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. The glass menagerie continually signifies Laura’s
Like the glass menagerie, the only people who see her unique beauty are the ones who take the time to look at her in the right light. One of the first people outside the family to see the more vibrant side of Laura is Jim, a friend of her brother’s as well as an old high school crush of hers. While having dinner at their house, Jim takes interest in Laura’s collection of glass animals and records. They reminisce about high school and when Jim begins to understand why she is so shy, he says, “You know what I judge is the trouble with you? Inferiority complex! Know what that is? That’s what they call it when someone low-rates himself!” Seeing her now as the vibrant creature she is, Jim is intrigued by her exotic beauty. Though Laura’s entire collection represents her personality, the unicorn in particular, symbolizes her unique and rare soul. When she shows Jim her menagerie, she declares the unicorn to be her favorite. “Aren’t those extinct in the modern world?” Jim replies. He also says that the unicorn must be lonely because he is not like the other horses. It seems that the unicorn is Laura’s favorite because she can easily identify with it, its beauty, its distinctiveness, and its solitary
At the beginning of the story she “shines” when people choose to see her in the right “light”, which is love or attention. However, at the end of the play when Jim accidentally breaks off the unicorn’s horn, it is no longer exotic or unique. At first, Laura calls this “a blessing in disguise” –that he has made her normal. But when he reveals to her that he is engaged to another woman, her hopes are shattered just like the unicorn’s horn. Now the unicorn is just like all the other horses, therefore, she decides it is more fitting for Jim than it is for her. 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 changes her in the way that a piece of her innocence that made her so different was 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
"The Glass Menagerie" is a play about intense human emotions; frustration, desperation, sadness, anger, shyness, and regret. Perhaps the most intense scene in the play is when a gentleman caller, Jim O'Connor, finally does come. All of their futures hang in the balance during this scene. Laura is actually drawn out of her shyness with someone besides her family, and she actually begins to feel good about herself.
Tennessee Williams's brilliant use of symbols adds life to the play. The title itself, The Glass Menagerie, reveals one of the most important symbols. Laura's collection of glass animals represents her fragile state. When Jim, the gentleman caller, breaks the horn off her favorite unicorn, this represents Laura's break from her unique innocence.
Although the glass menagerie is meant as a direct metaphor for Laura, it also serves as a metaphor to the other characters in the play through various means. They are all interconnected in some way, depending on each other, and when things don’t turn out right, everything begins to fall into a downward spiral, with little or no hope for improvement.
Everybody has something about them that makes them unique, but sometimes they tend to not realize how special they are because of it. In the play, The Glass Menagerie, Laura possesses a collection of glass figurines that symbolize how others see her despite her limp. She has allowed her limp to define who she is, as well as play a major part in the way that she acts around other people. Laura’s limp has restricted her life in certain ways and because of it, she has become a delicate, radiant, and unique individual.
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.
The glass figurines that reside in Laura's menagerie are symbolic of Laura herself. Laura is "like a piece of her own glass collection, too exquisitely fragile to move from the shelf" (849). Because of a slight defect, magnified several times over by her own mind, Laura's self image is as fragile as her collection. Because of her low self image, she is extremely withdrawn, even to the point of avoiding contact with others as much as is possible. Laura escapes "to the world of her menagerie where she is safe from the world of people" (Kahn 74)...
