2: The Glass Castle 67-128

"Hitchiking was one option, Dad said. If we covered three miles an hour for eight hours a day, we could make it in three days. We had to leave everything behind except Maureen's lavender blanket and the canteen.s That included Mom's fruitwood archery set. Since Mom was attached to that archery set, which her father had given her, Dad had Brian and me hide it in an irrigation ditch. We could come back and retrieve it later.
Dad carried Maureen. To keep our spirits up, he called out hup, two, three, four, but Mom and Lori refuesed to march along in step. Eventually Dad gave up and it was quiet except for the sound of our feet crunching on the sand and rocks and the wind whipping off the desert. After walking for what seemed like a couple of hours, we reached a motel billboard that we had passed only a minute or so before the car broke down. The occasianal car whizzed by, and Dad stuck out his thumb, but none of them stopped. Around midday, a big blue Buick with gleaming chrone bumpers slowed down and pulled onto the should in front of us. A lady with a beauty-parler hairdo rolled down the window.
'You poor people!' she exclaimed. 'Are you okay?'
She asked us where we were going and when we told her Poenix, she offered us a ride. The air-conditioning in th eBuick was so cold that goose bumps popped up on my arms and legs. The lady had and me pass aroundd coca-colas and sandwhiches from a cooler in the foot well. Dad said he wasn't hungry.
The lady kept talking about how her dauhter had been driving down the highway and seen us and, when she got to the lady's housue, had told her about this poor family walking along the side of the road. 'And I said to her, I said to my daughter, 'Why, I can't leave these poor people out there.' I told my daughter, 'Those poor kids must be dying of thirst, poor things.'
'We're not poor,' I saidd. She had used that word one too many times.
'Of course you're not,' the lady quickly replied. 'I didn't mean it that way.'
But i could tell that she had. The laddy gre quiet, and for the rest of the trip, no one said much. As soon as she dropped us off, Dad disappeared, I waited on the front steps until bedtime, but he didn't come home.

I liked this excerpt because the Dad finally realizes that he is failing his family. When the family got home after their troublesome day, "Dad disappeared." This showes that the Dad is humiliated by his carless driving and has put his family through so much misery, that he decides it is better for him to be out of the picture right now. This, however, is an example of the disfunctional family which is very present today. The Dad runs away from his troubles instead of facing them. He realizes that he has failed his family but he wants to please them so much that it always ends up backfiring. Jeanette, however, loves her father. Her dad is her hero, despite how much he messes up. Jeanette ceases to see the bad things, and looks up to her dad as a rolemodel. Jeanette loves her father's abstract ideas and ways of life. This demonstrates the unconditional love that a child has toward their parents. Jeanette is an odd character because, despite her unconditional love to her dad, she never gets mad at him or loses faith in him. Jeanette only sees the good things in life, and does not think about what she doesn't have. Jeanette focuses on keeping her family together, instead of her few posessions.