“The Glass Menagerie” takes place in St. Louis, with a mother and her two children, Tom and Laura, it is written by Tennessee Williams. “The Glass Menagerie is a play about coming-of-age. Tom’s maturity is demonstrated by his final decision to leave the family, a decision that is made with the awareness of the inevitable clash between illusion and reality, between reaction and action, and between what life has given him and what he can control” (enotes). Tom is the narrator of the play, and is also a character in it. The play is presented by memories that Tom has. The two children’s father ran off many years ago and has not been in contact with them since. Amanda, the mother, is trying to get Laura a husband, though she is crippled. Amanda refuses to except that her daughter is disabled. She spends her life going between reality and fantasy trying to avoid the problems in the real world. Tom works at a shoe warehouse, and hates his job. He likes to write poems and would like to spend his life doing that. Tom reminds Amanda of his father, and …show more content…
Amanda, Tom and Laura’s mother, lives in her own fantasy world most of the time. Her mind is constantly going between the real world and a false world she has made up in her head. Amanda often does this when her life becomes too difficult to deal with. She reminisces on the years when she was younger, and had many gentlemen callers. Amanda uses this old memory as her new reality. “In The Glass Menagerie, there are enormous differences between Amanda's memories of her girlhood in Blue Mountain and her current life in a Depression-era tenement in St. Louis. Her attempts to ignore these differences can make her look ridiculous, for example when she goes overboard on the dinner for Jim, but they can also create sympathy as you realize how far she has fallen from her glory days in the Mississippi Delta”
In The Glass Menagerie, by Tennessee Williams, the glass menagerie is a clear and powerful metaphor for each of the four characters, Tom, Laura, Amanda, and the Gentleman Caller. It represents their lives, personality, emotions, and other important characteristics.
Every time the family comes to a confrontation someone retreats to the past and reflects on life as it was back then, not dealing with life as it is for them today. Tom, assuming the macho role of the man of the house, babies and shelters Laura from the outside world. His mother reminds him that he is to feel a responsibility for his sister. He carries this burden throughout the play. His mother knows if it were not for his sisters needs he would have been long gone. Laura must pickup on some of this, she is so sensitive she must sense Toms feeling of being trapped. Tom dreams of going away to learn of the world, Laura is aware of this and she is frightened of what may become of them if he were to leave.
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
The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams had ordinary people in an ordinary life that closely resembled the influences of Williams’ personal life while having reoccurring themes and motifs throughout the story. The play has been done by many with some variations in the scripts and setting while still clinging to the basic ideas of the original play.
In The Glass Menagerie, by Tennessee Williams, we embark on the task of seeing a family living in the post WWII era. The mother is Amanda, living in her own world and wanting only the best for her son, Tom. Tom, a dreamer, tired of Amanda’s overbearing and constant pursuit of him taking care of the family, wants to pursue his own goals of becoming a poet. He is constantly criticized and bombarded by his mother for being unsuccessful. This drives him to drinking and lying about his whereabouts, and eventually at the end of the play, he ends up leaving. An example of Amanda and Tom’s quarrel I when he quotes, “I haven’t enjoyed one bit of this dinner because of your constant directions on how to eat it. It’s you that makes me rush through meals with your hawklike attention to every bit I take.”(302) Laura, on the other hand, is shy and out of touch with reality because of a slight disability, in which she is comfort...
Amanda Wingfield is mother of Tom and Laura. She is a middle-aged southern belle whose husband has abandoned her. She spends her time reminiscing about the past and nagging her children. Amanda is completely dependent on her son Tom for finical security and holds him fully responsible for her daughter Laura's future. Amanda is obsessed with her past as she constantly reminds Tom and Laura of that " one Sunday afternoon in Blue Mountain when she once received seventeen gentlemen callers" (pg.32). The reader cannot even be sure that this actually happened. However, it is clear that despite its possible falsity, Amanda has come to believe it. Amanda also refuses to acknowledge that her daughter Laura is crippled and refers to her handicap as " a little defect-hardly noticeable" (pg.45). Only for brief moments does she ever admit that her daughter is crippled and then she resorts back into to her world of denial and delusion. Amanda puts the weight of Laura's success in life on her son Tom's shoulders. When Tom finally finds a man to come over to the house for diner and meet Laura, Amanda blows the situation way out of proportion. She believes that this gentlemen caller, Jim, is going to be the man to rescue Laura. When in fact neither herself nor Laura has even met this man Jim yet. She tries to explain to Laura how to entertain a gentleman caller; she says-talking about her past " They knew how to entertain their gentlemen callers. It wasn't enough for a girl to be possessed of a pretty face and a graceful figure although I wasn't slighted in either respect.
themselves. Some of the symbols for Tom are the Merchant Marine and the magician’s nailed coffin, while Amanda’s are the yellow dress and her membership to the Daughters of the American Revolution and some of Laura’s are the unicorn and blue roses. Tennessee Williams play has a simple face but the meanings behind the countless and increasingly complex symbols make the play enjoyable the tenth time read. Through the narrator, Tom, we are giving a glimpse into Tennessee Williams’ life as his autobiographical character survives the depression era in St. Louis. I shall explain some of the more obvious symbols and deeper meanings to the key points of this play.