The Glass Menagerie Thesis statement In this paper I have attempted to give a detailed view of what the young girl Laura (depiction of Williams’s sister) has gone through in her mother’s (Williams’s mother) quest to find a husband for her, the agony she has experienced, and Tom’s (Williams) rebellious attitude towards life. While Tom wants to live and cherish his own life, he finds it difficult to fulfill this desire. In my hypotheses Laura, the crippled girl remains the fragile piece of glass. The Glass Menagerie was an autobiographical play by Tennessee Williams about him, his mother, and sister (Falk). Launched in 1944, the play was a start of a brilliant and controversial career of this unconventional American playwright. Set in St Louis during the depression of 1930s, it is the moving drama of a family's continuous abrasion, under both internal and external pressures (Londre and Lumley). It is a story of a frustrated mother who is inclined to persuade her rebellious son to provide a 'gentleman caller' for her shy, crippled daughter. However, her romantic dreams are broken by the interference of harsh reality. According to Bloom the play is Tom Wingfield self-described "memory play" (pg. 21). The play revisits the time when his family longs to escape their insubstantial existence by making epitome fantasy worlds (O'Connor). Amanda tries to rise above the family's dejected state of affairs with the accouterments of gentility and puts all of her hopes into the expectation of Laura marrying and lifting them out of indigence. However, Laura is agonizingly prudish and can't endure the pressures of the outside world. She either spends her days in isolation in the park or tending to the glass figurines she collects. "Glass breaks...
The Glass Menagerie centers on a small family—a young man, an over-controlling mother, and a lonely daughter. Of the three characters, Laura Wingfield—the daughter—is portrayed as the weakest and frailest. Born with a lame leg and therefore a “cripple” (1.2.82), Laura is constantly dealing with lowered self-esteem and a sense of worthlessness despite her mother’s feeble attempts to convince her that it is just “a little defect” (1.2.86). In addition, Laura is cursed with a naive and skewed view of the world.
Wiliam’s use of symbolism in The Glass Menagerie adds a lot of meaning to the play. The fire escape has important meanings for each of the characters. For Tom, the fire escape is the way out of the world of Amanda and Laura, and an entrance into a world of adventure. For Amanda, the fire escape is perceived as a way for gentlemen callers to enter their lives. She is also trying to escape her own vacant life. And for Laura, the fire escape is a way into her own world where nobody else can invade. The fire escape portrays the escape from reality into a world of illusion for each character.
Laura is symbolized by her fragile collection of glass animals, the glass menagerie. Her favorite animal is the unique unicorn. The unicorn is different because it has a horn. When Laura was in high school, she wore a b...
In Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie, the narrator is used to reveal elements of Williams' own life as a victim of the Depression in the 1930s. Williams does this through his eloquent use of symbolism. Three symbols seem to reveal Williams' intent especially accurately; the unicorn, the picture of Mr. Wingfield, and Malvolio's coffin trick.
On the surface of the play the issues present seem to be rooted in the fact that Laura is “crippled” and unwed, however, upon further examination it is seen that there are other deeper issues. Williams writes in his production notes that this is a “memory play” (1041). What is interesting about The Glass Menagerie is the point of whose memory the audience is exposed to. Tom acts as the protagonist because it is his memory that audiences must trust, as the narrator in addition to being the man of the house in the absence of his father.
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”
The symbolic link between Laura and the glass, particularly the unicorn which is eventually broken, dramatically reinforces Laura’s own short comings and weakness, particularly as this is an ongoing metaphor, ‘she is like a piece of translucent glass touched by light ... not lasting.’ Descriptions of Amanda in contrast to Laura show Laura’s position as the weakest member of their family. Amanda is described powerfully, ‘Amanda ... stares furiously at Laura. She points imperiously...’, however, that power is frequently undermined by the absurdity of her problems or demands. As long as Laura is accompanied by other characters there is usually some semblance of normality but once she is left alone or confronted with a problem Laura’s weakness comes to the forefront, literally, due to the use of the onscreen images, ‘Laura is left alone. Legend: Terror’. Tom, in comparison to Laura and Amanda, seems exponentially stronger, suffering through a job he hates for the good of the family and he ultimately succeeds the most, getting away from the apartment and the closeted life he hated. Tom
In The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams, the glass figurine of the unicorn plays an inherently important role as a representation of Laura's self esteem. The collection of glass figurines is used by Laura to escape from the dangers of the outside world. The unicorn is the central piece to her collection and is important because it directly symbolizes Laura. The unicorn represents Laura's obsession with her handicap and also represents the uniqueness in her character. As the play develops, the fracture of the unicorn's horn represents a change in Laura's perspective of self and also gives a reason to why she parts with the figurine in the end.