Comprehensive Study Notes on Jeannette Walls' The Glass Castle Excerpt
Severe Burn Accident and Initial Emergency Response
Setting and Initial Circumstances:
The incident occurs when Jeannette Walls is three years old, residing in a trailer park in a southern Arizona town whose name she never learned.
She is standing on a chair in front of the stove wearing a pink dress given to her by her grandmother. Pink is her favorite color, and the dress features a skirt that sticks out like a tutu, which she enjoys spinning around in while looking in the mirror and pretending to be a ballerina.
Jeannette is using the dress and chair setup to cook hot dogs, watching them swell and bob in boiling water as late-morning sunlight filters through the small kitchenette window of the trailer.
Her mother is in the next room singing while working on one of her paintings.
The family's black mutt, named Juju, watches Jeannette as she cooks.
Ignition and Burn Injury:
Jeannette stabs a hot dog with a fork, bends over, and offers it to Juju.
Because the wiener is hot, Juju licks at it tentatively.
As Jeannette stands back up and resumes stirring the hot dogs, she feels a sudden blaze of heat on her right side.
Turning to investigate, she discovers her pink dress is on fire, with yellow-white flames burning a ragged brown line up the fabric of her skirt and climbing onto her stomach.
The flames leap upward and reach her face.
Jeannette screams as she smells the burning and hears a crackling sound as the fire singes her hair and eyelashes.
Juju barks continuously while Jeannette screams again.
Immediate Rescue and Transport:
Jeannette stands on the chair swatting at the flames with the fork used to stir the hot dogs and shrieks, "Mommy, help me!"
Her mother runs into the room, runs out, and returns with an army-surplus wool blanket (a blanket Jeannette hates due to its scratchy material) to smother the flames.
Because her father has gone off in the car, her mother grabs Jeannette and her younger brother, Brian, and hurries to the neighboring trailer.
The neighbor woman is hanging laundry on a clothesline with clothespins in her mouth.
In an unnaturally calm voice, Jeannette's mother explains what happened and asks for a ride to the hospital.
The neighbor woman drops her clothespins and laundry into the dirt and runs for her car without saying a word.
Hospital Admission, Skin Graft Procedure, and Pediatric Care
Emergency Room Care and Triage:
Upon arrival at the hospital, nurses place Jeannette on a stretcher and speak in loud, worried whispers.
They use a pair of shiny scissors to cut off the remaining remnants of her fancy pink dress.
Jeannette is laid flat on a large metal bed piled with ice cubes, and nurses spread additional ice across her body.
A silver-haired doctor wearing black-rimmed glasses leads her mother out of the room, stating that her condition is very serious.
Sensing that she is causing a big fuss as nurses hover over her, Jeannette stays quiet.
A nurse squeezes her hand and tells her she is going to be okay; Jeannette replies, "I know, but if I'm not, that's okay, too," prompting the nurse to squeeze her hand again and bit her lower lip.
Room Environment and Brian's Behavior:
The treatment room is small and white with bright overhead lights, metal cabinets, and ceiling panels containing rows of tiny dots.
Ice cubes cover Jeannette's stomach and ribs while pressing against her cheeks.
Out of the corner of her eye, Jeannette sees a small, grimy hand reach up a few inches from her face and grab a handful of ice cubes.
Her younger brother, Brian, eats the ice cubes, creating a loud crunching sound.
Surgical Skin Graft and Medical Interrogations:
Doctors inform Jeannette that she is lucky to be alive.
Medical staff perform a skin graft procedure, removing skin patches from her upper thigh and placing them over the severely burned areas of her stomach, ribs, and chest.
After the surgery, her entire right side is wrapped in bandages.
Jeannette jokes to a nurse, "Look, I'm a half-mummy." The nurse smiles, places her right arm in a sling, and attaches it to the bed's headboard to keep her from moving it.
Hospital personnel ask Jeannette a series of questions: how she was burned, whether her parents ever hurt her, and why she has various cuts and bruises.
Jeannette clarifies that her parents never hurt her; the cuts and bruises came from playing outside, and the burns occurred while cooking hot dogs.
