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Essay on symbolism in literature
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A Faithful of Wife and a Great Mother “Amanda” In Williams, Tennessee’s play The Glass Menagerie, Amanda’s image of the southern lady is a very impressive. Facing the cruel reality, she depends on ever memories of the past as a powerful spiritual to look forward to the future, although her glory and beautiful time had become the past, she was the victim of the social change and the Great Depression, but she was a faithful of wife and a great mother’s image cannot be denied. 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 …show more content…
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
To start, Amanda Wingfield displays different characteristics from Troy. Amanda lives with her son and daughter who are in their 20’s and are supposed to be starting their lives. Amanda wants Laura to succeed in life and be a remarkable wife to one of her future gentleman callers. When Amanda discovers Laura has stopped going to her typewriting class, Amanda realizes her dreams of Laura succeeding are flickering away, “My hopes and ambitions for you”(Williams 14). 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). Another way Amanda wants Laura to be blissful is through her efforts in trying to get Laura a gentleman c...
Amanda Wingfield is an old Southern belle who came from a very prominent Southern family who loss of their money. She is a single mother of two because her husband left his family to pursue his dreams or whatever he wanted to do with his life. Kind of like Tennessee’s real mother Edwina. In play, “The Glass Menageri...
Amanda Wingfield is mother of Tom and Laura. She is a middle-aged southern belle whose husband has abandoned her. She spends her time reminiscing about the past and nagging her children. Amanda is completely dependent on her son Tom for finical security and holds him fully responsible for her daughter Laura's future. Amanda is obsessed with her past as she constantly reminds Tom and Laura of that " one Sunday afternoon in Blue Mountain when she once received seventeen gentlemen callers" (pg.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. Amanda also refuses to acknowledge that her daughter Laura is crippled and refers to her handicap as " a little defect-hardly noticeable" (pg.45). Only for brief moments does she ever admit that her daughter is crippled and then she resorts back into to her world of denial and delusion. Amanda puts the weight of Laura's success in life on her son Tom's shoulders. When Tom finally finds a man to come over to the house for diner and meet Laura, Amanda blows the situation way out of proportion. She believes that this gentlemen caller, Jim, is going to be the man to rescue Laura. When in fact neither herself nor Laura has even met this man Jim yet. She tries to explain to Laura how to entertain a gentleman caller; she says-talking about her past " They knew how to entertain their gentlemen callers. It wasn't enough for a girl to be possessed of a pretty face and a graceful figure although I wasn't slighted in either respect.
Amanda is also well characterized by the glass menagerie. The glass sits in a case, open for display and inspection for all. Amanda try’s to portray herself as a loving mother, doing everything she can for her children, and caring nothing for herself, when in fact, she is quite selfish and demanding. Amanda claims that she devotes her life to her children, and that she would do anything for them, but is very suspicious of Tom’s activities, and continually pressures Tom, trying to force him in finding a gentleman caller for Laura, believing that Laura is lonely and needs a companion, perhaps to get married. Like the glass, her schemes are very transparent, and people can see straight through them to the other side, where ...
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 is based off of his mother, Edwina Williams. Amanda and Ms. Williams were caring women and they both were verbose. Throughout The Glass Menagerie, Amanda would have long soliloquies explaining her past and how she was a very wanted woman in her girlhood. According to Signi Falk, Williams' own mother had a "verbal compulsion" (Bloom 103) and that Williams stated that "his mother would be talking a half hour after she's laid to rest" (Bloom 103). Ms. Williams' love for Williams shows when she "spends nine night sleeping with her son to take care of him while he was sick with diphtheria, during this time this illness was a common death for children" (Bloom 15).
...o have an employed man in her life. Amanda served as a perfect model to exemplify this belief, and the way that Williams’ makes use of naturalistic themes in his play. He proves that without a strong man in the house to support Amanda and Laura, the women would not survive. While Amanda tries to raise her children without a husband, she exhibits many naturalist mannerisms. Williams’ reveals examples of Charles Darwin’s theories of “survival of the fittest”, and of natural selection through Amanda, and her interactions with her son, her daughter, and her character and disposition. Williams’ also demonstrates the naturalistic principle that character traits and personalities are hereditary. Tom Wingfield was the main provider for the family, and when he followed his father’s footsteps and abandoned Laura and Amanda, the women were left unaided and hopeless.
Amanda a loving and caring mother devoted her life for her childern .she is abondaned by her husband,the only one she loved deeply.She struggles to secure her children`s lives and when she is overwhelmed by despair she resorts to her memories.
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.
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.
In the play The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams, AmandaWingfield who belongs to a genteel Southern family, regales her children frequently with tales of her idyllic youth and the scores of suitors who once pursued her. But contrary to popular opinion, Amanda can be portrayed as a “bad mother” since she is constantly disappointed in Laura for not attracting suitors and forces her son Tom Wingfield to work a dreary and dull job at a shoe factory.
She seems to want to be in control of their lives but she also has a sweetness and caring aspect for her children. Amanda’s problem is not that she is over protective but she is an anachronistic figure who is cut off from society and its changes. She shapes illusion into an appearance of what she wishes the truth to be and clings to another time and place. In Delma Presley’s The Glass Menagerie: An American Memory, she says that “Joseph Wood Krutch summarizes that Amanda is a heroine although “an absurd and pathetic widow” who is “defeated by a crude and pushing modernity which neither understands nor respects her dream of gentility.”” (Presley 36-37). Amanda comes from the deep south and a time of old traditions. One of those traditions being that a woman have a true gentleman caller. She has many fond childhood memories which she appreciates and relives over and over again with her children. She was a typical southern belle. The lifestyle she lived is the one she envisions for Laura. She becomes so desperate for Laura to be married to a man whom can take care of her that she begs Tom to bring home a nice young man to ask Laura out. “Find one that’s clean-living—doesn’t drink—and ask him out for sister!” (Williams
Amanda, somehow, finds a way to be both selfish and selfless when it comes to Laura. 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 disappointing. 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 is for her children to become dependent on relatives and not being able to take care of themselves. After Laura drops out of typing school Amanda says, “What is there left but dependency all our lives? I know so well what becomes of unmarried women who aren’t prepared to occupy a position. I’ve seen such pitiful cases in the South—barely tolerated spinsters living upon the grudging patronage of sister’s husband or brother’s wife!—stuck away in some little mousetrap of a room—encouraged by one in-law to visit another—little birdlike women without any nest—eating the crust of humility all their life!. Amanda had always wanted for Laura to find a nice husband, but then the situation became desperate when the younger women
On Saturday, March 19, 2016 at 7:30 pm, I attended the play called, The Glass Menagerie at the Le Petit Théâtre Du Vieux Carré in New Orleans. I was not really quite sure what all the performance would entail since it is a memory play and I had never experienced such a performance before. I truly enjoyed The Glass Menagerie due to the wonderful acting that was displayed, the great use of lighting to help establish the idea of the memory play, and relatable genre of the play, and the characters.
Choose either Tom, Amanda or Laura and argue that the character is the main character in the story.