What Is the Significance of the Title, "The Glass Menagerie?"

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Why did Tennessee Williams call his play set in the 1930's, a family drama, `The Glass Menagerie'? The play has three main characters, the mother, Amanda and the two children, Tom and Laura. A gentleman caller called Jim steps into the final scenes, and the father of the family is mentioned who left them, `He was a telephone man who fell in love with long distances.' The whole play is about a family who are under pressure both from outside and within their society to live their lives the right way.

Laura, Amanda's daughter in the play is the character who has the most significance in what the play is all about she explains why William's gave the play its title. `The Glass Menagerie' is Laura's collection of glass animals and is the play's central symbol. Laura's collection of glass animal figurines represents a number of different sides to her personality. Like the figurines, Laura is delicate, dreamy and somehow old-fashioned. The message I got from the glass is that glass is transparent, but, when the light is shined upon it a rainbow of colours shines through this is mentioned as the screen images showing there is more to Laura than meets the eye. Similarly, Laura, though quiet around strangers, is lovely to those who choose to look at her in the right light. The menagerie is a dream world to Laura; a world that has colour and depth but is based on fantasy, `She is washing and polishing her collection of glass. Amanda appears...At the sound of her ascent, Laura catches her breath,...' Laura is a very fragile and innocent girl who gets nervous easily and tries to do right by her mother.

Laura explains to her mother in scene two that when she was at school she had a crush on a boy called Jim who used to call her, `Blu...

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...doesn't live anywhere near reality!

Critics such as John Gassner (1903-1967) say that Laura is seen as the victim in this story, yet it is she who tries to bring the family together. Walter Kerr (1913-1966) writes that Williams is excellent at writing as an artist and a poet and writes the play out of bricks. Arthur Ganz describes the play as recurring; William's uses Laura as a `fugitive kind who is too fragile to live in a malignant world.' I as a reader of the play agree with all these comments and the main focus on the play is Laura and her fragile world of `The Glass Menagerie.' The Wingfield family represent society, `The Glass Menagerie,' is caged and on show like the Wingfield family, they are trapped, trying to get into the ideal life of, `The American dream' this is the main message William's tries to get across in the play of, `The Glass Menagerie.'

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