The Glass Castle
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50 free The Glass Castle trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Jeannette Walls spent years hiding her childhood from the people she worked with in Manhattan. The Glass Castle, published in 2005, is the story she finally told: a brilliant, unreliable father who promises his children a house made of glass, an artist mother who would rather paint than cook, and children who learn to raise themselves. It has become one of the most widely read and widely taught American memoirs. This quiz follows the book in order. It starts with the opening scene on a New York street, moves through the desert years of midnight moves and big promises, stays for the hard winters in Welch, West Virginia, and ends with the plan the siblings hatch to get out. Expect questions on Rex and Rose Mary Walls, on Lori and Brian, and on the neighbors, teachers and relatives of Welch, plus a few on the author's later career and the film adaptation. It suits students checking their reading before a class test, book clubs that want a quick multiple-choice review, and anyone revisiting the memoir after seeing the film. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so a wrong guess still sends you back to the right scene.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In The Glass Castle, what is three-year-old Jeannette Walls cooking when her dress goes up in flames?
Hot dogs
Hot dogs were boiling on the stove when her pink dress caught. After about six weeks of skin grafts, her father carried her out of the hospital without paying the bill.
Q 02At the start of The Glass Castle, what is Rose Mary Walls doing when Jeannette spots her from a taxi?
Rooting through a dumpster
Rooting through a dumpster was how Jeannette found her, two blocks from a party. She slid down in her seat and asked the driver to turn around and take her home.
Q 03In The Glass Castle, which planet does young Jeannette Walls claim when her father offers stars as Christmas presents?
Venus
Venus was her pick, the brightest light low in the western sky. Decades later, walking Manhattan at night, she still looks for it glowing over the river.
Q 04In The Glass Castle, what does Jeannette Walls ask her father to do as her tenth birthday present?
Stop drinking
Stop drinking was her whole wish. Rex dried out at home and stayed sober for a few months, and his relapse is what sent the family east to West Virginia.
Q 05In The Glass Castle, what ends up filling the foundation hole Jeannette and Brian Walls dig for the dream house?
Garbage
Garbage went into the pit because the family could not afford the town's trash-collection fee. Rex called it a temporary measure, and the heap soon attracted a big river rat.
Q 06In The Glass Castle, which big cat does Rex Walls let his children pet through the bars of its zoo cage?
A cheetah
A cheetah licked Jeannette's palm, drawn, her father said, by the popcorn salt and butter on her hand. A guard soon ordered the family to leave the zoo.
Q 07In The Glass Castle, what do the hungry Walls children catch their mother secretly eating under her bedcovers?
A chocolate bar
A chocolate bar, a family-sized Hershey's already half gone, lay beside her. She sobbed that she was a sugar addict, and the four children split the rest.
Q 08In The Glass Castle, what does teenage Jeannette Walls build from a wire coat hanger and rubber bands?
Dental braces
Dental braces cost twelve hundred dollars, so she made her own and wore them at night. Her father called them a feat of engineering genius and said they were working.
Q 09In The Glass Castle, which career does Brian Walls take up in New York, baffling a father who hates authority?
Police officer
Police officer was the job he took as soon as he turned twenty. Rex wondered where he had gone wrong raising a son who joined what he called the gestapo.
Q 10In the opening of The Glass Castle, what does Rose Mary Walls tell Jeannette to say when people ask about her parents?
The truth
The truth, she says, is simple enough. That lunchtime challenge in a Chinese restaurant launches the memoir, a story Jeannette had spent years hiding from her friends.
Q 11In The Glass Castle, who does Rex Walls claim is chasing the family when they flee bill collectors at night?
The FBI
The FBI was after him, he hinted, over a dark episode he never explained. Rose Mary told the children he just found federal agents more fun than bill collectors.
Q 12In The Glass Castle, what name does Rex Walls give the family's sudden night-time moves out of town?
The skedaddle
The skedaddle meant grabbing whatever fit in the car and leaving the rest. On one such exit Jeannette's favourite toy was left behind for good.
Q 13In The Glass Castle, what does Rex Walls call the contraption he designs to separate gold nuggets from desert rock?
The Prospector
Q 21In The Glass Castle, what kind of old building do the Walls family move into in Battle Mountain, Nevada?
