The Glass Menagerie Analysis

2295 Words5 Pages

Tennessee Williams’ excellent use of themes to portray characters in his world class, classic play “The Glass Menagerie” makes the play enthralling till the very end of it. Out of many themes like loneliness, illusions and distress; disintegration of the family seems to be a major plot of the play. Undoubtedly, all the themes displayed in “The Glass Menagerie” are as much important for the success of the play which keeps the audience indulged into it throughout. Nature and lifestyle of each character plays a vital role in creating events and setting the theme of the story. From an ambitious, energetic and hard-working young man, Tom to a physically challenged and unsociable girl, Laura; many qualities of a human being have been portrayed in …show more content…

Every member of WIngfield family described by Tennessee William uses illusion to protect himself/herself from a reality which is oppressive and ultimately destructive. Laura makes the most obvious use of illusions in her creation of a world of glass which becomes more real to her than the “real” world outside the glass menagerie. The world of glass menageries is very beautiful, delicate, and tender for Laura where she finds the most comfort to escape from the chaos of everyday life. At the end of the play, Laura returns to this glass world from which Jim almost took her away during his visit as the gentleman caller. After encounter with “the gentleman caller” and being let down by him, Laura seems to have become a fragile piece of glass, lost forever in the illusionary world that she has created, who would never let the outside world impinge on her or hurt her again. (NOVICK, J. “The Harvard …show more content…

Qualities of characters observed in all characters of the Wingfield family are not that rare to find in today’s world. Many families seem to live in distress due to one or the other defect in the quality of a member of the family. Laura’s unsociable and shy characters can often be seen through many children. Amanda’s pushy character or high expectations from her children is also quite common in many mothers. Tom’s character of an ambitious young man, who likes to chase his dreams but is strangled in the family due to his responsibilities towards the family, is often found in many

Show More
Related

  • Laura In Tennessee William's The Glass Menagerie

    1667 Words  | 4 Pages

    The Glass Menagerie is a play about the character Tom trying to escape his living situation that traps him. He is doing to best to cope with his dependent, demanding mother Amanda and take care of his quiet sister Laura. Amanda and Laura solely depend on Tom’s income from his warehouse job, but Tom is desperately wanting to leave both his mother and sister to lead his own adventurous life. Laura is mainly embodied by her precious glass menagerie and Jim O’Connor’s nickname for her, “Blue Roses.” Her livelihood revolves around taking care of her glass animals and protecting them, and in doing so, she isolates herself from the normal world around her. In Tennessee William’s play The Glass Menagerie, symbolism is use to uncover the unearthly beauty and delicacy of Laura and to portray Tom’s need to escape from his oppressive responsibilities.

    Read More

  • Use of Metaphor in Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie

    841 Words  | 2 Pages

    Laura is the owner and caretaker of the glass menagerie. In her own little fantasy world, playing with the glass animals is how she escapes from the real world in order to get away from the realities and hardships she endures. Though she is crippled only to a very slight degree physically, her mind is very disabled on an emotional level. Over time, she has become very fragile, much like the glass, which shatters easily, as one of the animals lost its horn; she can lose control of herself. Laura is very weak and open to attack, unable to defend herself from the truths of life. The glass menagerie is an unmistakable metaphor in representing Laura’s physical and mental states.

    Read More

  • Free Glass Menagerie Essays: The Destruction of Laura

    1116 Words  | 3 Pages

    In Tennessee William's play, The Glass Menagerie, the character of Laura is like a fragile piece of glass. The play is based around a fragile family and their difficulties coping with life.

    Read More

  • The Glass Menagerie Analysis

    1420 Words  | 3 Pages

    Did you know that most of the plays written and performed in twentieth century America where based off of what was happening in the world at that time? The Great Depression, new inventions, and The Great War influenced the ideas of plays. The twentieth century American history takes a role in the ways of life in The Glass Menagerie which is set after the Great Depression in the late 1930’s.