Every character exists in their own little world in which they indulge themselves in whether it is real or just a fantasy. In The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams, everyone in the play allows for their imagination to run wild. The contrast is shocking when they withdraw from there because the differences in their appearance, personality and behavior transform drastically. Tom supports his family despite his unhappiness with his lifestyle. He tries to please his mother, Amanda by being the sole supporter of the family, but only gets rewarded by Amanda's constant nagging and distrust. Eventually, Tom finds himself more like his father as he seeks adventure in the movies and hangs out on the fire escape to avoid suffocation of the household. He desperately seeks the life he always desired; the life of adventure.
In Tennessee Williams' play, The Glass Menagerie, Amanda, Laura, and Tom have chosen to avoid reality. Amanda continually attempts to live in the past. Laura's escape from the real world is her glass collection and old phonograph records. Tom hides from the real world by going to the movies and getting drunk. Each character retreats to their separate world to escape the cruelties of life.
Life is a lonely tale of alienation, as Tennessee Williams conveys though his play, “The Glass Menagerie.” Williams surrounds Laura in isolation from a world in which they wish to belong to by using various symbols. The symbolic nature of the motifs hidden within the lines of this play provides meaning to the theme found consistent throughout the play: Individuals are all alone in the world.
Throughout this story, I believe that the glass menagerie represents a symbol, much as is represents Laura. The glass menagerie is fragile, as is Laura. They are both kind of in the old time, because they don’t go out into the reality of the world. Laura is a very shy girl, and is nervous about being around people she doesn’t really know. When the characters in the story give Laura a chance, we learn that she can actually be charming and the gentleman caller, Jim, also learns that she is a very sympathetic person, but she can’t face what it takes to be in a relationship. When she was telling her mom about the yearbook where Jim used to call her “Blue Roses”, Laura feels drawn to think about him again, but quickly realizes that he is probably
Tom Williams in the play The Glass Menagerie writes about a time when his family struggles. Many people can relate their problems one way or another with Williams. Though the play had a very realistic feel to it, many people enjoy fairytale endings.
“The Glass Menagerie” is a play about a fatherless family for whom the youngest and only son, Tom, is the sole provider. The play is Tom’s memory of his family and the events leading up to his departure. He and his mother, Amanda, argue quite frequently in the story, which causes Tom to run off every night and return in the wee hours of the morning for work. After Tom brings home one potential suitor who he didn’t know was engaged, for his sister Laura who cannot seem to get married because of her terrible shyness, his mother chastises him for bringing an engaged man to meet Laura. However in the words of Preston Fambrough, “Amanda is unjust to Tom in blaming him for the failure of her ham-handed campaign to ensure a suitable husband for daughter Laura, unreasonably faulting him for not knowing that the gentleman caller was engaged to be married and forgetting that Tom tried to dissuade her from the ill-fated scheme in the first place” (Fambrough 100). Tom subsequently runs away for being falsely accused and not respected. The play prompts the audience to ask whether or not Tom was justified in leaving his family behind because they didn’t respect him as the main contributor for their wellbeing. Tom is
The Glass Menagerie, a play by Tennessee Williams, is well written with a significant/influential theme, an engaging plot, and a cast of eclectic characters. The play contains four main characters: Amanda, the mother, Tom, the son, Laura, the daughter, and Jim, the gentleman caller. Throughout the play Amanda wishes for Laura to find a husband, even though she is shy and crippled. Tom is the man of the house, meaning that he is obligated to pay the bills. Tom must push his dreams of being a poet in order to do this.
The Glass Menagerie, a memory play, written in 1944 by Tennessee Williams which brought him to fame. It is a four character play which stars Williams as the main character and narrator. This play is of Tom’s recollection of his mother Amanda, and his sister Laura. The play starts off which Tom’s opening monologue, which explains the background and history of the play. His mother Amanda was a middle age southern belle, who was deserted by her husband and was trying to raise her two children. Laura, Tom’s older sister, was very shy and had an illness which left her with a disabled and fragile.