Summary of Scene Seven of The Glass Menagerie
Half an hour later, as dinner is finishing up, the lights go out. Tom feigns ignorance of the cause. Amanda, unfazed, continues to be as charming as she can be. She lights candles and asks Jim to check the fuse box. After Jim tells her that the fuse box looks fine, Amanda suggests that he go spend time with Laura in the living room.
As Amanda and Tom do dishes in the kitchen, Laura warms up to Jim, who is charming enough to put her ease. She reminds him that they knew each other in high school, and that he used to call her "Blue Roses." Jim feels ashamed that he did not recognize her at once. They reminisce about the class they had together, a singing class to which Laura, because of her leg, was always late. She always felt that the brace on her leg made a clumping sound "like thunder," but Jim insists that he never noticed it.
They have a friendly conversation by candlelight. Jim reveals that he was never engaged, and that his old girlfriend was the one who put the announcement in the yearbook. They no longer see each other. Laura speaks admirably of Jim's voice, and he autographs the program of the show he was in, The Pirates of Penzance‹she was too shy to bring the program to him back in high school, but she has kept it all these years. Jim tries to give Laura advice about raising the level of her self-esteem, and talks about his plans to get involved with the nascent television industry. He speaks of the numerous courses he is taking, and his interest in various, programmatic methods for self-improvement. He calls money and power the cycle on which democracy is built.
She shows Jim her glass collection. They look closely at a little glass unicorn, remarking on how ...
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... frail and vulnerable.
Tom's closing speech is a great moment. The descending fourth wall puts a powerful but permeable barrier between Tom and his family. They are behind him, behind him in time and in the physical space of the stage, and they are inaudible. Yet he cannot seem to shake the memory of them, and they are clearly visible to the audience. Although he has never explicitly spoken of one of the play's most important themes‹the conflict between responsibility and the need to live his own life‹it is clear that he has not been able to fully shake the guilt from the decision that he made. The cost of escape has been the burden of memory. For Tom and the audience, it is difficult to forget the final image of frail Laura, illuminated by candlelight on a darkened stage, while the world outside of the apartment faces the beginnings of a great storm.
When Meghan hears me enter she runs crying "Tim's teasing me and I'm hungry." I ask the kids, "Why didn't you feed her?" Tim responds, "she didn't say she was hungry." Pat runs up from the basement and reminds me I have to take him to guitar practice now or he'll be late.
He claims to go to the movies, however; his mother thinks other wise of the situation and creates an uproar in the house. She asks Tom why he won 't bring any gentleman callers to the house for his sister to try and get her to move away. While showing complete love for her daughter she still wants her out of the house. Tom decides to bring home one of his friends from work to have dinner with him and his family. When Amanda finds out she is ecstatic and goes on about how she always had gentleman callers coming around and how this was going to be the best night ever. Laura was not happy at all “I 'm just not popular like you were in Blue Mountain” (Williams 367). Laura was content where she was and felt no man could possibly love her. When the gentleman arrived Laura was nowhere to be seen and had suddenly become ill. She knew the gentleman caller from school Jim, and had a crush on him during school but never said anything. Laura had a glass collection that defined who she was and her favorite was different from all the other ones just like she was different. Jim was a very smart and intelligent man that would soon have more accomplishments than most. He
The Glass Menagerie is about four characters, Amanda Wingfield, mother of Tom, Laura and Jim O’Connor. The story is about a mother who has raised her two kids by herself because the father, Mr. Wingfield left many years ago to continue working other places around the country. After Amanda finds out that Laura has dropped out of school she begins to worry that Laura will not be able to settle down with anyone."I wonder,’ she said, ‘If you could be talking about that terribly shy little girl who dropped out of school after only a few days’ attendance?”(Shmoop Editorial Team) In the story Amanda the mother wants Tom to find a suitable male caller for his sister Laura from his work place. Jim O’Connor was who Tom invited to dinner, this was the
Another aspect of Laura’s personality, which is portrayed by the glass menagerie, is her extreme fragility. At first, Laura calls this “a blessing in disguise” – that he has made her normal. But when he reveals to her that he is engaged to another woman, her hopes are shattered, just like the unicorn’s horn. Now the unicorn is just like all the other horses, therefore, she decides it is more fitting for Jim than it is for her.
All of the characters in The Glass Menagerie have specific symbols in the play representing
In Tennessee Williams's play, The Glass Menagerie, he reflects upon the economic status and desperation of an American family living in St. Louis during the 1930s. Williams portrays three characters: Amanda Wingfield, the disappointed mother; Tom, the narrator and trapped son; and Laura, the crippled daughter. Williams compares the Wingfield apartment to "one of those vast hive-like conglomerations of cellular living-units..." a reminder to each character of the harsh reality of their life (epilogue.1972). Although they strive for escape from the same situation, each character has a way of dealing with hardships that are symbolized throughout the play in various ways. William's use of symbolism emphasizes one of the main themes; escaping reality.