Jeannette's Method for Cooking at Age Three:
Asked why she was cooking hot dogs alone at three years old, Jeannette explains that it is easy and lacks a complicated recipe.
Because full pans of water are too heavy for her to lift, she executes the following step-by-step process:
Places a chair next to the sink, climbs up, and fills a glass with water.
Stands on a chair next to the stove and pours the glass of water into the pan.
Repeats this process until the pan contains sufficient water.
Turns on the stove burner.
Drops the hot dogs into the water once it begins boiling.
Jeannette tells the nurses that her mother considers her mature for her age and allows her to cook for herself frequently.
Two nurses exchange looks, and one writes notes on a clipboard while telling Jeannette nothing is wrong when asked.
Bandage Maintenance and Scab Peeling:
Every couple of days, nurses change Jeannette's bandages.
The used bandages are discarded to the side, wadded up and covered with smears of blood, yellow discharge, and pieces of burned skin.
Fresh, large gauzy cloth bandages are applied to her burn sites.
At night, Jeannette runs her left hand over the rough, scabby skin left un-bandaged.
Although instructed by nurses not to peel scabs, she slowly pulls at them to see how large a scab she can loosen.
After freeing a couple of scabs, she pretends they are talking to one another in cheeping voices.
Extended Hospital Stay, Orderly Environment, and Chewing Gum Experience
Hospital Conditions and Amenities:
The hospital is clean, shiny, hushed, and organized, with strictly white walls, sheets, and uniforms, and silver beds, trays, and instruments.
The quiet environment allows one to hear the nurses' rubber-soled shoes squeaking down the hall; Jeannette grows fond of this quiet and order, which contrasts with her trailer home.
Jeannette enjoys having her own private room, whereas at home she shares a bedroom with her brother and sister.
Her room includes a wall-mounted television (which they do not have at home), and she watches programs frequently, noting Red Buttons and Lucille Ball as her favorites.
Staff check on her regularly to ask if she is hungry or needs anything, serving delicious meals three times a day with fruit cocktail or Jell-O for dessert, and changing sheets even if clean.
Jeannette reads to the nurses, who compliment her intelligence and state she reads as well as a six-year-old child.
First Experience with Chewing Gum:
Jeannette notices a nurse with wavy yellow hair and blue eye makeup chewing something and asks what it is.
The nurse answers that it is chewing gum—a product Jeannette has never heard of—and fetches her a whole pack.
Jeannette removes a stick, takes off the white paper and shiny silver foil beneath it, and inspects the powdery, putty-colored gum.
Putting it in her mouth, she is stunned by its sharp sweetness and says, "It's really good!"
The nurse laughs, warns her not to swallow it, and brings in other nurses to watch Jeannette chew her first piece of gum.
When bringing lunch, the nurse tells Jeannette to take out the gum but promises a new stick after eating, adding that she will buy another pack if Jeannette finishes the current one.
Jeannette observes that in the hospital, supplies of food, ice, or chewing gum never run out, concluding that she would be happy remaining in the hospital forever.
Family Dynamics, Disagreements with Medical Staff, and Navajo Witch Doctor Story
Family Visits:
When Jeannette's family visits, their arguing, laughing, singing, and shouting echo down the quiet hospital hallways.
Although shushed by nurses, her mother, father, sister Lori, and brother Brian only lower their voices briefly before becoming loud again.
Onlookers constantly stare at Rex Walls, either due to his handsome appearance or because he addresses people as "pardner" and "goomba" and laughs loudly with his head thrown back.
Rex asks Jeannette if the medical staff treats her well, offering to "kick some asses" if they are not, and claims they are friendly because she is "Rex Walls's daughter."
The Navajo Witch Doctor Story:
Rex sits on Jeannette's bed and tells the story of when her older sister, Lori, was stung by a poisonous scorpion at four years old while flipping over a rock in the desert.
Lori went into convulsions, with her body becoming stiff and drenched in sweat.
Because Rex did not trust hospitals, he brought Lori to a Navajo witch doctor who cut open the wound, applied a dark brown paste, and recited chants, restoring Lori to health.
