The quote written by british novelist Laurence Sterne, “No body, but he who has felt it, can conceive what a plaguing thing it is to have a man’s mind torn asunder by two projects of equal strength, both obstinately pulling in a contrary direction at the same time.” ties to the life of Laura Wingfield. Within the play, The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams, Laura feels her mind being pulled in two directions, both by her family, and herself. Surrounded by a broken family, Laura shapes the play as a symbol of her family's relationship as she begins the play “crippled”- symbolizing a broken home- and heals over the course of the play due to conflicts and self realizations; showing the families final healing, even in an unconventional manner. …show more content…
Seen as the only stability and object to bring her joy, laura creates and attachment to the menageries. After a feud between Tom and Amanda, Tom accidentally knocks a menagerie over. Here, Laura shrieks, “My glass!- menagerie”, and covers her face, clearly upset. (Williams 24) The depiction and addition to the scene of the menagerie shattering depicts the shattered relationship tom and his mother share in this scene. In the beginning of this scene, Tom and Amanda re seen fighting over his apparent late night disappearances by going to what he states is the movies. In his mother's eyes, this is because of the books and their impact on him. Annoyed by the constant nagging when she takes his books insisting that she will not “ALLOW SUCH FILTH BROUGHT INTO … [her]... HOUSE”, he is taken aback by the statement and reminds her of his rent payments. (Williams 21) In doing so, he creates a bigger argument fueling her fears by stating that instead of going to the movies, he is committing an unspeakable act.Because of this, Tom ruins his relationship with his mother and forces her to not speak with him until he apologizes. Although the glass menagerie is not broken until after this scene, the understanding of the glass shattering after the argument allows the audience to understand why Willams included the glass piece and Laura's disabilities. By …show more content…
By her no longer being as shy as prior to Mr. O'Connor's visit, she is able to end her inner battles and allow for her brother and mother to do the same. By beginning the play “crippled”, Laura is able to depict the evolution of her family's relationships in an unconventional manner by resolving Tod and Amanda's conflicts and through self realization with Mr. O’Conner. Referencing back to Laurence Sterne's quote, Laura is an ideal symbol of “a man’s mind torn asunder by two projects of equal strength, both obstinately pulling in a contrary direction at the same time”. With fighting her inner battles of being shy and limping, and having her loved ones constantly bickering, her mind was inevitably torn. By Mr. O'connor easing one side of her mind with help overcoming her shyness, Laura was able to conquer her inner battle. In doing so, Tom and Amanda also began mending their broken relationship as Laura symbolized their broken family. With Laura able to recover, so was her
The family dynamics for Tennessee Williams are evident of a lifestyle of despondency and tension within the household. Tennessee Williams mother Edwina Williams she considered herself a Southern Belle, and his sister Rose Williams was a sickly adolescent whom he shared his imaginative dramatizations with as he transcribed his plays. While Williams was in graduate school at the University of Iowa, Rose was institutionalized for schizophrenia and was underwent a pre-font lobotomy. “The symbolization of lobotomy in the “Glass Menagerie” play signifies the hurt that Tennessee Williams felt by his parents by not collaborating to him that his sister underwent surgery. In the play, Williams substitutes the mental illness of his real sister, with a physical limitation “a limp” which Williams substituted for the mental illness of his real sister, Rose. Even the father’s absence reflects periods when his bullying sales man father, Cornelius Coffin Williams, would go on the road, leaving Tom, Edwina and Rose at one another’s mercies (Charles Matthews, 1996-2016).”
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.
She is a shy, quiet girl who keeps herself at a distance. She loves glass figurines and prides herself on them. To her brother, she is seen as crippled because she cannot walk well and is socially awkward. This results in Laura’s reality being different than the rest of the family’s because she closes herself off into a space where it is only her. Amanda wants the best for Laura, for her to have a husband or finish business school, because she wants Laura to get out of the house and get living. However, Laura does not want to live in that world, and it is shown when she skipped her business classes and through her interaction with Jim, her high school crush. Jim is the only person who is able to take Laura out of her own weird reality, and bring her into the reality of an ordinary girl. Laura breaks through her reality when she talks about the unicorn horn that Jim broke off her glass figurine, she tells Jim that, “It doesn’t matter. . . . [smiling] I’ll just imagine he had an operation. The horn was removed to make him feel less—freakish!” (Williams, 2009). Therefore, Laura being with Jim makes her feel a little less odd. This brings Laura out of her own reality for a bit, but then she retreats back into it when she finds out that Jim is engaged to someone else right after he kisses her. He broke her free of her own reality for a bit, just like how he broke the horn off of the
In Tennessee William's play, The Glass Menagerie, the character of Laura is like a fragile piece of glass. The play is based around a fragile family and their difficulties coping with life.
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.
