almost a hundred years ago as a fort. The outside walls, covered with white stucco, were three feet thick. “These sure would stop any Indians’ arrows,” I said to Brian.
Jeannette goes on to describe the house’s many rooms and the fine objects that fill them, as well as the garden with its palm and orange trees. These details communicate Jeannette’s childlike wonder. For someone who has so often gone without safe living conditions and material goods, the house seems like a kind of paradise. Jeannette’s comment about the thickness of the walls is also significant; it shows the Walls children’s awareness of the world’s dangers, and also foreshadows how even in this place, they will want for protection.
Contrast this house with the one on Little Hobart Street that the family lives in during their time in Welch in Part 3 of the memoir:
The house was a dinky thing perched high up off the road on a hillside so steep that only the back of the house rested on the ground. The front, including a drooping porch, jutted precariously into the air, supported by tall, spindly cinder-block pillars. It had been painted white a long time ago, but the paint, where it hadn’t peeled off altogether, had turned a dismal gray.
“It’s good we raised you young ’uns to be tough,” Dad said. “Because this is not a house for the faint of heart.”
The dismal disrepair of this house, which Jeannette goes on to reveal has no running water or electricity, shows just how fall the Walls family has fallen in fortune. The house is practically built on a cliff, an apt representation of the family’s increasingly precarious situation.
In general, descriptions like these reflect not just where the family is physically, but also emotionally and psychologically. The Glass Castle’s motif of houses helps the reader track Jeannette’s literal travels and her internal journey, from naivety to disillusionment to acceptance, from merely surviving to building a life of her own.
Related Themes:
Part 3: Welch
Explanation and Analysis—Cars:
Cars act as a motif that punctuates the Walls family’s dramatic journey from one location to the next. Notably, the Walls’s various cars are where many family altercations take place.
For example, in one scene, a young Jeannette tumbles out of the so-called “Green Caboose” and worries that her parents won’t return for her, having witnessed their unattached attitude toward toys and pets; to her surprise and relief, they do turn back for her. In another scene, Mom and Dad get in a fight while driving. Mom jumps out of the car and runs off into the desert, leaving Dad to pursue her through the darkness and pull her back into the vehicle.
In this way, cars come to represent the Walls family’s unified forward momentum. They remain constantly in motion, and when one of them moves, they all do. For better or worse, their fates are bound. This is the responsibility they bear one another: the expectation of loyalty and unity even in the most difficult of living circumstances and interpersonal dynamics.
However, the family’s journey is anything but smooth, as represented by the constant breaking down and abandoning of cars. Indeed, the Walls’s nomadic tendencies and detachment from material goods lends a disjointedness to their lives. This is evident in their shifting attitude toward their cars. When Jeannette is young, her family gives fun, silly names to their vehicles, like “the Blue Goose” and “the Green Caboose.” This changes as she ages:
Back in Battle Mountain, we had stopped naming the Walls family cars, because they were all such heaps that Dad said they didn’t deserve names. Mom said that when she was growing up on the ranch, they never named the cattle, because they knew they would have to kill them. If we didn’t name the car, we didn’t feel as sad when we had to abandon it.
This shift in behavior coincides with the disillusionment of Jeannette’s coming of age. When Jeannette is a child, Mom and Dad make life feel fantastical and exciting through wild stories, make-believe games, and cars with charming names. As she gets older, Jeannette begins to recognize that much of what she thought of as adventure is actually just the result of her parents’ irresponsibility. This sobering realization takes much of the whimsy out of life, including the whimsy of naming a family car.
Related Themes:
Explanation and Analysis—Houses:
Jeannette describes each place she lives in painstaking detail, such that houses become a motif throughout The Glass Castle. Each time the Walls family moves, a description of their house grounds the reader in that new location. One can imagine how carefully taking stock of her physical surroundings helped ground Jeannette, too, within the chaos of her family’s nomadic lifestyle.
Several houses stand out, like, for example, the adobe home the Walls family inherits from Grandma Smith in Phoenix in Part3 of the memoir:
When we pulled up in front of the house on North Third Street, I could not believe we were actually going to live there. It was a mansion, practically, so big that Grandma Smith had had two families living in it, both paying her rent. We had the entire place to ourselves. Mom said that it had been built almost a hundred years ago as a fort. The outside walls, covered with white stucco, were three feet thick. “These sure would stop any Indians’ arrows,” I said to Brian.
Jeannette goes on to describe the house’s many rooms and the fine objects that fill them, as well as the garden with its palm and orange trees. These details communicate Jeannette’s childlike wonder. For someone who has so often gone without safe living conditions and material goods, the house seems like a kind of paradise. Jeannette’s comment about the thickness of the walls is also significant; it shows the Walls children’s awareness of the world’s dangers, and also foreshadows how even in this place, they will want for protection.
Contrast this house with the one on Little Hobart Street that the family lives in during their time in Welch in Part 3 of the memoir:
The house was a dinky thing perched high up off the road on a hillside so steep that only the back of the house rested on the ground. The front, including a drooping porch, jutted precariously into the air, supported by tall, spindly cinder-block pillars. It had been painted white a long time ago, but the paint, where it hadn’t peeled off altogether, had turned a dismal gray.
“It’s good we raised you young ’uns to be tough,” Dad said. “Because this is not a house for the faint of heart.”
The dismal disrepair of this house, which Jeannette goes on to reveal has no running water or electricity, shows just how fall the Walls family has fallen in fortune. The house is practically built on a cliff, an apt representation of the family’s increasingly precarious situation.
In general, descriptions like these reflect not just where the family is physically, but also emotionally and psychologically. The Glass Castle’s motif of houses helps the reader track Jeannette’s literal travels and her internal journey, from naivety to disillusionment to acceptance, from merely surviving to building a life of her own.
Related Themes:
