The Temporary Metamorphosis of Laura in The Glass Menagerie
Laura Winfield in The Glass Menagerie goes through a temporary metamorphosis during the course of the play. She is a slightly crippled and very shy young girl who is having a hard time finding her way in the world. She is hopeless and beautiful all at the same time. She is trapped in a world that is spiraling quickly into doom.
Laura lives in the St. Louis of the Depression with her restless brother Tom and her half-mad, overbearing mother Amanda. Her father left the family for a life on the road. "He worked for the telephone-company and fell in love with long distances." This left Tom as the only breadwinner in the family and her mother in a desperate and touched condition. Tom got a job in a warehouse. He deeply resented this and craved freedom and adventure. He would disappear every night to go to the movies to find his release. This would soon be not enough, though, and both Laura and her mother sensed this. The mother constantly hounded Tom. She would continually point out every flaw he had. They would erupt into fierce arguments that made it difficult to tell if she was deliberating with Tom or his absent father. Her mother was from the south; a place called Blue Mountain. She was a beautiful girl there and had a lot of gentleman callers. She pined bitterly over the loss of this place and time and the poor choice she made in husbands. Even if Laura had no physical defects it would have been hard for her to succeed given these circumstances.
At the beginning of the play Laura is wrapped up in her own little world of glass creatures and phonograph records. She is afraid of people and afraid of the world. She is like one of the inceptions in her glass menagerie. She is a thing of fragile beauty in a hard world. She doubts herself and her abilities. Her mother, though, is determined to see that her daughter does not become a victim of her situation. Her mother tries, almost too hard, to see her daughter through. It is, however, through her mother's attempts that we see the temporary metamorphosis of Laura.
In scene two we find out that Laura's mother has discovered that she has dropped out of business school.
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... Nick makes a small funeral for Gatsby and Daisy does not attend it. He took the blame for her, and he is dead all because of her, he sacrificed for her. She and Tom decide to travel and take off. Also Nick breaks up with Jordan, and he moves back to Midwest because he has had enough of these people, and hates the people that were close to Gatsby and for bareness, emptiness, and cold heart they have of the life in the middle of the wealthy on the East Coast. Nick realizes, and reveals that Gatsby’s dream of Daisy was ruined by money and un-loyalty, dishonestly. Daisy all she cared about is wealth, she chased after the men that have a lot of money. Even though Gatsby has control, influence, and authority to change his dreams into making it into real life for him this is what Nicks says makes him a good man. Now both Gatsby’s dream and the American Dream are over.
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.
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.
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.
The American forces involved in the Battle of Okinawa consisted of 182,821 troops of the U.S. Tenth Army under the leadership of Lieutenant General Simon Bolivar Buckner, Jr. The U.S. Tenth Army comprised of XXIV Corps of the United States Army and III Amphibious Corps of the United States Marine Corps. The 7th, 27th, 77th, and 96th are the four divisions including the two Marine Divisions the 1st and the 6th fought in the island.
... with the basic notions he had suggested in the letter. In the subsequent letter, he endeavors himself to explain in details what he meant” (Margaret A.: p19). However, to his surprise, Elizabeth is not yet convinced. She says that “despite what explanation Descartes has given so far, she still does not understand the manner in which the soul moves the body” (Margaret A.: p21).
Alexander Hamilton was born as a British subject on the island of Nevis in the West Indies on the 11th of January 1755. His father, James Hamilton -- Scottish merchant of St. Christopher – was the younger son of a minor Scottish noble. His mother, Rachel Fawcett Levine was married a Danish proprietor of St. Croix named John Michael Levine. Ms. Levine left her husband John and was later divorced from him on June 25, 1759, two years after Alexander was born. His parents soon separated. However, Alexander grew up with his mother and his brother James, living on the ragged edge of poverty. He had no further contact with his father, and when his mother died in 1768, he became an orphan at the age of 11 (Hamilton).
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
According to ushistory.org, Hamilton was born on January 11, 1757 in Charleston, St. Kitts & Nevis. Even at a young age, Hamilton’s intelligence shined to others. Being so brilliant benefitted
On April 12th, 2014, Syracuse Stage presented the play The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams. The play was directed by Timothy Bond, and turned out to be an interesting production. The Glass Menagerie is a memory play that is set in St. Louis in 1937. Its action is taken from the memories of the narrator, Tom Wingfield. Tom who has a dream of being a poet works in a shoe warehouse to support his mother, Amanda, and sister, Laura. Their father, Mr. Wingfield ran off years ago. They had not heard from him except for in one postcard, they said he fell in love with long distance. Their mother Amanda, who genuinely wants the best for her children, pressures them with her uncontrollable desires for them. She is disappointed that Laura, who is crippled and is painfully shy, does not attract any gentlemen callers. She is even more disappointed to see that her son is following in his father’s footsteps.
The three family members are adults at the time of this play, struggling to be individuals, and yet, very enmeshed and codependent with one another. The overbearing and domineering mother, Amanda, spends much of her time reliving the past; her days as a southern belle. She desperately hopes her daughter, Laura, will marry. Laura suffers from an inferiority complex partially due to a minor disability that she perceives as a major one. She has difficulty coping with life outside of the apartment, her cherished glass animal collection, and her Victrola. Tom, Amanda's son, resents his role as provider for the family, yearns to be free from him mother's constant nagging, and longs to pursue his own dreams. A futile attempt is made to match Laura with Jim, an old high school acquaintance and one of Tom's work mates.
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.
Tennessee Williams portrays Laura Wingfield to be like the glass unicorn in the sense of not belonging . The unicorn is an animal that is a rare species which causes it to be an outcast in the animal kingdom. The unicorn was an outcast because of “the single horn on his forehead” (1.7.204), which caused it not interact as freely and to look different from the other animals. Laura was a woman who was “shy with people” (1.7.119), which caused her to be an outcast in society. Laura was not