Life is full of difficulties. People are compelled to face these from time to time. In some cases, an individual is unable to progress in life because of their inability to deal with the reality of their predicaments. However, some of these drastic incidents are necessary for individuals to overcome these difficulties and move on in life. In The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams, a few of the characters portrayed successfully overcome the hardships while others remain held up in their predicaments and are hence, unable to make any progress in life. In this play, Tom fails to overcome the boredom of living with his family, Laura fails to confront her fears of schooling while Amanda succeeds in accepting that she has raised her children well despite their stubbornness. Amanda sends Laura to college so she can get typing lessons so she can make enough capital for the family to start a business. This is Amanda’s biggest dream. Working hard to cater for her children, she entertains gentlemen in her house who pay her for her services. BUT Tom greatly dislikes this, going to the movies each night to stay away. He stops working and confesses,’ I’m going to the opium dens- I am a hired assassin” (Williams, 759). This distresses Amanda …show more content…
He attempts to overcome this distress; he prefers to spend his nights at the movies. His mother, Amanda, constantly rebukes him for being so rude to her and always engaging in alcohol. It gets so bad that he mistreats his little sister, Laura, damaging her glass menagerie. He also dislikes Amanda’s style of waking them up each morning, saying “rise and shine!” (759). While arguing with his mother, he confesses to her how much he hates his job, wishing to go, “as a far as the transportation reaches” (759). Like Laura, Tom fails to win the battle over the reality of the fact that he dislikes his job and resorts to
Reality is hard to face, when everything going on around a person is not in the greatest conditions. The Wingfield family does not live in the greatest conditions. Tom, Amanda and Laura all live in an apartment together. Tom, the main character and narrator of the play, is the brother to Laura and the son to Amanda. Tom is forced to take on the role of the breadwinner of the family because his father left them. This has thrown the entire family off the rails. It has altered the reality in which all of the characters live. In Tennessee Williams’ play, “The Glass Menagerie”, The Wingfield family has difficulty differentiating reality versus non-reality. The world we are living in today relates
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.
Tennessee Williams The Glass Menagerie is a profound play that uses symbolism as a way to remember his personal life but to add depth to each character. Each character brings a symbol that is essential to plot of the story. All of the symbolic elements come together at the end of the play. Tom has escaped his life with Amanda and Laura and is riddled with guilt as everything around him serves as a reminder of his old life, especially Laura.
The family in Tennessee Williams’ play, The Glass Menagerie, faces various dilemmas. One of the most prominent is the issue of anxiety. Throughout the play, the family focuses their attention mainly on Laura and her struggle with both her physical disability and social anxiety. However, closer analysis reveals that Laura is not the only character suffering, each family member displays signs of being affected by anxiety. Their interactions with one another trigger feelings of nervousness, unhappiness, and anger. The issue of anxiety extends beyond Laura, affecting the whole family, and ultimately leads to tragedy.
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.
that’s what you’ll do!” (Williams 17). Amanda is very controlling so she believes she is entitled to not only mocking her daughter about her failed business career but also taking control of her love life and her future, without even asking Laura what she wants. This leads to a change in Laura by the end of the book, just like Tom and the girl in The Fish. Laura ends up getting a life lesson out of a set up date by her mother, as she finally interacts with a man that told her the truth and that she needs to take control of her life, and that's what she did.
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
In Tennessee Williams' play, The Glass Menagerie, each member of the Wingfield family has their own fantasy world in which they indulge themselves. Tom escaped temporarily from the fantasy world of Amanda and Laura by hanging out on the fire escape. Suffocating both emotionally and spiritually, Tom eventually sought a more permanent form of escape.
The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams is a touching play about the lost dreams of a southern family and their struggle to escape reality. The play is a memory play and therefore very poetic in mood, setting, and dialogue. Tom Wingfield serves as the narrator as well as a character in the play. Tom lives with his Southern belle mother, Amanda, and his painfully shy sister, Laura. The action of the play revolves around Amanda's search to find Laura a "gentleman caller. The Glass Menagerie's plot closely mirrors actual events in the author's life. Because Williams related so well to the characters and situations, he was able to beautifully portray the play's theme through his creative use of symbolism.
The three family members are adults at the time of this play, struggling to be individuals, and yet, very enmeshed and codependent with one another. The overbearing and domineering mother, Amanda, spends much of her time reliving the past; her days as a southern belle. She desperately hopes her daughter, Laura, will marry. Laura suffers from an inferiority complex partially due to a minor disability that she perceives as a major one. She has difficulty coping with life outside of the apartment, her cherished glass animal collection, and her Victrola. Tom, Amanda's son, resents his role as provider for the family, yearns to be free from him mother's constant nagging, and longs to pursue his own dreams. A futile attempt is made to match Laura with Jim, an old high school acquaintance and one of Tom's work mates.
In Tennessee Williams' play, The Glass Menagerie, each character attempts to escape the real world by creating their own “reality”. Laura hides from the world by magnifying her illness. Tom convinces himself that his needs supersede the needs of his family. Amanda focuses almost exclusively on the past - when she saw herself as a desirable southern belle. Even Jim focus his hopes on recapturing his good old high school days. Each character transposes their difficult situations into shadows of the truth.
People have the tendency to block out the things that aren't going well in their lives, this can be called denial. No member of the Wingfield family has a perfect life, they each have various issues. In the play The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams, every member of the Wingfield family denies reality and withdraws into their own private world of illusion. Amanda denies how her life turned out, Tom denies the fact his life is boring, and Laura denies herself; they each have a way of coping.
These personal downfalls in life drive Tom into a life of poetry and movies, and Laura into a world of glass figurines. Tom is unsatisfied with his work at the warehouse and feels his life lacks adventure. Therefore, he finds it through writing poetry and watching movies. When business is slow at the shoe warehouse, Tom goes to the washroom to work on his poetry.
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 to handle 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, somehow, finds a way to be both selfish and selfless when it comes to Laura. Amanda wants Laura to be happy and successful, but does not understand that Laura is too shy and unmotivated to be either. When Amanda discovers that Laura has stopped going to typing class she is beyond disappointing. When discovered Amanda yells at her daughter saying, “Fifty dollars’ tuition, all our plans- my hopes and ambitions for you- just gone up the spout, just gone up the spout like that.” Laura quit something as simple as learning how to type; this realization struck Amanda because if she cannot do that there is no way Laura could provide for herself without a husband. Mrs. Wingfield’s worst nightmare is is for her children to become dependent on relatives and not being able to take care of themselves. After Laura drops out of typing school Amanda says, “What is there left but dependency all our lives? I know so well what becomes of unmarried women who aren’t prepared to occupy a position. I’ve seen such pitiful cases in the South—barely tolerated spinsters living upon the grudging patronage of sister’s husband or brother’s wife!—stuck away in some little mousetrap of a room—encouraged by one in-law to visit another—little birdlike women without any nest—eating the crust of humility all their life!. Amanda had always wanted for Laura to find a nice husband, but then the situation became desperate when the younger women