I agree that the `The Glass Menagerie' is definitely a play about life that is explored "through he fantasies of a crippled girl." However, more than that, it is a play about family and how they interact with each other, causing them to lead such a life. So, yes, although the plot centres on Laura, we also learn a fair amount about Amanda and Tom's life. Therefore, Williams actually explores life through the fantasies of an American family who share one main thing in common- they all have big dreams, but they are all flawed. Thus, failure is their only fate.
The glass menagerie continually signifies Laura’s unique personality throughout the play. One of the first people outside the family to see the more vibrant side of Laura is Jim, a friend of her brother’s as well as an old high school crush of hers. While having dinner at their house, Jim takes an interest in Laura’s collection of glass animals and records. They reminisce about high school and when Jim begins to understand why she is so shy, he says, “You know what I judge is the trouble with you?
In Tennessee Williams's play, The Glass Menagerie, he reflects upon the economic status and desperation of an American family living in St. Louis during the 1930s. Williams portrays three characters: Amanda Wingfield, the disappointed mother; Tom, the narrator and trapped son; and Laura, the crippled daughter. Williams compares the Wingfield apartment to "one of those vast hive-like conglomerations of cellular living-units..." a reminder to each character of the harsh reality of their life (epilogue.1972). Although they strive for escape from the same situation, each character has a way of dealing with hardships that are symbolized throughout the play in various ways. William's use of symbolism emphasizes one of the main themes; escaping reality.
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.
Tennessee Williams wrote The Glass Menagerie in a poetic and symbolic manner. For example, the glass menagerie is a symbol for how fragile Laura is, and the fire escape is a symbol for Tom’s hope to escape his dysfunctional household. Amanda is very poetic when she speaks. For example, "Oh! I felt so weak I could barely keep on my feet! I had to sit down while they got me a glass of water! Fifty dollars’ tuition, all of our plans – my hopes and ambitions for you – just gone up the spout, just gone up the spout like that." (2.16, Amanda).
The Glass Menagerie reflects Williams's own life so much that it could be mistaken as pages from his autobiography. The characters and situations of the play are much like those found in the small St. Louis apartment where Williams spent part of his life. Williams himself can be seen in the character Tom. Both worked in a shoe factory and wrote poetry to escape the depressing reality of their lives, and both eventually ended up leaving. One not so obvious character is Mr. Wingfield, who is the absent father seen only by the looming picture hanging in the Wingfield's apartment. Tom and Williams both had fathers who were, as Tom says, "in love with long distances." Amanda, an overbearing mother who cannot let go of her youth in the Mississippi Delta and her "seventeen gentleman callers" is much like Williams own mother, Edwina. Both Amanda and Edwina were not sensitive to their children's feelings. In their attempts to push their children to a better future, they pushed them away. The model for Laura was Williams' introverted sister, Rose. According to Contemporary Authors "the memory of Rose appears in some character, situation, symbol, or motif in almost every work after 1938." Edwina, like Amanda, tried to find a gentleman caller for Rose. Both situations ended with a touching confrontation with the caller and an eventual heartbreak
“There is a time for departure even when there is no certain place to go” - Tennessee Williams. In life, individuals will often have to deal with the struggle of their issues and pushing through tough times that may be difficult to handle . During these moments in our life, we look to escape and find an outlet to be rid of reality for a period of time. By engaging in escapism and retreating into our own world it can caused a divide in dealing with our reality which can cause us to ignore the problems going on in our lives. In the play, The Glass Menagerie, by Tennessee Williams, the play suggests that when life becomes too difficult for individuals thet long to escape their reality.
Tennessee Williams’ play, The Glass Menagerie, depicts the Wingfield family in a naturalistic viewpoint that highlights the importance of a man in the life of a woman. Without a husband in the play, Amanda’s son Tom is rendered as “the man of the house.” Williams attributes the monetary stability of the Wingfields entirely to Tom. Williams stresses the necessity of a working man through Tom so that women and children can be financially stable. As a naturalist, Tennessee Williams illustrates the characters’ reactions to various events and circumstances in accordance with man’s natural instincts of survival. Williams reveals Amanda in this approach, and he portrays naturalistic tendencies in her personality and character, her relationship with her son, and her connection with her hopeless daughter, Laura. Amanda is trying to survive and raise her children without a husband to support her economically.
To escape the stress, Laura has a collection of glass sculptures. This is stated in the scene information of Scene II with “She [Laura] is washing and polishing her collection of glass” (Williams 1251). In Scene III when Tom and Amanda are fighting Tom through his jacket and breaking a sculpture “With an outraged groan he [Tom] tears the coat off again, splitting the shoulders of it and hurls it across the room. It strikes against the shelf of Laura’s glass collection, a tinkle of shattering glass. Laura cries out as if wounded” (Williams 1257).
written in between 384 and 222 BC, and his views were taken on by some