Jeannette Walls didn’t just write a memoir; she handed us a magnifying glass to look at a car crash that somehow felt like a carnival. When people search for characters from The Glass Castle, they aren't usually looking for a dry list of names. They want to know how Rex could be so brilliant yet so destructive. They want to understand why Rose Mary chose a paint canvas over a grocery list.
It's messy. It’s uncomfortable. Honestly, it’s a miracle any of the Walls children survived to tell the story.
The book has stayed on the bestseller lists for years because these aren't just "characters" in the literary sense. They are real people who lived through a level of neglect that would spark a national news cycle today. Yet, there’s this weird, flickering light of love throughout the narrative that makes you root for them, even when you want to scream at them.
Rex Walls: The Genius, the Drunk, and the Architect of Air
If you’re looking at the characters from The Glass Castle, Rex is the sun that everyone else orbits. He’s the most polarizing figure in the book. One minute, he’s teaching his kids about binary numbers and the vastness of the cosmos; the next, he’s stealing the family’s grocery money to buy a bottle of booze.
He was a man of immense intellect. Truly. He was an air force veteran and a self-taught engineer. But he was also a man fleeing from his own demons—demons likely born in that cramped, gray house in Welch, West Virginia. The "Glass Castle" itself was Rex’s ultimate promise. It was a blueprint for a magnificent, solar-powered home made entirely of glass. He carried the blueprints everywhere.
He never built it.
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Instead, he had his children help him dig a foundation for it in the backyard of their shack in Welch. But when the family couldn't afford trash pickup, that foundation hole—the literal footprint of their dreams—became a garbage pit. That’s the tragedy of Rex. He gave his children the stars, but he also gave them a home filled with the smell of rotting refuse. You can’t talk about Rex without acknowledging the "Skedaddle." Whenever the bills got too high or the law got too close, Rex would pack the kids into whatever beat-up car they had and disappear into the night. He framed it as an adventure. To a child, it was. To an adult reader, it’s a horrifying cycle of instability.
Rose Mary Walls: The Artist Who Refused to Mother
Then there’s Rose Mary. In many ways, she is harder to forgive than Rex.
While Rex was a captive of his addiction, Rose Mary’s neglect felt like a choice. She was a licensed teacher. She could have worked. She could have provided. Instead, she sat in bed and painted, claiming she was an "excitement addict." She famously told her children that "suffering in childhood can be good for you" because it "builds character."
She was a woman who owned land in Texas worth nearly a million dollars while her children were eating margarine mixed with sugar because there was nothing else in the cupboard.
Rose Mary challenges our fundamental ideas of motherhood. She wasn't "evil" in a cartoonish way. She was whimsical, artistic, and deeply, profoundly selfish. She didn't want the responsibility of being a parent. She wanted to be a free spirit. The tension between her and Jeannette is the heartbeat of the book’s later half. When Jeannette is finally making it in New York and finds her mother digging through a dumpster, the collision of their two worlds is staggering. Rose Mary didn't want to be "saved." She liked her life. That's a hard pill for most readers to swallow.
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The Siblings: Survival as a Team Sport
The kids are the only reason this story isn't a total tragedy. They formed a phalanx. Lori, Jeannette, Brian, and Maureen are the characters from The Glass Castle that provide the emotional payoff.
- Lori Walls: The eldest. She was the first to realize that the only way out was a literal escape plan. She was the artist, like her mother, but she had the pragmatism her mother lacked. She moved to New York first, acting as the beachhead for the rest of the siblings.
- Jeannette Walls: Our narrator. She was "Daddy’s girl" for a long time. She believed in the Glass Castle longer than anyone else. Her journey is about the painful shedding of that loyalty. When she finally realizes Rex will never change, it’s heartbreaking.
- Brian Walls: The protector. Brian grew up to be a police officer, which is fascinating if you think about it. After a childhood of chaos and "skedaddling" from the law, he chose a life of order and enforcement. As a kid, he was the one digging through the woods for food and standing up to bullies with a defiant silence.
- Maureen Walls: The baby of the family. Maureen’s story is the one that most people forget, or maybe they just find it too sad to dwell on. She didn't have the same "pioneer" grit the older three had because they shielded her. By the time she grew up, the weight of the family's trauma crushed her. Her descent into mental health struggles and her eventual departure for California is the shadow over the "successful" ending the other three found.
The Welch Relatives: Where the Darkness Started
You can't fully understand these people without looking at the Welch contingent. Erma Walls, Rex’s mother, is a piece of work. When the family moves back to West Virginia, we see the environment Rex was raised in. It was cold, abusive, and claustrophobic.
Erma was a woman who didn't allow laughter in her house. There are heavy implications in the book—and many literary analyses by experts like those at The New York Times or The Guardian have pointed this out—that Rex may have been a victim of childhood sexual abuse at the hands of his mother. This context doesn't excuse his behavior, but it explains the frantic way he tried to run away from his past. It shows that the "Glass Castle" wasn't just a house; it was an attempt to build something transparent and light to counter the dark, heavy secrets of his childhood.
Why These Characters Resonate in 2026
We live in an era of "trauma dumping" and "oversharing," but Jeannette Walls did something different. She didn't write for sympathy. She wrote for clarity.
The characters from The Glass Castle matter because they represent the American Dream gone wrong. They show that poverty isn't always about a lack of intelligence; sometimes it’s a lack of stability. The book forces us to look at the "invisible" homeless—people like Rose Mary and Rex who live in squats or vans, not because they have to, but because they don't know how to exist within the lines of "normal" society.
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There is a nuance here that most memoirs miss. Usually, characters are "good" or "bad." In the Walls family, everyone is both. Rex is a hero when he gives Jeannette the planet Venus for Christmas. He’s a villain when he lets a guy he’s gambling with go upstairs with his daughter. Holding both those truths at once is what makes the reading experience so visceral.
Key Insights for Understanding the Walls Family
If you're studying these characters for a book club or a class, or if you're just trying to make sense of the movie version, keep these three things in mind:
- Resilience is a double-edged sword. The kids survived because they were tough, but that toughness came at the cost of their childhood. They had to be "mountain goats" just to get through the day.
- Addiction is a character in itself. Rex’s alcoholism isn't just a habit; it’s a presence in the room. It dictates the budget, the mood, and the geography of their lives.
- The "Glass Castle" is a metaphor for potential. It’s the idea that things could be beautiful, which is often more painful than just accepting that things are ugly.
To truly grasp the impact of these people, you have to look at where they ended up. Most of them found a way to bridge the gap between their chaotic roots and a stable adulthood. They didn't do it by forgetting where they came from; they did it by writing it down, facing Erma, facing the trash pit, and finally letting go of the blueprints for the castle that was never going to be built.
What to Do Next
If the story of the Walls family has left you reeling, your next step should be to explore the concept of intergenerational trauma. Understanding how Erma’s household created Rex, and how Rex created the environment for Jeannette, is key to breaking cycles in real life.
You might also want to look into the work of Dr. Gabor Maté, who writes extensively on the link between childhood trauma and addiction. It provides a scientific lens to the erratic behavior Rex shows throughout the memoir. Seeing the clinical side of Rex’s "demons" can often help readers find a sense of peace with the story’s more frustrating moments.