Have you ever lived unhappily but it was impossible to escape from it? Unhappy lives are like cancer to individuals. Many people have difficulties running away from unhappiness. Many sacrifices are done to avoid harming anyone. Also, unhappiness holds people back and destroys their lives. There are many ways to escape unhappiness; however, the best way to escape unhappiness is running away from it without hurting anyone. In Tennessee William’s book, The Glass Menagerie, Tom escapes his unhappy life by looking for adventures, which is the best method because he fulfilled his dreams and harmed no one. Tom escapes his unhappy life by following his dreams and ambitions. For example, Laura asked, “where have [Tom] been all this time?” and Tom said that, “[he] has been to the movies” (26). This shows that Tom escapes his unhappiness by going to the movies, pretending that it is an adventure. Adventures are one of Tom’s dreams and the movies are the only connection for him with the outer world. Movies show him the adventures of other people and he feels that he is present in that adventure (movie). In addition, …show more content…
For example, Laura escapes reality by “washing and polishing her collection of glass” (11). This shows that Laura is trying to have her own world by pretending that her glass menagerie are real people. She has difficulties interacting with the surrounding world, so she clings to the glass collection to waste time living in imagination. In addition, Jim said that the problem is “the lack of confidence in [Laura]” (81).Cleaning the glass menagerie made Laura more shy and lonely and it made he more insecure about her physical traits. This also made her worse in social interaction, since she only cleans and talks with illusional people. Laura’s way of escaping her unhappy life is not the best way because it made her more shy and
Laura Brown is a fragile middleclass housewife and mother in 1951. She lives a miserable life trying to play the model suburban housewife. Throughout The Hours, Laura is reading Mrs. Dalloway, which is Virginia's novel. Her obvious mental illness doesn't allow her to always connect and understand her environment. Situations that seem simple to the average person, such as making a cake, are beyond difficu...
This is highlighted through the fact that Laura rarely speaks about herself but when she does her self doubt, and fears are quite
She is a shy, quiet girl who keeps herself at a distance. She loves glass figurines and prides herself on them. To her brother, she is seen as crippled because she cannot walk well and is socially awkward. This results in Laura’s reality being different than the rest of the family’s because she closes herself off into a space where it is only her. Amanda wants the best for Laura, for her to have a husband or finish business school, because she wants Laura to get out of the house and get living. However, Laura does not want to live in that world, and it is shown when she skipped her business classes and through her interaction with Jim, her high school crush. Jim is the only person who is able to take Laura out of her own weird reality, and bring her into the reality of an ordinary girl. Laura breaks through her reality when she talks about the unicorn horn that Jim broke off her glass figurine, she tells Jim that, “It doesn’t matter. . . . [smiling] I’ll just imagine he had an operation. The horn was removed to make him feel less—freakish!” (Williams, 2009). Therefore, Laura being with Jim makes her feel a little less odd. This brings Laura out of her own reality for a bit, but then she retreats back into it when she finds out that Jim is engaged to someone else right after he kisses her. He broke her free of her own reality for a bit, just like how he broke the horn off of the
Laura unable to survive in the outside world - retreating into their apartment and her glass collection and victrola. There is one specific time when she appears to be progressing when Jim is there and she is feeling comfortable with being around him. This stands out because in all other scenes of the play Laura has never been able to even consider conversation with a "Gentleman Caller."
It is said in the character description that Laura “[has] failed to establish contact with reality” (Glass 83). This illustrates how Laura is childlike and naive, in that, Williams literally says that she has not established contact with reality. Laura is naive because she refuses to face life and all that comes with it, she is also childlike because she has sheltered herself and is unaware of her surroundings much as a child would be. Early on in the play the reader discovers that Laura had affections towards Jim when they were in high school. This, of course, will prove to be part of Jim’s easy manipulation of Laura. Shortly after this discovery, Laura’s gentleman caller, Jim, is invited over for dinner with the family. After having completed their evening meal, Laura and Jim go to another room and being
how society forced them to change and Laura to lose her status in order to fit
Tom deserting his family wanting to escape from his family, his job and current life which endorses his loss of belonging to his family and his life or, perhaps,
When he asks what she gives it to him for, she replies, “A—souvenir.” Then she hands it to him, almost as if to show him that he had shattered her unique beauty. This incident changed her in the way that a piece of her innocence that made her so different is now gone. She is still beautiful and fragile like the menagerie, but just as she gives a piece of her collection to Jim, she also gives him a piece of her heart that she would never be able to regain. Laura and her menagerie are both at risk of being crushed when exposed to the uncaring reality of the world.
