People live their lives often with a false sense of reality. We do this to ourselves most often though what we are taught is right and what’s normal while we are growing up, or just simply lying to ourselves to make scene of our discontent or to fulfill an obligation to a loved one. “Some people walk through a hallway with covered mirrors– the hallway is lined with mirrors but there are blankets covering each of them. They go through life believing in an image of themselves that isn't real, and an image of themselves standing in the world and relative to the world, that isn't real. {C. JoyBell}. This quote I found during the coarse of my research can almost sum up my thoughts of the charters in the story. In the story the Glass Menagerie we have a handful of charters who seem to be simply living a lie. Some feel trapped or imprisoned by burden, others secretly are discontent with their lives and trying to become something that they are not due to what is considered normal by society. In this paper I plan to find out and outline if these characters lives are an illusion or a reality.
First lets take a look at the three charters the mother Amanda, the son Jim and the sister Laura. Who are they and what kind of life doe they live. First we have the son named Tom who is not only a charter but also the narrator of the story. Tom works a dead end job to support his family a burden left to him by his father who left then some years ago. While tom performs this obligation, as he grows older he also want to grow free of his family and mind more meaning in his life. These conflicting ideals often lead to fights with his overbearing mother who wants him to stay and take the place of his father permanently as she has no means to support her...
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...ass-menagerie-at-loeb-drama-center-cambridge-mass.html?pagewanted=2
http://www.timesdispatch.com/entertainment-life/arts-literature/theater/theater-review-the-glass-menagerie/article_aefc5e74-0c65-5208-b307-09bc8c772ecd.html ( TONY FARRELL
Special correspondent)
http://www.tennesseewilliamsstudies.org/archives/2000/4debusscher.pdf (Gilbert
Debusscher)
Gilbert Dehusscher- Secerts and lies in the glass menaerine- http://www.tennesseewilliamsstudies.org/archives/2000/4debusscher.pdf
http://classiclit.about.com/od/glassmenagerie/fr/aa_glassmenager.htm (James Topham)
http://redmondaplit.blogspot.com/2012/02/characters-trapped-by-illusion-glass.html (Rachael Redmond)
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/16/theater/reviews/the-glass-menagerie-at-loeb-drama-center-cambridge-mass.html?_r=0
http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/theatre/2010/04/05/100405crth_theatre_lahr
The power within the mind provides people with the opportunity to create an illusion of one’s life. These illusions sprout from dreams that often are unobtainable, as they strive to reach perfection in life which is known to be impossible. The mind crafted images provide people with an outlet to escape the terrifying truth of reality. Shielding oneself from reality is only a temporary solution, and can create social struggles as well as tension. The struggle between wanting to live in a fantasy of dreams to escape the world, and accepting the hardships of reality has existed in society since the beginning of time. Tennessee Williams demonstrates that many fall into the temptation to escape reality by living in an imagination where truth and responsibilities are neglected in his novel The Glass Menagerie.
There are many charters in this book like the two main ones Laura Wyman and Sara Gittler. They are both about 14 years old. Laura is the main charter of the present time and Sara is the main charter in the diary. They are both smart girls. Laura has a younger sister named Hinda and her two best friends Nix and Adam. Laura, her friends and family all live in a small town. Sara also has a younger sister and a brother Named David and her best friend Denna. They all live in the Warsaw Ghetto.
Character Response #1 “‘I didn 't propose to you,’ Dad said, ‘I told you I was going to marry you.” (Walls 27) This shows how Rex is a determined person, that he wants to be there for his wife no matter what happens. It shows he wants to be a wonderful husband and father and he won’t back down until he gets what her. He seems like a confident person and he is the reason they got married because he had true feelings for Rose Mary and he actually cared about her.