Rex insists that Jeannette's mother should have taken her to that witch doctor on the day she was burned rather than to "heads-up-their-asses med-school quacks."
Mother's Disapproval and Sibling Updates:
When informed about the chewing gum, Jeannette's mother expresses disgust ("Ugh"), calling it a disgusting, low-class habit and vulgar behavior, and asserts that the nurse should have consulted her first.
Jeannette asks Lori during a visit if the family misses her; Lori responds, "Not really… Too much has been happening."
On a subsequent visit, Brian's head is wrapped in a dirty white bandage with dried bloodstains.
Her mother explains Brian fell off the back of the couch and cracked his head open on the floor, but they decided against taking him to the hospital, saying "one kid in the hospital at a time is enough."
Rex jokes that Brian's head is so hard that the floor took more damage than he did, which Brian finds hilarious.
Her mother reveals she entered Jeannette's name in a fair raffle and won a helicopter ride, but admits the family took the ride without Jeannette while she was hospitalized.
Confrontation with the Doctor:
Rex gets into an argument with Jeannette's doctor, arguing that her bandages should be removed because "Burns need to breathe."
The doctor states bandages are required to prevent infection, to which Rex responds, "To hell with infection," and accuses the doctor of scarring his daughter for life.
Rex pulls back his fist to punch the doctor, causing the doctor to back away with raised hands.
A uniformed guard intervenes and forces Mom, Dad, Lori, and Brian to leave the premises.
Afterward, a nurse asks Jeannette if she is okay; Jeannette says she does not care about having a scar, leading the nurse to remark that she has other things to worry about.
Rex Walls-Style Hospital Escape and Subsequent Obsession with Fire
The Escape ("Rex Walls-Style"):
After Jeannette has spent approximately six weeks in the hospital, Rex Walls enters her room alone and tells her they are checking out "Rex Walls-style."
When Jeannette asks if it is okay, Rex tells her, "You just trust your old man."
He unhooks her right arm from the headboard sling and holds her close; Jeannette smells his familiar combination of Vitalis, whiskey, and cigarette smoke.
Rex carries Jeannette in his arms and runs down the hallway as a nurse shouts for them to stop.
He pushes open an emergency-exit door, runs down the stairs, and heads into the street.
Their car—a beat-up Plymouth named the Blue Goose—is idling around the corner with her mother in front, and Lori, Brian, and Juju in the back.
Rex slides Jeannette across the front seat next to her mother, takes the wheel, and tells her, "You don't have to worry anymore, baby… You're safe now."
Return Home and Fascination with Fire:
A few days after returning home, Jeannette cooks hot dogs by herself again because she is hungry, her mother is painting, and no one else is available.
Her mother sees her and approves, telling her, "Good for you… You've got to get right back in the saddle. You can't live in fear of something as basic as fire."
Instead of fearing fire, Jeannette develops a fascination with it.
Rex demonstrates how to pass a finger through a candle flame; Jeannette repeats this continually, slowing her finger to watch it cut the flame in half and testing her heat tolerance.
She seeks out larger fires, running over to watch neighbors burn trash, moving closer to feel the intense heat on her face before backing off slightly.
When the neighbor who drove her to the hospital expresses surprise that Jeannette does not run away from fire, Rex proudly grins and bellows, "Why the hell would she?… She already fought the fire once and won."
Pyromaniac Experiments:
Jeannette steals matchbooks from her father and lights them behind the trailer.
She enjoys the scratching sound against the sandpapery brown strip, the pop and hiss, and the sudden leap of the flame from the red-coated tip.
She holds lit matches near her fingertips, triumphantly waves them out, and lights small scraps of paper and brush piles.
She holds her breath until the small blazes verge on growing out of control, then stomps them out while shouting her father's profanities, including "Dumb-ass sonofabitch!" and "Cocksucker!"
On one occasion, she takes her favorite toy behind the trailer: a two-inch-tall plastic Tinkerbell figurine featuring yellow hair in a high ponytail and hands on her hips in a confident, cocky pose.