What happens in Chapter 10 of The Glass Castle?
In Chapter 10 of Jeannette Walls's memoir The Glass Castle, Rex and Rose Mary Walls impulsively decide to move the family from their crumbling home in Welch, West Virginia, to New York City. They frame this move, as they often do, as an adventure instead of an escape from their struggles with poverty and dysfunction. They pack the kids into their old car and head north, arriving in the city nearly broke and without a solid plan. They end up in the South Bronx, one of the poorest urban neighborhoods in America at that time, moving into a cramped and run-down apartment. Instead of improving their situation, the move just shifts their familiar chaos to a new location. Rose Mary feels invigorated by being near art galleries and cultural venues, while Rex soon returns to drinking. Jeannette and her siblings—Lori, Brian, and Maureen—have to adapt again to a hostile environment, dealing with dangerous streets and a new school system. This chapter illustrates that geography changes nothing for the Walls family; their dysfunction travels with them, as resilient and portable as their few worn belongings.
Analysis
Walls uses irony carefully in this chapter, letting the contrast between Rex and Rose Mary's words and their reality do the heavy lifting. The family's move to New York is described with the same breathless energy that marks every Walls family "fresh start," and that echo in tone serves as a critique—readers have come to see the parents' optimism as a red flag. The South Bronx setting is significant; Walls selects one of the most symbolically charged neighborhoods in late-twentieth-century America, a place marked by arson, abandonment, and systemic neglect that reflects the family's internal struggles. The city's verticality sharply contrasts with the horizontal expanse of the Southwest desert chapters, tightening the family's dysfunction into more claustrophobic spaces.
Rose Mary's shift toward cultural aspirations—museums and galleries—acts as her signature evasion, dressing up poverty instead of facing it. Rex's drinking resurfaces almost immediately, indicating that the move was never really about starting anew. Throughout, Walls's writing stays close to the child's viewpoint, maintaining an observational rather than judgmental narrative; the adult memoirist allows the details to speak for themselves without commentary. The chapter also develops the theme of resilience as a survival mechanism: the Walls children adapt to their new surroundings with a practicality that is both admirable and heartbreaking, their ability to adjust reflecting the heavy burdens they’ve already carried.
Key quotes from Chapter 10
“We were always doing the skedaddle, usually in the middle of the night.”
Jeannette reflects on the family's pattern of sudden relocations, framing the New York move within a lifetime of flight.
“Mom said living in the South Bronx would be a great adventure.”
Rose Mary reframes the family's arrival in a blighted neighborhood as opportunity, a characteristic act of willful reenchantment.
“Dad said New York City was the one place in America where a man with his brains and guts could make a million bucks.”
Rex pitches the move in the grandiose, self-mythologizing language that has defined his promises throughout the memoir.
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Create an accountSign inVocabulary in Chapter 10
- panhandling
- Begging for money from strangers in a public place, typically on the street, as a means of survival.
- squatter
- A person who occupies an abandoned or unoccupied building or land without legal permission or paying rent.
- tenement
- A run-down, overcrowded apartment building in a poor urban area, typically subdivided into many small, cheap units.