    Read More

  • glass

    781 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Glass Menagerie as a whole serves as a reflection of Tennessee Williams personal life. The character of Tom, who is named after Williams own given name of Thomas, shares the same desire to escape from his demanding family life. Laura, whose nickname Blue Roses is a veiled reference to Tennessee Williams sister Rose. Laura much like Rose also suffers from a disability. While Rose suffered from schizophrenia, Laura’s disability was physical but both women were emotionally fragile and dependent on others to care and provide for them. Amanda Wingfield is very similar to Williams mother Edwina. Both matriarchs deeply care for their children but live in a world of illusion, where their reality is having a life of social poise and grandeur. The Wingfield patriarch abandoned the family years before the events of the play but it can be noted that he is similar to Williams own father who was an alcoholic traveling salesman who was always away from home.

    Read More

  • Tennessee Williams and His Message in "The Glass Menagerie"

    681 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Glass Menagerie is an eposidic play written by Tennesse Williams reflecting the economic status and desperation of the American people in the 30s.He portrays three different characters going through these hardships of the real world,and choosing different ways to escape it.Amanada,the mother,escapes to the memories of the youth;Tom watches the movies to provide him with the adventure he lacks in his life;and laura runs to her glass menagerie.

    Read More

  • Theme Of Anxiety In The Glass Menagerie

    1538 Words  | 4 Pages

    The family in Tennessee Williams’ play, The Glass Menagerie, faces various dilemmas. One of the most prominent is the issue of anxiety. Throughout the play, the family focuses their attention mainly on Laura and her struggle with both her physical disability and social anxiety. However, closer analysis reveals that Laura is not the only character suffering, each family member displays signs of being affected by anxiety. Their interactions with one another trigger feelings of nervousness, unhappiness, and anger. The issue of anxiety extends beyond Laura, affecting the whole family, and ultimately leads to tragedy.

    Read More

  • Glass Menagerie: Symbolism of Laura’s Fragility and Escapism

    935 Words  | 2 Pages

    Tennessee Williams’ play, “The Glass Menagerie”, depicts the life of an odd yet intriguing character: Laura. Because she is affected by a slight disability in her leg, she lacks the confidence as well as the desire to socialize with people outside her family. Refusing to be constrained to reality, she often escapes to her own world, which consists of her records and collection of glass animals. This glass menagerie holds a great deal of significance throughout the play (as the title implies) and is representative of several different aspects of Laura’s personality. Because the glass menagerie symbolizes more than one feature, its imagery can be considered both consistent and fluctuating.

    Read More

  • Free Glass Menagerie Essays: The Characters

    2168 Words  | 5 Pages

    Generally when some one writes a play they try to elude some deeper meaning or insight in it. Meaning about one's self or about life as a whole. Tennessee Williams' "The Glass Menagerie" is no exception the insight Williams portrays is about himself. Being that this play establishes itself as a memory play Williams is giving the audience a look at his own life, but being that the play is memory some things are exaggerated and these exaggerations describe the extremity of how Williams felt during these moments (Kirszner and Mandell 1807). The play centers itself on three characters. These three characters are: Amanda Wingfield, the mother and a women of a great confusing nature; Laura Wingfield, one who is slightly crippled and lets that make her extremely self conscious; and Tom Wingfield, one who feels trapped and is looking for a way out (Kirszner and Mandell 1805-06). Williams' characters are all lost in a dreamy state of illusion or escape wishing for something that they don't have. As the play goes from start to finish, as the events take place and the play progresses each of the characters undergoes a process, a change, or better yet a transition. At the beginning of each characters role they are all in a state of mind which causes them to slightly confuse what is real with what is not, by failing to realize or refusing to see what is illusioned truth and what is whole truth. By the end of the play each character moves out of this state of dreamy not quite factual reality, and is better able to see and face facts as to the way things are, however not all the characters have completely emerged from illusion, but all have moved from the world of dreams to truth by a whole or lesser degree.

