Unhappiness In The Glass Menagerie

1920 Words4 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Analyse the character of amanda in glass menagerie

We all feel unhappiness at some point in our lives. It’s human to feel like you want more or something is not good enough for you. You want more out of life. You want to do something to make you happy. In The Glass Menagerie Tom, Laura, and Amanda Wingfield all expierence unhappiness through out the play in their own way. They are a family but their goals and dreams are quite different from each other. Their dreams and goals lead to their unhappiness because they seem impossible to reach. One reason that holds them back from being happy is the decade they are living in. The story is taking place in the 1940’s right after the great depression. Times are tough so dreams and future goals have to be moved to the back of the to do list while you …show more content…

Which is why he is left to help support his sister and mother “Oh I can see the handwriting on the wall as plain as I see the nose in front of my face! It’s terrifying! More and more you remind me of your father! He was out all hours without explanation-Then left! Good-Bye! And me with the bag to hold. I saw that letter you got from the Merchant Marine. I know what you’re dreaming of. I’m not standing here blindfolded. Very well then. Then do it! But not till there’s somebody to take your place.”(Williams 2308) Amanda knows Tom doesn’t want to be there doing the same thing every day. She knows he is unhappy on where he is in life, but her and Laura need him to support them until Laura can get a gentleman caller. Amanda even states in the play that whenever Laura gets a gentleman caller that he can go wherever he wants to go land or sea. (Williams 2309) Tom goes out to the movies to watch different films most nights to help cope with not being able to go on adventures and be free. He lives that life through the actors in the film that get to expierence his dream. “ Yes, movies! Look at them-(A wave toward the marvels of Grand Avenue.) All of those glamorous people-having

Show More
Related

  • The Dreamers of The Glass Menagerie

    1069 Words  | 3 Pages

    really a place for someone like him and his mind rebelled. Lastly you can see

    Read More

  • Theme Of Anxiety In The Glass Menagerie

    1538 Words  | 4 Pages

    The family in Tennessee Williams’ play, The Glass Menagerie, faces various dilemmas. One of the most prominent is the issue of anxiety. Throughout the play, the family focuses their attention mainly on Laura and her struggle with both her physical disability and social anxiety. However, closer analysis reveals that Laura is not the only character suffering, each family member displays signs of being affected by anxiety. Their interactions with one another trigger feelings of nervousness, unhappiness, and anger. The issue of anxiety extends beyond Laura, affecting the whole family, and ultimately leads to tragedy.

    Read More

  • Glass Menagerie: Symbolism of Laura’s Fragility and Escapism

    935 Words  | 2 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Essay on the Illusion of Escape in The Glass Menagerie

    1092 Words  | 3 Pages

    In The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams, the characters exhibit a state of delusion that originates from their dissatisfaction with their lives. Tom seeks adventure in the movies. Amanda reminisces often about her days as a Southern Belle. Laura sits in a dream world with her glass collection, and Jim basks in the praises of his high school glory. In their respective ways, they demonstrate their restlessness. The quotation from Thoreau, "The mass of men lead lives of the quiet desperation," applies to the characters in that they are all unhappy, but take no action to improve their situation in any significant way.

