The Glass Menagerie, a play by Tennessee Williams, is well written with a significant/influential theme, an engaging plot, and a cast of eclectic characters. The play contains four main characters: Amanda, the mother, Tom, the son, Laura, the daughter, and Jim, the gentleman caller. Throughout the play Amanda wishes for Laura to find a husband, even though she is shy and crippled. Tom is the man of the house, meaning that he is obligated to pay the bills. Tom must push his dreams of being a poet in order to do this. Amanda, towards the end of the play, persuades Tom to invite one of his supposedly single coworkers to dinner to meet Laura. In scene seven, several unexpected events transpire that astonishes the audience, such as Jim having a fiancé and Tom leaving Amanda and Laura. The beginning portion of the last scene of The Glass Menagerie contributes to the audiences understanding of Luara, the theme of the play, and the play as a whole.
Scene seven in The Glass Menagerie is critical for the audience to fully understand Laura. In this scene, Laura begins to show a different side...
"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.
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.
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 menagerie continually signifies Laura’s unique personality throughout the play. 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 an 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?
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' play, The Glass Menagerie, originated in the memory of Williams. Williams' family embodied his father, Cornelius Williams, his mother, Edwina Dakin Williams, his sister, Rose Williams, and his younger brother, Dakin Williams. Cornelius was an alcoholic, always away from home; Tennessee and Cornelius did not have a strong relationship, "By the late 1920s, mother and father were in open warfare, and both were good combatants. He came home drunk and picked up a bill-perhaps for Tom's clothing or schoolbooks-and he'd fly into rage."(Spoto, 18). Edwina, on the other hand, revered "refinement and the good manners of Southern gentry." (Barron's Book Notes, 2). Tennessee adored Rose immensely and were close as they could be. The Glass Menagerie is based on a mother and her two children who live in a dream world away from society. Williams' play is drawn heavily upon his family life and experiences; they are very much parallel to the events that occur in Williams' 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 Glass Menagerie, written by Tennessee Williams in 1944, tells a tale of a young man imprisoned by his family. Following in the footsteps of his father, Tom Wingfield is deeply unhappy and eventually leaves his mother and sister behind so he may pursue his own ambitions. Throughout the play, the reader or audience is shown several reasons why Tom, a brother to Laura and son to Amanda, is unhappy and wishes to leave his family. However, the last scene describes Tom’s breaking point in which he leaves for the last time. Amanda tells Tom to “go to the moon,” because he is a “selfish dreamer.” (7. Amanda and Tom) The reasonings for Tom’s departure are due to his mother’s constant nagging, hatred for
In Tennessee Williams' play, The Glass Menagerie, each member of the Wingfield family has their own fantasy world in which they indulge themselves. Tom escaped temporarily from the fantasy world of Amanda and Laura by hanging out on the fire escape. Suffocating both emotionally and spiritually, Tom eventually sought a more permanent form of escape.
“The play is memory. Being a memory play, it is dimly lighted, it is sentimental, it is not realistic” (Williams). The play “The Glass Menagerie” is narrated from Tom’s memory, and the audience learns about the other characters from his perspective of them. It is obvious that the main character is Tom, because he is the narrator. However, it is not clear who the protagonist and antagonist are, because there is not a true hero or villain in the play. All four characters are genuine people who have flaws that come out throughout the story. Though, through the eyes of tom’s memory, he is the closest character to a protagonist, because he undergoes a huge change, he is the financial support of his family, and he is the one whom the audience most
The Glass Menagerie is a play written by Tennessee Williams in 1945. The play takes place in the Wingfield’s apartment in St. Louis. Tom is the protagonist in the play and he stays at home with his mother Amanda and his sister Laura. Tom’s Father left the family when he was younger leaving him as the man of the house. His mother Amanda expects him to do everything a man would do. This included working, paying bills, and taking care of herself and Laura. Laura is disabled and she doesn’t work therefore Tom is left providing for his whole family. Being abandoned by Mr. Wingfield left the family distraught. No one seemed to be able to cope with the fact that he was gone even though he left many years ago. Amanda is constantly treating Tom like a child. She tells him how to eat, when to eat, and what he should and should not wear. Tom eventually gets fed up with everything. He can’t stand his factory job, the responsibility of being the man or being treated like a child by his mother. Tom decides to follow in his father’s footsteps and leave the family. It seems as if Tom thinks that running away from his problems will make them go away but things didn’t turn out that way. Although the play was written many years ago, young adults in this day and age can relate to Tom and his actions. The main theme in the play is escape. All of the character use escape in some way. Laura runs to her glass menagerie or phonographs when she can’t handle a situation, Amanda seems to live in the past, and Tom constantly runs away when things aren’t going his way. Escape is a short term fix for a bigger problem. Running away may seem like the easiest thing to do, but in the end the problem is still there and it may be unforgettable. As time goes on esc...
‘ The Glass Menagerie’ is a very poetic play. The play has a great deal of metaphors and symbolism in each and every scene. Each character has their own way of saying things. Both Tom and Amanda use heavy figurative language in their dialogue; but each in a different way. Laura, on the other hand, does not talk much but her small actions and the different objects she uses speak louder than words. Tom starts off the play with a clever play on words: “Yes, I have tricks in my pocket, I have things up my sleeve. But I am the opposite of a stage magician. He gives you illusion that has the appearance of truth. I give you truth in the pleasant disguise of illusion.”(1.4)
Tennessee Williams’s The Glass Menagerie is the story of the Wingfield family, Amanda, the mother, Tom, son, and Laura, daughter. The Wingfield’s story is one in which contains many underlying themes that each character experiences throughout the play. This essay will explore in depth looks at the themes, difficulty accepting reality, the impossibility of a true escape, and the unrelenting power of memory, as well as each characters issues with abandonment left behind by Mr. Wingfield.
When Jim O’Connor came for dinner Laura’s stomach also turn because Jim was the first person she had ever like and when they were talking she had evened remembered the first time he called her “blue roses.” Hence ‘the glass menagerie’ is used to escape reality, real world and her avidness as it is Laura’s desire to. Laura has a habit to try and avoid people because of how shy she is. Perhaps, Laura has a phobia of people and that is why she always drops out and her best friends are her glass collection? This is effective as it helps convey the idea of ‘to have the desire to escape’ (Cardullo). When Laura’s mother Amanda found out that she dropped out of school for being shy Amanda asked Laura were she goes and Laura said, “I went in the art museum and the bird-houses at the zoo. I visited the penguins every day! Sometimes I did without lunch and went to the movies. Lately I’ve been spending most of my afternoon in the jewel-box, that big glass-house where they raised tropical flowers” (Williams). Boxill said that “Laura as the predestined spinster with a lost love.” This is said because Laura never stopped liking Jim. When Jim came in the room she instantly remembered the past. Eventually Jim went to go talk to Laura and remembered that she was the girl that was quiet and came late every day and Laura remembered what days they saw each
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.