A miserable life vs. a fantasy life
Have you ever felt trapped within the confines of your own home, or as if your life is going nowhere? In Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie, this is Tom and Laura’s exact situation. Tom feels as if he is trapped in his own home while Laura’s life seems to be heading nowhere. In this play Tom is felt the most sympathy for due to his complicated predicament of not being able to leave his house, while Laura has the least amount of sympathy felt only because she seems to be doing nothing progressive to help move her life forward.
One of the many reason most of the sympathy is felt for Tom is the constant nagging exerted from his mother. It seems as if throughout the whole play Amanda is nothing but a continuous nuisance to him. One might even begin to say that Tom’s mother has an idea of the way she feels her son should behave, act, and live, however, since Tom and his mothers opinions apparently clash, this appears to all the more provoke Mrs. Wingfield to further mold her son in her own image. Coincidently agreeing, Preston Fambrough writes, “She labors grotesquely to mold the lives of her adult children into American success stories through nagging and moralizing, an attempt epitomized by the unendurable cheery ‘Rise and Shine!’” (par. 1). Having to constantly put up with the bothersome attitude Amanda exhibits could not only tire a person out but also slowly break them down as it shows to do with her son. There are many scenes where Williams portrays Amanda bothering Tom, one of which being when the family is at dinner and Mrs. Wingfield feels led to tell Tom how to eat his food. Williams writes, “I haven’t enjoyed one bite of this dinner because of your constant d...
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Greiff, Louis K. "Fathers, Daughters, and Spiritual Sisters: Marsha Norman's 'Night Mother and Tennessee Williams's The Glass Menagerie." Text and Performance Quarterly 9.3 (1989): 224-228. MLA International Bibliography. EBSCO. Web. 28 Apr. 2011.
Fambrough, Preston. "Williams's The Glass Menagerie." Explicator 63.2 (2005): 100-102. MLA International Bibliography. EBSCO. Web. 28 Apr. 2011.
Fordyce, William. "Tennessee Williams's Tom Wingfield and Georg Kaiser's Cashier: A Contextual Comparison." Papers on Language and Literature: A Journal for Scholars and Critics of Language and Literature 34.3 (1998): 250-272. MLA International Bibliography. EBSCO. Web. 28 Apr. 2011.
Kennedy, X. J., and Dana Gioia. "The Glass Menagerie." Literature: an Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and Writing. 11th ed. New York: Longman, 2010. 1612-658. Print.
The Glass Menagerie is a play about the character Tom trying to escape his living situation that traps him. He is doing to best to cope with his dependent, demanding mother Amanda and take care of his quiet sister Laura. Amanda and Laura solely depend on Tom’s income from his warehouse job, but Tom is desperately wanting to leave both his mother and sister to lead his own adventurous life. Laura is mainly embodied by her precious glass menagerie and Jim O’Connor’s nickname for her, “Blue Roses.” Her livelihood revolves around taking care of her glass animals and protecting them, and in doing so, she isolates herself from the normal world around her. In Tennessee William’s play The Glass Menagerie, symbolism is use to uncover the unearthly beauty and delicacy of Laura and to portray Tom’s need to escape from his oppressive responsibilities.
Williams, Tennessee. The Glass Menagerie. The Bedford Introduction to Literature: Reading, Writing, Thinking. 5th ed. Ed. Michael Meyer. Boston: Bedford, 1999. 1865-190
Bloom, Harold, Frank Durham, and Nancy M. Tishcler. Tennessee Williams's The Glass Menagerie. New York: Bloom's Literary Criticism, 2007. Google Books. Web.
Williams, Tennessee. The Glass Menagerie. In Literature: An Introduction to Reading and Writing, 4th ed. Ed. Edgar V. Roberts and Henry E. Jacobs. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1995. 1519-1568.
The Glass Menagerie is an eposidic play written by Tennesse Williams reflecting the economic status and desperation of the American people in the 30s.He portrays three different characters going through these hardships of the real world,and choosing different ways to escape it.Amanada,the mother,escapes to the memories of the youth;Tom watches the movies to provide him with the adventure he lacks in his life;and laura runs to her glass menagerie.
Amanda uses the word “devotion,” instead of the word “obsession,” like Tom uses. The word “devotion” has a positive stigma around it, which suggests that Amanda’s intentions are good. Yet, in spite having the right intentions, her approach to helping her family backfires. Amanda uses the metaphor of a witch to show how her obsession of having a perfect family has a negative impact on her behavior. She understands that her controlling ways are causing her children to resent her. Although she is aware of how her behavior is affecting her family, anxiety is brushed under the rug during this time period (Dworkin 49). Therefore, she does not have anyone to help tame her anxious ways, which damages her relationships with her
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.
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.
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
Williams, Tennessee. "The Glass Menagerie." The Bedford Introduction to Literature. Ed. Michael Meyer. 5th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's. 1999. pp.1865-1908.
Williams, Tennessee. The Glass Menagerie. In Literature: An Introduction to Reading and Writing, 4th ed. Ed. Edgar V. Roberts and Henry E. Jacobs. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1995. 1519-1568.
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...
Every piece of writing has deeper meaning than that of the literal words written on the page. In essence, an author is an artist, creating a beautiful story full of vivid detail that serves a greater purpose than that of just storytelling. In Tennessee Williams’s novel, The Glass Menagerie, Williams tells a story of a single parent family, in which each member battles their own distinct internal struggles. Tom, the protagonist and main provider for the household, wishes to leave and venture off on his own but worries about the financial burden this decision will leave for his family. Similarly, Tom’s younger sister, Laura, struggles with acceptance and finding a place of belonging.
Williams, Tennessee. The Glass Menagerie. In Literature: An Introduction to Reading and Writing, 4th ed. Ed. Edgar V. Roberts and Henry E. Jacobs. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1995. 1519-1568.