In high school, Jim was basically your all around nice guy. He was friendly to everyone, and an example of this is that he called Laura "Blue Roses". He was being friendly when he nicknamed her that, but otherwise they didn't really talk to each other. That was basically under the only circumstances that they actually talked. The only reason that Jim asked Laura what was the matter in the first place, was because she was out of school for a long time and he was just a little concerned like anyone that is your all around nice and friendly type of person would do.
Symbolism in The Glass Menagerie Symbolism plays an integral part in Williams’s play, The Glass Menagerie. Examples of the use of symbolism include the fire escape, as an escape from the family, the phonograph, as an escape from reality, the unicorn, as a symbol for Laura's uniqueness and the father’s photograph, representing something different to each character. Through recognition of these symbols, a greater understanding of the play’s theme is achieved. Throughout the play, Tom Wingfield was torn by a responsibility he felt for his mother and sister and the need to be his own man. He used the fire escape most of the time.
Fordyce states, “The weight of family obligations is something Tom must cast aside, but he cannot do so unscathed; after he left, the memory of the past... leads him into an emotional impasse”(255). Tom cannot forget Laura, even after a long period of time. This is because, no matter what the circumstances, family stays with you. In varying degrees, no character in the play can seem to accept their reality. Even as Tom begins the play, he admits of the gentleman caller, “He is the most realistic character in the play, being an emissary from a world of reality we were somehow set apart from”(Williams 852). Because Williams tells this story through the memory of Tom, we are able to see that he has still not managed to overcome his guilt about leaving Laura. It is human nature to resist one’s imagined prisons, but it will end in defeat because of the imperfect nature of humanity (Fordyce 270). While some may say that one can forget their past life in favor of a new one, family has a place in the heart that cannot be easily
Tom is a sensitive, artistic man who is forced by circumstances into a phenomenological situation. He is compelled to live and re-live the situation of the play, in which he sought for and found what he believed to be freedom. Although he escapes the situation, he does not find freedom; his consciousness forces him to dwell upon the situation until he finds meaning in it. Because Mr. Wingfield, Laura, Amanda, and Jim are parts of ...
The last scene of the play is when Tom storms out of the apartment and
Jim would call her blue roses, "he thought that I had said Blue Roses! So that's what he'd always call me after that” (64-65). Jim was the only boy Laura ever was interested in, she even told Amanda about him. Tom invited a friend over as a gentleman caller for Laura, it happened to be Jim. When Laura saw Jim, she acted extremely sheepish, she was too nervous to open the door. Jim did not recognize her until halfway through the dinner. Jim realized she was not confident and tried to instill confidence in her by kissing her and calling her pretty. This worked for a hot second, but Laura later retreated to her own world when he said he was
Laura shows that she doesn’t live on past events/ When Laura talks to Jim at dinner and comes to know Jim has a girlfriend. Jim answers to Laura's question if he will call again on page 89, "No, Laura, I can’t. As I was just explaining, I've---got strings on me. Laura, I've---been going steady! I go out all the time with a girl named Betty." Jim is saying that he can’t have a relationship with Laura because he is talking to a girl named Betty. This important because it means that Laura can’t be with the man she dearly loves. She doesn’t cry about it or
The Glass Menagerie is a tale of a family caught up in their own deep struggles and sometimes selfish dreams. Throughout this memory play, the Wingfield’s struggles and conflicts lie deep within themselves, but also with each other. Laura and Tom each have profound conflicts with their mother, Amanda. What Laura wants for herself is completely different from what Amanda wants for her, as it is with Tom and Amanda. Laura’s quiet, timid life with her glass figurines greatly differs from the vivacious, successful, gentlemen- seeking life that Amanda wishes her to pursue. And Tom wants to escape the stifling home he inhabits with his mother and sister, and become lost in literature, movies, liquor, and adventure, and just get away, like his father did. But Amanda wants Tom to become a thriving businessman, and simply escape the shoe factory that employs him. These conflicts complicate the relationships that the characters hold with each other, and the world. The conflicts that divide Laura and Amanda, and Amanda and Tom, not only obscure their ties with each other, but ultimately weaken their grasp on reality.
Amanda is obsessed with her past as she constantly reminds Tom and Laura of that 'one Sunday afternoon in Blue Mountain' when she received seventeen gentlemen callers (Williams 32). The reader cannot even be sure that this actually happened. However, it is clear that despite its possible falsity, Amanda has come to believe it. She refuses to acknowledge that her daughter is crippled and refers to her handicap as 'a little defect - hardly noticeable' (Williams 45). Only for brief moments does she ever admit that her daughter is 'crippled' and then she resorts back to denial. She doesn't perceive anything realistically. She believes that this gentleman caller, Jim, is going to be the man to rescue Laura and she hasn't even met him yet. She tells Laura when Laura is nervous about the gentleman caller, 'You couldn't be satisfied with just sitting home', whe...