Glass Menagerie Essay

Memory is the product of the mind, and it is often manipulated by the heart and emotions. Many people believe that what happened in their memories is what truly happened in the past, however that is not the case. Memory itself is not an indicator of the truth, for example, two people who have experienced the same situation, may or may not recall the same actions, because memory is not reality. The Glass Menagerie is a play by Tennessee Williams that is based off memory and not reality. It is displayed through the memory of the main character Tom, who is deemed unreliable simply because the memories are flawed, however the play is not about remembering what happened, but wondering about what might have been. The Glass Menagerie reveals to the

Laura Wingfield is Tom’s little sister who clings to her past memory of Jim O’Connor, the boy who gave her fond memories of high school. Laura recollects these memories to Amanda, her mother, of Jim calling her Blue Roses when she had pleurosis “because he thought that [she] said Blue Roses” (Williams 35). To Laura, who’s life she lives as a jobless cripple, one of the reasons these memories of him calling her Blue Roses are one of the few fond moments she has is because he was the boy she liked in high school and acknowledgement from him was the one thing she could look forward to. On the other hand, because he was the boy she liked these memories are faulty, because humans tend to look past the flaws of loved ones and see them for what they are not. Laura sees Jim as an angel in her memories, however the audience discovers later on that it’s not the true case. The audience sees Jim through the eyes of Laura as she describes him from memory, however as sweet as the present Jim seems at first, he kisses Laura despite being engaged and then proceeds to tell her he can not speak to her again (Williams 107). Due to Laura’s over glorified and unreliable memory of Jim, she was fooled into a disappointing