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Amanda in the glass menagerie essay
Tennessee Williams the Glass Menagerie and how it relates to his life
Tennessee Williams the Glass Menagerie and how it relates to his life
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Recommended: Amanda in the glass menagerie essay
The power within the mind provides people with the opportunity to create an illusion of one’s life. These illusions sprout from dreams that often are unobtainable, as they strive to reach perfection in life which is known to be impossible. The mind crafted images provide people with an outlet to escape the terrifying truth of reality. Shielding oneself from reality is only a temporary solution, and can create social struggles as well as tension. The struggle between wanting to live in a fantasy of dreams to escape the world, and accepting the hardships of reality has existed in society since the beginning of time. Tennessee Williams demonstrates that many fall into the temptation to escape reality by living in an imagination where truth and responsibilities are neglected in his novel The Glass Menagerie. After Amanda’s husband had …show more content…
Her low self-esteem makes it difficult for Laura to interact in society causing her to be more comfortable living in her imagination. John takes note of his sister diffident personality and tries to make Amanda understand, "[…]in the eyes of others-strangers-she 's terribly shy and lives in a world of her own and those things make her seem a little peculiar to people outside the house"(Williams 47). Being so self conscious about her disability, Laura allowed herself to become distant from the world around her. Laura creates this distance by escaping “[...] into a world of glass and music. Her father 's old phonograph records provide her with escape that the unfamiliar new tunes can 't provide”(). Laura finds comfort in what she is familiar with which is why she flees into her world of imagination and memory. When Laura is unable to deal with real life issues and duties she seeks tranquility in her delicate glass figurines and the remains of her father before he choose to elude the
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.
The masterful use of symbolism is delightfully ubiquitous in Tennessee Williams’ “The Glass Menagerie.” He uses a collection of dim, dark and shadowy symbols that constantly remind the audience of the lost opportunity each of these three characters continually experience. This symbolism is not only use to enlighten the audience to their neglected opportunities to shine, but it is also repeatedly utilized to reinforce the ways in which the characters try in vain to cross over turbulent waters into a world of light and clarity. It is thematically a wrenching story of life gone by, and the barren attempts to realize another reality that is made more poignant by symbolic language, objects, setting, lighting and music. The characters are trying to escape their own reality, and continue desperately to grasp at real life. The powerful use of symbolism in The Glass Menagerie exaggerates their missed opportunities, and their inability to step into a new reality. Through the use of symbolism, Williams continually illuminates the attempts of each character to break their bondage, and cross their own personal Rubicon into another reality. Because of his expert use of symbolism the audience can assuredly feel the full weight and impact of their imprisonment and actions.
The Glass Menagerie is a play written by Tennessee Williams. It involves a mother, Amanda, and her two children, Tom and Laura. They are faced with many problems throughout the play. Some of these problems involve: Amanda, the mother, only wants to see her kids succeed and do well for themselves. How does her drive for success lead the book?
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 ...
The Glass Menagerie first opened on March 31, 1945. It was the first big success of Tennessee Williams’ career. It is in many ways about the life of Tennessee Williams himself, as well as a play of fiction that he wrote. He says in the beginning, “I give you truth in the pleasant disguise of illusion'; (1147). The characters Tom, Laura, and Amanda are very much like Williams, his sister Rose, and his mother Edwina. We can see this very clearly when we look at the dialogue, and the relations between the action in the play and the actions in Tennessee Williams’ life.
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
“I have to remind myself that some birds aren’t meant to be caged. Their feathers are just too bright”(Morgan Freeman in The Shawshank Redemption). This quote reminds me of the characters in Tennessee William’s The Glass Menagerie. William’s is known for using his own reality in his works. This particular play, in my opinion is very relatable to many people. The play is basically about not being happy with the situation in which the characters currently exist. No one in the play is satisfied with the way their life is turning out and they want “out”, one way or another. In order to understand the characters in The Glass Menagerie, one must examine the theme of escape and what each character wants to escape.
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
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.
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.
really a place for someone like him and his mind rebelled. Lastly you can see
of the fire escape it is also where Tom tries to have brief moments to
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.
of - was charm!' - or trails off - 'And then I - (she stops in front
written in between 384 and 222 BC, and his views were taken on by some