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Amanda character in glass menagerie play essay
Tennessee Williams life and the glass menagerie
Tennessee Williams life and the glass menagerie
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"Cling clang, cling clang", you are in high school walking through the hall, kids making judgments about you all the time. Laura Wingfield dragging herself through that hall every day for four years. In Tennessee William's The Glass Menagerie, Laura Wingfield, the daughter of Amanda Wingfield, shows great strength while dealing with the great bickering of her mother. While both Amanda and Laura portray certain acts of strength, Laura has a greater physical tenacity because of her health obstacles, discovering of happiness, and the acceptance of her own fate. First, Laura displays a greater physical drive that Amanda does not have to go through. In scene 7, Laura tells the reader what it was like every day in high school. Laura says,
Through this quote Williams incorporates heartache into Amanda’s voice depicting her ambition for Laura to succeed. She also feels, “So weak I could barely keep on my feet!”(Williams 14). These two quotes illustrate that Laura’s own being is extremely important to Amanda and to an extent, acts as if Laura’s failure is her own failure. This sense of care that Amanda shows is essential to help Laura make something of herself and appears to the reader as a deep aspiration of Amanda’s conscious. While Troy only cares for Cory because , “It is my job...cause it’s my duty”(Wilson 38).
Speak, by Laurie Halse anderson is novel about a girl known by the name of Melinda Sordano.In the novel Melindas transforamtion as the main protagoinst is represented by a tree. Three ways in which a tree represents Melinda are through the strugle to find who she is, her growth, amd life.
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.
Learning how to remain optimistic and fulfilled in a rough situation is one of the most important skills a person can develop.. In Tennessee William’s The Glass Menagerie, the Wingfield family has trouble separating what is real and what is not, but they always manage to stay pleased with themselves. Laura spends her time with her glass menagerie and trinkets. Tom uses art, literature, and substance abuse to distract him from his current situation. Amanda indulges into the past and lives vicariously through her daughter as to not be in the moment. When an individual is forced to comply to a certain standard of living, then they must artificially escape their reality, because if they do not, they will never be able to sustain
Laura's mother and brother shared some of her fragile tendencies. Amanda, Laura's mother, continually lives in the past. Her reflection of her teenage years continually haunts Laura. To the point where she forces her to see a "Gentleman Caller" it is then that Tom reminds his mother not to "expect to much of Laura" she is unlike other girls. But Laura's mother has not allowed herself nor the rest of the family to see Laura as different from other girls. Amanda continually lives in the past when she was young a pretty and lived on the plantation. Laura must feel she can never live up to her mothers expectations. Her mother continually reminds her of her differences throughout the play.
Amanda was a woman who lives in a world of fantasy and reality. In the past memory and the future of the fantasy made Amanda very strong, but in the face of reality she was fragile. Just like Tom used to explain “I give you truth in the
In the realistic fiction novel Ellen Foster, written by Kaye Gibbons, a young girl named Ellen Foster yearns for a loving family and a better life after enduring a tremendous amount of abuse and loss. Throughout the novel, Ellen exemplifies resilience by making the most of difficult circumstances and finding ways to rise above hardships. Of all of the qualities that Ellen demonstrated during the hardships she faced, resilience was the most valuable to her future success, because it enabled her to develop a strong sense of identity and bounce back from adversity.