A railroad depot
A railroad depot on the edge of town became home. Cable spools served as tables, and the children slept in refrigerator-sized cardboard boxes they refused to trade for beds.
Q 22In The Glass Castle, what is the sulfur spring called where Rex Walls throws Jeannette in until she swims?
The Hot Pot
The Hot Pot, a desert spring that locals said had no bottom, was his classroom. His lesson afterwards: you can't cling to the side your whole life.
Q 23In The Glass Castle, which Nevada neighbor fires a BB gun at the Walls house after Jeannette returns his ring?
Billy Deel
The Prospector would scoop up dirt and tell gold from plain rock by its weight. Striking it rich was step one; the family's dream house was meant to come next.
Q 14Which holiday gives its name to the final part of The Glass Castle, set five years after Rex Walls's death?
Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving brings the family to Jeannette's country home, where her second husband roasts the turkey and everyone raises a toast to Rex.
Q 15In the closing toast of The Glass Castle, Rose Mary Walls says life with Rex was never what?
Boring
Boring is the one thing she says life with him never was. Jeannette imagines him chuckling at the line, the way he did when he truly enjoyed something.
Q 16In The Glass Castle, which wind-bent desert plant does Rose Mary Walls say owes its beauty to its struggle?
A Joshua tree
A Joshua tree, bowed sideways by the wind, inspired dozens of her paintings. When Jeannette offered to straighten a sapling, she said that would destroy what made it special.
Q 17In The Glass Castle, in which state does Rose Mary Walls own inherited land valued at about a million dollars?
Texas
Texas land came down from her mother, and she would not sell it even while her children scavenged for food. Its value stunned Jeannette years later.
Q 18In The Glass Castle, what kills Rex Walls two weeks after he tells Jeannette that he is dying?
A heart attack
A heart attack killed him at fifty-nine, after decades of four packs of cigarettes a day. He had blamed his decline on a rare tropical disease.
Q 19In The Glass Castle, which form of federal aid does Rex Walls say was first handed out in Welch?
Food stamps
Food stamps in their modern form really did start in Welch: in 1961 a McDowell County family received the first $95 worth as reporters looked on.
Q 20In The Glass Castle, which famous test pilot does Jeannette Walls interview for her school newspaper?
Chuck Yeager
Chuck Yeager was the one man her father admired above all others. Rex waited on the porch with pen and paper to coach her on questions the day before.
Billy Deel, a delinquent three years her senior, got real bullets back when Lori fetched her father's pistol. The family left for Phoenix that same night.
Q 24In The Glass Castle, what kind of business is the Green Lantern, the house the Walls kids pass in Nevada?
A brothel
A brothel, or a cathouse as their mother put it, the Green Lantern kept Christmas lights over its door all year. Jeannette saw no cats, only women waving from the porch.
Q 25In The Glass Castle, which item demanded by a school nurse does Rose Mary Walls dismiss as a crutch for Lori?
Eyeglasses
Eyeglasses let Lori read street signs aloud and spot starlings on the telephone wires for the first time. Moved to tears, she decided to become an artist.
Q 26In The Glass Castle, what do Jeannette and Brian Walls find under rotting lumber that their mother refuses to sell?
A diamond ring
A diamond ring of two carats went straight onto her finger to replace the wedding band Rex had pawned. Self-esteem, she said, was even more vital than food.
Q 27In The Glass Castle, Rose Mary Walls says she stays married to Rex partly because she is what kind of addict?
Excitement
Excitement was her self-diagnosed addiction. Her first reason for refusing to leave him, when Jeannette urged her to, was her Catholic faith.
Q 28In The Glass Castle, what do Jeannette and Brian Walls rig into a catapult to bury Ernie Goad's gang in rocks?
A mattress
A mattress piled with stones and yanked by ropes looped over tree branches sent an avalanche onto the bullies' bikes. The siblings named it the Battle of Little Hobart Street.
Q 29In The Glass Castle, which Walls sibling stabs their mother and later leaves New York for California?
Maureen
Maureen, the youngest, spent a year in an upstate hospital before buying a one-way bus ticket west. Jeannette blamed herself for failing to protect her.
Q 30In The Glass Castle, which nickname does Rex Walls use for his daughter Jeannette?
Mountain Goat
Mountain Goat was his name for her because she never fell when they climbed together. He uses it even on the night the two of them hunt a monster called Demon through the house.