What happens in Chapter 2 of The Glass Castle?
Chapter 2, "The Desert," immerses the reader in Jeannette Walls's nomadic early years, mostly spent in the parched towns of the American Southwest. The Walls family—Rex, Rose Mary, and their kids—are always on the move, escaping debts, landlords, and Rex's inner demons under the guise of adventure and self-sufficiency. Even at a young age, Jeannette takes in her parents' view of poverty as a form of freedom: sleeping under the stars becomes romantic, and hunger is viewed as a way to toughen up. Rex teaches Jeannette to swim by tossing her into a hot spring and only pulling her out when she starts to sink—a method he dubs "the Rex Walls method." Rose Mary focuses on her painting and writing, seeing domestic duties as interruptions to her creative work. The family lives off roadkill, foraged food, and Rex's irregular job, always claiming that the Glass Castle—Rex's dreamy idea of a self-sufficient home—is just over the next horizon. The chapter ends with the family making another midnight "skedaddle," packing up kids and belongings into the car and disappearing before sunrise, leaving yet another town and another stack of unpaid bills behind.
Analysis
Walls uses irony with careful precision in this chapter, refraining from commentary and instead allowing the contrast between her childhood wonder and the adult reader's discomfort to resonate. The desert landscape is significant—its vastness reflects the family's lack of roots and Rex's grand ambitions; the open sky feels both freeing and uncaring. The swimming lesson serves as the chapter's turning point: it appears to be a simple act of paternal teaching, but it represents a recurring theme in Walls's memoir—Rex simultaneously putting his children at risk while also trying to save them, merging the roles of both threat and protector into a single figure. This duality drives the book's emotional core.
Rose Mary's artistic self-absorption emerges here as a balance to Rex's chaos: her neglect isn't born from cruelty but from a deep inner life, which Walls portrays without sentimentality. The "skedaddle" scene captures the excitement of childhood in the present tense, a stylistic choice that draws the reader into the children's complicity before revealing the grim reality. Themes introduced here—fire, stars, and the Glass Castle as an unfulfilled promise—recurrence as key symbols throughout the memoir. Walls's writing remains straightforward and declarative, allowing the material to evoke its own horror and tenderness without embellishment.
Key quotes from Chapter 2
“Dad called it the 'Rex Walls method' of swimming. You either swam or you sank.”
Jeannette recounts Rex's teaching philosophy after he throws her into a hot spring, encapsulating his parenting ethos of trial-by-ordeal.
“We were always doing the skedaddle, usually in the middle of the night.”
Walls describes the family's habitual pre-dawn escapes from towns where bills had gone unpaid, framed through a child's matter-of-fact acceptance.
“Mom said we were 'low on finances' but that was okay because rich people never got to see the stars the way we did.”
Rose Mary reframes the family's destitution as spiritual privilege, a rhetorical move Walls reproduces without comment, letting its hollowness register on its own.
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Create an accountSign inVocabulary in Chapter 2
- skittered
- Moved quickly and lightly in an unsteady, darting way, like a small animal scurrying across a surface.
- emaciated
- Extremely thin and weak from lack of food or illness, to the point where bones are visibly prominent.
- teetotaler
- A person who never drinks alcohol at all, choosing complete abstinence rather than moderation.
- prospecting
- Searching the ground in a specific area for valuable minerals, gold, or other natural resources, usually by digging or testing soil samples.
- Joshua tree
- A distinctive desert plant with spiky, twisted branches native to the American Southwest, used here to evoke the harsh, remote landscape of the family's early life.
- self-sufficient
- Able to provide for one's own needs without relying on outside help or resources, a value Rex Walls strongly promoted for his family.
- turbulent
- Marked by constant disorder, instability, and unpredictable upheaval, used to describe the chaotic nature of the Walls family's life.
- admonish
- To firmly warn or reprimand someone, urging them to correct their behavior, usually in a serious but not harshly punitive tone.
- nomadic
- Moving from place to place without a permanent home, used to describe the Walls family's constant relocating across the American Southwest.