By her no longer being as shy as prior to Mr. O'Connor's visit, she is able to end her inner battles and allow for her brother and mother to do the same. By beginning the play “crippled”, Laura is able to depict the evolution of her family's relationships in an unconventional manner by resolving Tod and Amanda's conflicts and through self realization with Mr. O’Conner. Referencing back to Laurence Sterne's quote, Laura is an ideal symbol of “a man’s mind torn asunder by two projects of equal strength, both obstinately pulling in a contrary direction at the same time”. With fighting her inner battles of being shy and limping, and having her loved ones constantly bickering, her mind was inevitably torn. By Mr. O'connor easing one side of her mind with help overcoming her shyness, Laura was able to conquer her inner battle. In doing so, Tom and Amanda also began mending their broken relationship as Laura symbolized their broken family. With Laura able to recover, so was her
As children, we never thought about the difficult tasks in life. We would worry about when is the next time you're going to the park or getting a new toy. Overtime we come to understand not everything is unicorns and rainbows and with increasing age, you develop more responsibility, which comes with the making of hard adult life decisions. That’s not the case for 11 year old Ellen Foster, who was forced to make those demanding choices that you endure later in life. In Kaye Gibbons’s novel, Ellen Foster, the main character, Ellen, is forced to care for herself and her household due to her father’s alcoholism. Leaving her to make it her mission to generate a better life for herself. In Ellen Foster, Ellen journeys through the novel with determination
Tennessee Williams’ play, The Glass Menagerie, depicts the Wingfield family in a naturalistic viewpoint that highlights the importance of a man in the life of a woman. Without a husband in the play, Amanda’s son Tom is rendered as “the man of the house.” Williams attributes the monetary stability of the Wingfields entirely to Tom. Williams stresses the necessity of a working man through Tom so that women and children can be financially stable. As a naturalist, Tennessee Williams illustrates the characters’ reactions to various events and circumstances in accordance with man’s natural instincts of survival. Williams reveals Amanda in this approach, and he portrays naturalistic tendencies in her personality and character, her relationship with her son, and her connection with her hopeless daughter, Laura. Amanda is trying to survive and raise her children without a husband to support her economically.
When my mom asked if I wanted to see this year’s Lakeside musical, I honestly was a bit unwilling. It’s not that I didn’t want to support my two or three friends up on stage and in the crew; I just don’t have a very good track record with high school performances. I’m a critic: I have always been very critical of myself, and very critical of others. I unwittingly judge the actors onstage, and end up feeling guilty because I probably could have done no better. On top of this warped superiority/inferiority was the nature of the musical they were performing; all throughout third grade I had been obsessed with the movie-musical Hairspray. I knew all the songs, most of the lines, and wasn’t sure if anyone could top Queen Latifah. But I was mistaken.
Tennessee Williams has a gift for character. Not many playwrights do, and even fewer possess the unique ability to craft a character as paradoxical and complex as Amanda Wingfield. In The Glass Menagerie, Amanda is a very difficult character to understand because of her psychological disposition. Williams realizes this and provides the reader with a character description in hopes of making the character more accessible to meticulous analysis.
LAST WEEK, I WAS SHOPPING FOR A NEW TOP I THOUGHT STEVE MIGHT LIKE. IT TOOK ME AND BARB ALL WEEKEND. IT SEEMED LIKE LIFE OR DEATH, YOU KNOW? AND NOW... Nancy Wheeler is a normal, teenage girl. Her relationship with her nuclear family is strained, and she only appears to have one close friend in Hawkins, Indiana
Amanda wants Laura to be happy and successful, but does not understand that Laura is too shy and unmotivated to be either. When Amanda discovers that Laura has stopped going to typing class, she is beyond disappointed. When discovered Amanda yells at her daughter saying, “Fifty dollars’ tuition, all our plans- my hopes and ambitions for you- just gone up the spout, just gone up the spout like that.” Laura quit something as simple as learning how to type; this realization struck Amanda because if she cannot do that there is no way Laura could provide for herself without a husband. Mrs. Wingfield’s worst nightmare is for her children to become dependent on relatives and not being able to take care of themselves.
Abandoned by her husband and left penniless, Amanda Wingfield in The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams, lived in a small alley apartment on the lower middle-class section of town with her two adult children Tom and Laura. This was far cry from Amanda’s youth during the Victorian era at Blue Mountain to her present situation of poverty and uncertainty. As a single mother, Amanda was worried about her family’s financial security along with concerns regarding her daughter’s lack of marital prospects; for that reason, her need to enrich her life by molding the lives of her children resulted in illusions overpowering reality that also brought out destructive illusions within herself, her son Tom, and her daughter Laura.