    Read More

  • Analysis: The Glass Menagerie

    1125 Words  | 3 Pages

    As Winfield 's wife, Amanda is worthy of love and respect. Amanda is a southern lady, when she was young, she had an attractive appearance and graceful in manner, and her families were also quite rich. These favorable conditions made her the admiration of many men. Still, her final choice was a poor boy. She did not hesitate and bravely to choose her own love. Though her marriage was not as good as she had imagined the happiness of life, and the husband, Winfield meager income also drinking heavily, finally abandoned Amanda and two young children, but she still remembered and loved her husband. Her husband 's weakness did not make Amanda fall down; instead, she was brave enough to support the family, raising and educating of their two young children. Daughter Laura was a disability to close her fantasy world, and she was collection of a pile of glass small animals as partners. Amanda knew Laura sensitive, fragile, she was always in the care and encourages her daughter. Because of her shortcomings, Laura sometimes frustrated and Amanda immediately replied that "I 've told you never, never to use that word. Why, you 're not crippled, you just have a little defect". Amanda for the care of the children was more reflected a mother 's strong from the play that Amanda paid money to send Laura to typing school. She hoped daughter have a better future and married a good man to take care of the family, and encouraged her daughter, prompting her to go out of the glass menagerie to experience her real life, but Amanda placed more expectations for his son Tom because her husband left home, Tom is the only man and the mainstay of the family. She wanted Tom to realize that is a kind of family responsibility, also is a kind of essential social

    Read More

  • Essay on Tom's Escape in The Glass Menagerie

    786 Words  | 2 Pages

    In Tennessee Williams' play, The Glass Menagerie, each member of the Wingfield family has their own fantasy world in which they indulge themselves. Tom escaped temporarily from the fantasy world of Amanda and Laura by hanging out on the fire escape. Suffocating both emotionally and spiritually, Tom eventually sought a more permanent form of escape.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of The Glass Menagerie

    824 Words  | 2 Pages

    My outside source that I found was “Why Two-Income Families Are Happier than Single Earner Households,” which is explaining how stress is made by a single income family. Clarifying the amount of unhappiness and stress that is created in a single income family, rather than a household that has two incomes. I picked this article due to the stress that is shown within the play as Tom struggles to keep up with the bills.

    Read More

  • Illusion vs. Reality in The Glass Menagerie

    2804 Words  | 6 Pages

    In The Glass Menagerie, Tennessee Williams uses the roles of the members of the Wingfield family to highlight the controlling theme of illusion versus reality. The family as a whole is enveloped in mirage; the lives of the characters do not exist outside of their apartment and they have basically isolated themselves from the rest of the world. Even their apartment is a direct reflection of the past as stories are often recalled from the mother's teenage years at Blue Mountain, and a portrait of the man that previously left the family still hangs on the wall as if his existence is proven by the presence of the image. The most unusual factor of their world is that it appears as timeless. Amanda lives only in the past while Tom lives only in the future and Laura lives in her collection of glass animals, her favorite being the unicorn, which does not exist. Ordinary development and transformation cannot take place in a timeless atmosphere such as the apartment. The whole family resists change and is unwilling to accept alteration. Not only is the entire family a representation of illusion versus reality, each of the characters uses fantasy as a means of escaping the severity of their own separate world of reality. Each has an individual fantasy world to which they retreat when the existing world is too much for them to handle. Each character has a different way of dealing with life when it seems to take control of them, and they all become so completely absorbed in these fantasies that they become stuck in the past.

    Read More

  • Free Glass Menagerie Essays: Parallels to Williams' Life and Symbolism

    627 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams is a touching play about the lost dreams of a southern family and their struggle to escape reality. The play is a memory play and therefore very poetic in mood, setting, and dialogue. Tom Wingfield serves as the narrator as well as a character in the play. Tom lives with his Southern belle mother, Amanda, and his painfully shy sister, Laura. The action of the play revolves around Amanda's search to find Laura a "gentleman caller. The Glass Menagerie's plot closely mirrors actual events in the author's life. Because Williams related so well to the characters and situations, he was able to beautifully portray the play's theme through his creative use of symbolism.

    Read More

  • The Glass Menagerie Symbolism Analysis

    790 Words  | 2 Pages

    Laura is bound by the fire escape, it is an outlet into a world of the unknown, it is both a physical and emotional barrier for Laura. Tennessee Williams use of symbolism in The Glass Menagerie is exemplified through the fire escape outside of the Wingfield’s apartment. Often choosing to return home after his late night movie excursions, the fire escape represents both the exit and entrance into the Wingfield family (25). Tom’s decision to return is shown through the fire escape. In order to fully live, to seek adventure and change, Tom must stop seeing the fire escape as an entrance and only view it as an exit, an escape.

    Read More

More about The Glass Menagerie Analysis

Open Document