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Glass menagerie abandonment essays
What is williams’ potential message in the play the glass menagerie
Tennessee williams essay on the glass menagerie
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In The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams, the theme of abandonment is salient to the play. Throughout most of the play, Tom contemplates whether he should stay with his family doing something he hates or leave them and follow his dream. His yen to be happy controls his decision in the end. Through Tom's actions, thoughts, and the negative imagery of his father, Williams proves that abandonment is a viable solution in the escaping challenges and reality, if it is tenable. Williams uses Tom’s thoughts to illustrate how Tom feels about abandoning his family. He justifies it by expressing his emotions towards his father and how he doesn’t really blame him for leaving. Abandonment is a means of escaping Tom’s problems with his mother. Tom's …show more content…
Williams sees abandonment, if preformed without reason, as an egregious thing. Tom, being tired of the pressure from his family, decided to leave them and go on his own. On the contrary, his father left because, as an itinerant man, he “fell in love with long distances.” This is his reason for abandoning his wife and two children; he left them alone with nothing. This shows his weak character. Also, Amanda, the mother, always brings up the fathers dirty ways and dark past. “And you – when I see you taking after his ways! Staying out late – and – well, you had been drinking…”(Scene IV). Additionally, Amanda is constantly pushing Tom to fill in his father’s shoes and take care of her and Laura like his father never did.: “But until that time you've got to look out for your sister. I don't say me because I'm old and don't matter. I say for your sister because she's young and dependent.” (Scene IV). Additionally, she urges Tom to maintain and try to keep his job even though he does not like it: “What right have you got to jeopardize your job? Jeopardize the security of us all?” (Scene III). Amanda knows he is not happy but she also knows that his job is what puts food on the table and a roof over their heads, so she encourages him to try and
At the beginning, Tom is very self-centered and preoccupied with his work. He finds what he wants to do more important than what his wife wants to do that night. Once faced with the reality of death, he realizes how important his wife is to him. This forces him to be strong and stay alive, for her sake. The only reason he made it back into his house was because of how much he cared for her. Tom then decides to go find her at the movies, which shows that he has become less self-centered and more aware of his wife’s feelings.
Later approaching the tragedy of of the book, Tom displays another act of sub-human behavior, nonchalantly brushing off his affairs, “And what’s more I love Daisy too. Once in a while I go off on a spree and make a fool of myself, but I always come back, and in my heart I love her all the time.”(201). Tom in a sense...
... he still feels guilt for leaving Laura behind. Tom cannot ignore his feelings towards Laura and accept letting her go. Tom is physically able to flee from his past and reality, but is unable to escape emotionally. Also, even a new life, filled with opportunities and self goals has troubles. Tom says that he does anything to keep busy so he can forget what he left behind. He is still not fully content with his life.
Tennessee Williams employs the uses of plot, symbolism, and dialogue to portray his theme of impossible true escape, which asserts itself in his play, The Glass Menagerie. Each of his characters fills in the plot by providing emotional tension and a deep, inherent desire to escape. Symbolism entraps meaning into tangible objects that the reader can visualize and attach significance to. Conclusively, Williams develops his characters and plot tensions through rich dialogue. Through brilliant construction and execution of literary techniques, Williams brings to life colorful characters in his precise, poignant on-stage drama.
Amanda has probably not done everything right for her family, but her intentions have always been good. Tom has lost patience and wants to pursue his journey away now. There's no waiting to save the money for the dues. He doesn't stop going to the movies for a week or quit smoking to save money. He takes the money for the light bill. We know this is a painfully big deal and he has intentionally hurt his family at this point. He knows he has put himself in a position of no turning back. Now, he has to go. As if to make it okay in someway, he says, ""I'm like my father. The bastard son of a bastard! See how he grins? And he's been absent going on sixteen years!" Now we know, he doesn't plan to come back. He has justified his not feeling obligated to his family by saying he gets it naturally. He is his father's son. Of course we have to decide if Tom has a choice. Is Tom withering away where he is. His family is full of dysfunction and he wants to help Laura out also.
William and his mother show kindness to Tom and Lily in the story. When Tom and Lily arrive at their cabin, the old lady shows much gratitude and invites them in, even though she has just met them.
