The Glass Menagerie Research Paper

Tennessee Williams’ play, The Glass Menagerie, is referred to as a memory play, centered around the Wingfield family. Many consider it autobiographical, as the characters strongly reflect Williams’ own troubled family. The play is set during the late 1930s, a time period distinguished by the Great Depression. The hardships that resulted from this time period took their toll on the American people, and many chose to live vicariously through entertainment, imagination, or memory. Tennessee Williams uses symbolism in The Glass Menagerie to depict the fantasies the Wingfield family members create to escape reality.

Thomas Lanier Williams was born March 26, 1911 in Columbus, Mississippi. Williams and his siblings were raised primarily by their

Laura cares for them deeply, and is often seeing cleaning them or simply fiddling with them throughout the play. Glass is delicate and decorative, much like Laura. When Amanda is dressing Laura for the gentleman caller, she is “like a piece of translucent glass touched by light; given a momentary radiance, not actual, not lasting (Williams 51). Her beauty is temporary and for show. Her nerves are fragile and must be handled carefully, because “glass is something you have to take good care of” (Williams 80). The glass menagerie also symbolizes the fantastical world Laura imagines herself in, her false reality. Critic L.M. Domina stated that, “Laura’s fantasies...don’t merely supplement reality, but become reality” (Galens and Spampinato 134). Laura’s favorite piece of her collection is her glass unicorn. Jim remarks that unicorns are extinct and that he must feel lonely, since he is the only one of his kind. The unicorn relates back to Laura, referred to as a cripple by her family, and often alone because of it and her anxiety. However, Jim does not see Laura’s nerves or disability, therefore bringing a sense of normalcy that she was missing. And so, when he accidentally knocks the glass unicorn off the table and breaks the horn off, altering it permanently, Laura is also changed. Jim does not care about what sets Laura apart physically, thus removing what alienates her. However, the “breaking” of

Tennessee Williams relied heavily on theatrical effects to not only set the stage, but also form characters and storylines. Tom’s opening soliloquy states, “Being a memory play, it is dimly lighted, it is sentimental, it is not realistic. In memory everything seems to happen to music” (Williams 5). There is recurring music, entitled “The Glass Menagerie”, and music that signals scene changes. The sets are simple, but allow the complexity of memory with curtains and other effects. This soft and gauzy setting of the play also adds to the illusion and fantasy. Instead of showing the action as it is, lighting and music elicits a fanciful atmosphere. While John Mason Brown found faults with the literature of the play, he said, “It is the kind of play one is proud to have the theatre produce, and pleased to sit before even when disappointed in this scene or in that” (Galens and Spampinato 136). William R. Mueller compared Shakespeare and Williams, saying, “Shakespeare can be played without setting ,lighting, costume, music; Williams cannot. He makes fullest use of the craft of the stage: scenic effects, lighting, olor, music are of vast importance in evoking from the audience the desired emotional response” (Galens and Spampinato 132). The storyline of the play is simple, set in several disillusioned worlds, and so the set and production of the play reflects