    Read More

  • Free Glass Menagerie Essays: The Characters

    2168 Words  | 5 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Analysis: The Glass Menagerie

    1125 Words  | 3 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Why Tom Is Unhappy

    979 Words  | 2 Pages

    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

    Read More

  • Illusion vs. Reality in The Glass Menagerie

    2804 Words  | 6 Pages

    In The Glass Menagerie, Tennessee Williams uses the roles of the members of the Wingfield family to highlight the controlling theme of illusion versus reality. The family as a whole is enveloped in mirage; the lives of the characters do not exist outside of their apartment and they have basically isolated themselves from the rest of the world. Even their apartment is a direct reflection of the past as stories are often recalled from the mother's teenage years at Blue Mountain, and a portrait of the man that previously left the family still hangs on the wall as if his existence is proven by the presence of the image. The most unusual factor of their world is that it appears as timeless. Amanda lives only in the past while Tom lives only in the future and Laura lives in her collection of glass animals, her favorite being the unicorn, which does not exist. Ordinary development and transformation cannot take place in a timeless atmosphere such as the apartment. The whole family resists change and is unwilling to accept alteration. Not only is the entire family a representation of illusion versus reality, each of the characters uses fantasy as a means of escaping the severity of their own separate world of reality. Each has an individual fantasy world to which they retreat when the existing world is too much for them to handle. Each character has a different way of dealing with life when it seems to take control of them, and they all become so completely absorbed in these fantasies that they become stuck in the past.

    Read More

  • Essay on the Dysfunctional Family of The Glass Menagerie

    1074 Words  | 3 Pages

    Dysfunctional. Codependent. Enmeshed. Low self-esteem. Emotional problems of the modern twenty-first century or problems of the past? In his play, The Glass Menagerie, Tennessee Williams portrays a southern family in the 1940's trying to deal with life's pressures, and their own fears after they are deserted by their husband and father. Although today, we have access to hundreds of psychoanalysis books and therapists, the family problems of the distant past continue to be the family problems of the present.

    Read More

  • Unleashing Potential: A Look at Society's Gilded Cage

    1100 Words  | 3 Pages

    Do to all these factors she feels a sense of selflessness. The mother is completely dependent upon Tom. She relies on Tom to pay the bills, put food on the table, and even relies on him to find his sister a gentlemen caller. Tom cares for his mother and sister but at times one can tell that Tom is tired of having to support them. “Amanda:... But I won 't allow such filth brought into my house! No, no, no, no, no! Tom: House, house! Who pays rent on it, who makes a slave of himself to- (p.1169). Tom implies that he is a slave working himself to death just to support his sister, mother, and to pay rent on a house that isn 't even his. Tom hated his job and would write poetry when ever work was slow. Tom felt trapped because he felt as though his life only revolved around supporting his mother, sister, and working a job

    Read More

  • The Glass Menagerie Symbolism Essay

    866 Words  | 2 Pages

    Kristin Gonzales E. Masterson Engl. 1302.02 12 August 2016 Drama Essay The prime component that sparked this play’s key success is its use of symbolism. Alike many other literary devices, symbolization contains a hidden message, only a select few can comprehend. The symbol that cannot go unnoticeable is the unicorn.

    Read More

  • The Glass Menagerie Abandonment Essay

    551 Words  | 2 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Theme Of Stress In The Glass Menagerie

    1040 Words  | 3 Pages

    Stress is a normal occurrence through the rollercoaster that is called life. It can make a person stronger or cause serious health issues that could potentially lead to death. Stress is like a levy that is imposed to pay for the existence of the human race. While it is impossible to get away from stress, there are ways to handle the stress that life gives each person, it just takes some time to figure out what works for each individual person. In the play The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams, the reader sees how three individuals named Tom, Amanda, and Laura deal with the stress and problems that they encounter every day in 1930’s St. Louis and that this might not always be the best option.

    Read More

  • Symbolism in The Glass Menagerie

    1021 Words  | 3 Pages

    Symbolism is an integral part of every play. The author uses symbolism in order to add more depth to the play. In Tennessee Williams’ play, The Glass Menagerie, he describes three separate characters, their dreams, and the harsh realities they face in a modern world. The Glass Menagerie exposes the lost dreams of a southern family and their desperate struggle to escape reality. Everyone in the play seeks refuge from their lives, attempting to escape into an imaginary world. Williams uses the fire escape as a way for the Wingfields, the protagonists of the play, to escape their real life and live an illusionary life. The fire escape portrays each of the character's need to use the fire escape as a literal exit from their own reality.

    Read More

  • The Glass Menagerie Theme of Abandonment

    569 Words  | 2 Pages

    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...

    Read More

More about Unhappiness In The Glass Menagerie

Open Document