Part of Tom’s desire to leave is this treatment at the hands of his mother. In the beginning of the play, he loses his appetite because of his mother’s “constant directions of how to eat it” (923), and at one point she said that, in reference to books that she took from Tom, she “took that horrible novel back to the library,” (931) and that she “won’t allow such filth brought into [her] house!” (931). Part of Tom’s desire to leave is this treatment at the hands of his mother; another part is his job, and how monotonous and stagnant it is at the workshop. [PP2] Together, they leave Tom feeling trapped in his lifestyle of struggling through the days. He mentions to seeing a magician show at the movies, which sums up his feelings of
The “Glass Menagerie” by Tennessee Williams shows a family facing economic and social hardships due to the father abandoning them. The father’s absence forces the rest of the family to fill roles that they wouldn’t be obliged to face if the father remained. The mother, Amanda, is a strong single mother who pushes her kids to be economically self-sustaining individuals. Amanda tries to impose her desires for her kids in a very direct and controlling manner which causes them to dislike her initiatives. The son, Tom, is the breadwinner for the family, however is dissatisfied with his situation due to his increased responsibilities. The daughter, Laura, is handicapped and dropped out of business school. Each member of the family is limited by their ability to grow out of their negative habits, however, it is likely that these habits or characteristics came from the family situation and the roles that each member was forced to fill.
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
The third and final reason Tom is unhappy and wants to leave, is due to his dreams being put on hold to support his family. Tom envisions a life of adventure, something of which he feels his life is meaningless without. After his father leaves, though not his obligation, Tom takes over the role as the man of the house. Tom feels that he is now responsible for taking care of his mother and sister. Even though Amanda and Laura need him, Tom decides anyway to leave them in search of his own adventures. Tom does not necessarily want to be unlike his father, he thinks of his wanting leave as a gene of sorts, a destiny, something he is supposed to do. When Tom’s coworker, Jim, is invited to dinner, Tom even confides in Jim that Tom is “like my [his] father” and that he is “the
Amanda Wingfield is the mother of Tom and Laura. She is a gracefully aging Southern Belle seemingly stuck on the values and traditions of the past that she once flourished so well in. Even though she has been abandoned by her husband and left to care for two children alone, Amanda is ever resiliently optimistic – though her life is not at all what she had planned for it to be. To Tom she is a constant nag and even more of an incentive to chase the dream within his grasp. She is just as dominating with Laura, insisting Laura always be ready and pretty for her “gentleman callers.” Laura knows deep down inside that these callers will never come, but Amanda cannot let go of the idea. She forces Laura to retreat into her world of imagination even further. Jim O'Connor is by the far the most ordinary out of them all. Jim i...
...e. As time goes on Tom finds it harder and harder to deal with the responsibilities of taking care of his family and the home. He decides to leave his job and his family for the merchant marines. He believes he will find the adventure he’s always been looking for. Instead of being free like he thought he would be, Tom is trapped by the memories of his sister. He says “I tried to leave you behind me, but I am more faithful than I intended to be!
Mr. Tom is an elderly gentleman who lives in the country of England. He is quiet and keeps to himself. Throughout the novel Mr. Tom changes and becomes a new person. With the outbreak of war he is responsible for the care of a young evacuee, Will. He and Tom quickly grow to care for each other. Will is given into Tom's care with only the clothes on his back. Tom talks to Mrs. Henley, a local neighbor, and asks her if she would be kind enough to knit Will a jersey. She replied, "You ent gotta clothe em" but Mr. Tom was persistent and was able to get Will a new, thick jersey made (18). Tom takes real good care of William and does his best to look after the young child. While Will is around him, Mr. Tom isn't so deeply depressed about his wife and son, who have both departed. He is more social with the rest of the town and has a more happy expression. When the young evacuee is sent back home Tom worries, when he goes to check on him he finds him in startling health. He even breaks the law to get his frail body back into the country side with him. Mr. Tom is soon Will's adopted father, nearing the end of the novel Will notices something about Tom. "[He] noticed how old and vulnerable Tom looked" (317).
Tennessee Williams of Columbus, Mississippi, and author of the play The Glass Menagerie creates a well-rounded character by the name of Tom Wingfield. The author reveals many aspects of this character throughout the play, which focuses on the memories of the three main characters that live in a St. Louis apartment in the late 1930s. As the story progresses, the reader observes how each of the characters unravel and unfold to their needs and wants. Tom is displayed as a character who lives in a world that is different from reality, so, therefore, he behaves in a fashion that makes him seem falsely selfish, creative, and adventurous.
The role of abandonment in The Glass Menagerie can best be described as the plot element that underlies the overall tone of despondence in the play because it emphasizes the continuous cycle of destruction and hardship that the Wingfield family experiences; indeed, abandonment in the play is a reiterative element that strips the excesses from the three main characters in the play and leaves them in their barest forms, united by a sorrowful reality and clutching each other through the ever-present need to sink into a self-constructed oblivion. The first, and perhaps the most notable and most frequently discussed, example of abandonment in the play would be that of Amanda Wingfield’s husband’s abandonment of his family; he left them at an unspecified time in the past because “he fell in love with long distances,” and evidently forsook any obligations and emotional affiliations that he may have had with his wife and offspring (Williams 5). Having been abandoned by a man who was both husband and father affected Amanda, Tom, and Laura in that it established many of their familial dynamics...