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.
Dysfunctional. Codependent. Enmeshed. Low self-esteem. Emotional problems of the modern twenty-first century or problems of the past? In his play, The Glass Menagerie, Tennessee Williams portrays a southern family in the 1940's trying to deal with life's pressures, and their own fears after they are deserted by their husband and father. Although today, we have access to hundreds of psychoanalysis books and therapists, the family problems of the distant past continue to be the family problems of the present.
The Glass Menagerie is a play written by Tennessee Williams in 1945. The play takes place in the Wingfield’s apartment in St. Louis. Tom is the protagonist in the play and he stays at home with his mother Amanda and his sister Laura. Tom’s Father left the family when he was younger leaving him as the man of the house. His mother Amanda expects him to do everything a man would do. This included working, paying bills, and taking care of herself and Laura. Laura is disabled and she doesn’t work therefore Tom is left providing for his whole family. Being abandoned by Mr. Wingfield left the family distraught. No one seemed to be able to cope with the fact that he was gone even though he left many years ago. Amanda is constantly treating Tom like a child. She tells him how to eat, when to eat, and what he should and should not wear. Tom eventually gets fed up with everything. He can’t stand his factory job, the responsibility of being the man or being treated like a child by his mother. Tom decides to follow in his father’s footsteps and leave the family. It seems as if Tom thinks that running away from his problems will make them go away but things didn’t turn out that way. Although the play was written many years ago, young adults in this day and age can relate to Tom and his actions. The main theme in the play is escape. All of the character use escape in some way. Laura runs to her glass menagerie or phonographs when she can’t handle a situation, Amanda seems to live in the past, and Tom constantly runs away when things aren’t going his way. Escape is a short term fix for a bigger problem. Running away may seem like the easiest thing to do, but in the end the problem is still there and it may be unforgettable. As time goes on esc...
Laura has a physical handicap with one leg being shorter than the other. With this handicap Laura was picked on and led to having high anxiety and stress. The anxiety and stress led to her not going to business college as stated when Amanda went to Laura’s class and talked to Laura’s teacher. To escape from the stress, Laura has a collection of glass sculptures. This is stated in the scene information of Scene II with “She [Laura] is washing and polishing her collection of glass” (Williams 1251). In Scene III when Tom and Amanda are fighting Tom through his jacket and broke a sculpture “With an outraged groan he [Tom] tears the coat off again, splitting the shoulders of it and hurls it across the room. It strikes against the shelf of Laura’s glass collection, there is a tinkle of shattering glass. Laura cries out as if wounded” (Williams 1257). Laura has one piece in her collection that wasn’t broken till later and means the most to her and that is the unicorn, Laura states this with “I shouldn’t be partial, but he is my favorite one” (Williams 1282). The unicorn represents her because the unicorn is different from a normal horse just like how she is different from other women, she then allows her gentleman caller Jim O’Connor to hold the unicorn and saying “Go on, I trust you with him”
Laura suffers from an "inferiority complex," much like how Jim described. She feels burdened with
The protagonist, Laura belongs to a wealthy family where her is life is perfect. She carries on with an ideal life that most people desire to live. The narrator creates some images of paradise to demonstrate how impeccable Laura’s life is. However, Laura has been trapped from the reality. She has not been exposed to the lives of the destitute. This is demonstrated when the
written in between 384 and 222 BC, and his views were taken on by some