Connections to The Glass Castle

To The Boogie Man: (Children)

I used to be afraid of you,
heard you eat up girls and boys.
I didn't want the lights turned out
and I was scared to play with toys.

Then Mommy asked you over.
She told me you're just sad.
You have no one to play with
and you aren't really bad.

You never come to dinner.
We still set a place for you,
a plate, a spoon, a glass for milk,
just in case you do.

-C.J. Heck

In the book The Glass Castle Jeannette thought she heard something under her and her sister’s bed and went to go get her dad. She finds her Dad in the living room and says that she heard a sound. Her father describes a scary monster and Jeannette says that’s who she thinks she saw. They went out to go find “Demon”, the scary ‘Boogie Man’ who was underneath Jeannette’s bed. In this passage she says “Dad said he’d been chasing Demon for years. By now, Dad said that old demon had figured out that it had better not mess with Rex Walls. But if that sneaky son of a gun thought it was going to terrorize Rex Wall’s little girl, it had by God got another think coming” (36). This connects to the poem “To the Boogie Man” by C.J. Heck because it shows how her Dad is comforting her from the ‘Demon’. He’s not denying his existence he’s just reassuring Jeannette and claiming there’s nothing to fear. In the poem it said “Then Mommy asked you over. She told me you're just sad. You have no one to play with and you aren't really bad” When talking about the Boogie Man.  In the book Jeannette and her father hunt down the ‘demon’, who is obviously not real and in the poem they leave a space for him at the dining table so he’s not lonely.

In this book, the Boogie Man or Demon is the least scary thing in Jeannette’s life compared to falling out if a car and being scared that you could be left behind along with many other events occurring in the story. The poem addresses the figurative meaning because its how these things like a boogie monster will not be the worst thing to come and how the boogie monster is just sad and lonely. By saying “I used to be afraid of you,” in the poem applies that things will come in your life that you’ll fear more than a boogie monster. In the book Jeannette's dad says “All you have to do, Mountain Goat, is show them that you’re not afraid”. This shows that once you no longer fear these things they won’t bother you.