The Glass Castle and the Seven Deadly Sins

As with the previous two works, The Glass Castle shows various of the seven deadly sins. Jeannette Walls’ memoir, The Glass Castle, is about her childhood, and being raised by her parents. For example, Jeannette was three, making herself hot dogs on the stove. She burned herself badly. Later, she was making hot dogs for herself again, “I was hungry, Mom was at work on a painting and no one else was there to fix them for me”(Walls 15). Rose Mary, Jeannette’s mother, shows the sin of sloth by doing the easier thing and continuing to paint rather than make food for her daughter.

Another example is Jeannette’s father, Rex. He is an alcoholic when they have enough money to buy alcohol. Rex is usually a nice man, “But when Dad pulled out a bottle of what Mom called “the hard stuff,” she got kind of frantic, because after working on the bottle for a while, Dad turned into an angry-eyed stranger who threw around furniture and threatened to beat up Mom or anyone else who got in his way”(Walls 23).

Rex shows the sin of gluttony with his drinking problem. He shows no care for the children or his wife as the only thing he seems to think about is the next bottle of alcohol and where it will come from. Jeannette had tried to get him to stop drinking as a birthday present to her, but he fell back on his vice when something didn’t go his way. Finally, Rose Mary hides food from her children, showing the sin of greed. Jeannette and her siblings are sitting in a cold house, trying to forget about their hunger, when they see Rose Mary ducking over the blankets she has wrapped around her. When Brian, Jeannette’s older brother, ripped the covers off “Lying on the mattress next to Mom was one of those huge family-sized Hershey chocolate bars, the shiny silver wrapper pulled back and torn away. She’d already eaten half of it”(Walls 174).

Rose Mary then proceeded to claim she is a sugar addict just as Rex is an alcoholic, with a claim that they should forgive her as they do with Rex. In The Glass Castle Rose Mary and Rex Walls show the sins greed, gluttony, and sloth throughout the novel.

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