With an unstable mother and alcoholic father, the Walls children matured very quickly in order to establish order and responsibility in their household. Jeanette Walls established this significant loss of innocence that was essential in the maintenance of a family through her gradually evolving style. While staying in the hospital being treated for a burn incident, the youthful Jeanette notes, “I would have been happy staying in that hospital forever” (Walls 12). Although she allows her naivety to shine through during her early childhood years, this naivety quickly grew into maturity, to assume her crucial role as care-taker for her younger siblings. Throughout her teen years, Jeanette and her siblings took advantage of every opportunity to bring home any amount of money for their family-an aspect that her parents never understood. Jeanette considered that “there’s one thing about whoring: It put a chicken on the table” (Walls 163). She did not grasp during her childhood that people went to desperate measures to make end’s meet for their families, but her gradual loss of innocence allowed her to comprehend this. For the Walls children, their youth was flooded with an overwhelming dose of maturity-as portrayed as an important theme in the novel.
The Walls family, for as long as they were together, always barely managed to linger on the fine line of normalcy and disruption. As soon as the children would be settled in a new school or new home, the father would announce another relocation. When Jeanette finally had faith that her father would discontinue his drinking habits, he would return back to alcoholism. Acting as a concluding reflection on her past, Walls depicts “the candle flames suddenly shifted, dancing along the border between turbulence and order” (Walls 288). Even though the children had managed to break free from the “turbulence” of their childhood, the limits of their memories would never allow them to fully establish success or “order” in their lives.
I agree with you that through out the novel, the theme, loss of innoucence is present. The Walls children are expected to grow-up a very early age. As they learn that their parents won't or are unable to provided for them, they have to start providing for themselves. They have to learn to fight and cook at an age where most children are starting school. This in turn leads to a very unusal childhood. Their loss of innoucence is seen in many other unusal incidents in their childhood, that most child would never expierence.
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