In Tennessee Williams The Glass Menagerie, we are given opportunity to see and understand that even truth can be cloaked by illusion. There are four main characters, we have Tom Wingfield whom is the narrator of the play. By day is a warehouse worker in a shoe factory, often absent minded for he would must rather be focusing on his passion for poetry and writing. By nightfall he often finds refuge from his mother's constant berating in the local movies. Laura Wingfield is Tom's beloved sister. Crippled since childhood from a disease known as plurosis, Laura is also emotionally crippled as an adult, in the sense that she is so incredibly shy attending business school was simply too much for her. To others it is no issue but to her it's all than she can see. Instead of fulfilling her mothers wishes she spends her days carefully attending to her delicate glass animals and listening to her father's record collection.
The “Glass Menagerie” by Tennessee Williams shows a family facing economic and social hardships due to the father abandoning them. The father’s absence forces the rest of the family to fill roles that they wouldn’t be obliged to face if the father remained. The mother, Amanda, is a strong single mother who pushes her kids to be economically self-sustaining individuals. Amanda tries to impose her desires for her kids in a very direct and controlling manner which causes them to dislike her initiatives. The son, Tom, is the breadwinner for the family, however is dissatisfied with his situation due to his increased responsibilities. The daughter, Laura, is handicapped and dropped out of business school. Each member of the family is limited by their ability to grow out of their negative habits, however, it is likely that these habits or characteristics came from the family situation and the roles that each member was forced to fill.
Reality vs. Illusion in The Glass Menagerie, The Death of a Salesman, and A Raisin in the Sun
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.
How do fiction storytellers reveal a character’s actions and or characteristics? Fiction storytellers use things like conflicts, diction, and imagery to add a better description to a book. Most of these examples also hook the reader to want to learn more. The mood of a story is also revealed when using this examples. In The Looking Glass Wars Beddor uses conflicts and challenges to inform the reader about Alyss’ characteristics.
Teenagers and young adults go through a lot of changes in their life sometimes good and sometimes bad. Their personality depends on who they are around and where they live. Authors can use certain literary techniques to signal these changes that are happening in the character. Beddor illustrates in the Looking Glass Wars how these changes are important to what someone will do with their life. In the Looking Glass Wars, Beddor uses diction, imagery, and details to show how the main character, Alyss is changing.
The aspect of character development plays a prominent role in various works of literature, and no exceptions arose within this novel. Jeannette Walls, author of The Glass Castle, uses detailed portions of the story to prominently display her character development and vibrantly show growth. The memoir follows the life of Jeannette and the struggles she faces along her journey. Living in a blue collar family, she faces many challenges that the average person may not deal with. Though the adventurous and wild-hearted Jeannette slowly begins to face reality and must adapt to her situations. Throughout the novel she matures and develops, altering her personality and thoughts. Several occurrences in the novel affect certain aspects of her personality and change certain beliefs that she once had. Her thoughts on her parents, the reality of the family's issues, and the beliefs of her future all begin to clear up and shift as she develops as a character.
really a place for someone like him and his mind rebelled. Lastly you can see
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.
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 handling 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.
Amanda, like Laura, wants Tom to strive for is full potential and be all that he can be. Their relationship is strained because Tom reminds Amanda of her husband. He just does not quite fit in with the rest of his family. He aspires to travel and see the world. He does not want to just get by; he wants to live and experience life. Amanda sees this in his and acknowledges that he has the same flighty attitude as his father. Mrs Wingfield snaps at her son and exclaims, “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! Goodbye! And me with the bag to hold. He is the major breadwinner in the family. He brings in all the income and if he leaves Amanda and Laura will not be able to make it. Amanda takes it upon herself to mold Tom into the man that she wished her husband was. Of course, he takes it upon himself to be anything but. He spends every night at the movies. Tom uses the movies as a form of escape form his home life and satisfy his urge to leave and explore. He says, “People go to the movies instead of moving.” Tom is more of a realist compared to Amanda’s hopeful view on life. He knows life will never measure up to his mother’s expectations. The world has changed and he feels his mother needs to wake up. His personality is a direct contrast
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.