In Tennessee Williams The Glass Menagerie, the readers get a true look at a dysfunctional family. Amanda, Laura, and Tom Wingfield are a typical family struggling to get by. They encounter several problems with each other and are not able to overcome these problems due to the lack of communication and concern for one another. They are the exact opposite of what a family is considered to be. Each character lives in their own mind. Due to the motherly impulse of Amanda, Tom and Laura are caught in a trap of their mothers’ arrogance, the uncertainty of their own lives, and the illusions which help them escape reality. As defined in the Oxford English Dictionary, illusions are where someone is in a mental state involving the attribution of reality …show more content…
She seems to want to be in control of their lives but she also has a sweetness and caring aspect for her children. Amanda’s problem is not that she is over protective but she is an anachronistic figure who is cut off from society and its changes. She shapes illusion into an appearance of what she wishes the truth to be and clings to another time and place. In Delma Presley’s The Glass Menagerie: An American Memory, she says that “Joseph Wood Krutch summarizes that Amanda is a heroine although “an absurd and pathetic widow” who is “defeated by a crude and pushing modernity which neither understands nor respects her dream of gentility.”” (Presley 36-37). Amanda comes from the deep south and a time of old traditions. One of those traditions being that a woman have a true gentleman caller. She has many fond childhood memories which she appreciates and relives over and over again with her children. She was a typical southern belle. The lifestyle she lived is the one she envisions for Laura. She becomes so desperate for Laura to be married to a man whom can take care of her that she begs Tom to bring home a nice young man to ask Laura out. “Find one that’s clean-living—doesn’t drink—and ask him out for sister!” (Williams …show more content…
Ever since her illness that left her with a physical deformity she has had no control over own wellbeing and life. Even with everything else that goes on around her, her life revolves around a set of glass animals. They are her only escape from the tension of family issues and the unhappiness that surrounds her in her apartment. Due to her physical deformity she had a seizure of fear during school one day and dropped out of school because she was embarrassed. Because of her physical condition it left Laura with an insecurity of what other people may think of her. Her glass animals played a huge part in her illusion and isolation because in her search for a friend she built a make-believe relationship with them along with a Victrola and old records. “Although Laura 's life is caught up in self-sustained illusions, she acknowledges her situation freely. She has given up trying to be “normal.”” (Presley 41). Laura realizes exactly what is going on in her life, but because of her crippled physical state and blinded mentality, she has become a prisoner to herself. She does not believe that anything else in the world could give her the same secure feeling as her fantasy
The Glass Menagerie closely parallels the life of the author. From the very job Tennessee held early in his life to the apartment he and his family lived in. Each of the characters presented, their actions taken and even the setting have been based on the past of Thomas Lanier Williams, better known as Tennessee Williams.
Amanda is also well characterized by the glass menagerie. The glass sits in a case, open for display and inspection for all. Amanda try’s to portray herself as a loving mother, doing everything she can for her children, and caring nothing for herself, when in fact, she is quite selfish and demanding. Amanda claims that she devotes her life to her children, and that she would do anything for them, but is very suspicious of Tom’s activities, and continually pressures Tom, trying to force him in finding a gentleman caller for Laura, believing that Laura is lonely and needs a companion, perhaps to get married. Like the glass, her schemes are very transparent, and people can see straight through them to the other side, where ...
Tennessee Williams was born on March 26, 1911. He was the second child of Edwina and Cornelius Coffin Williams. His father was a shoe salesman who spent most of his time away from home. Edwina was a “southern belle” she was snobbish and her behavior was neurotic. As a child, Williams suffered from diphtheria which almost ended his life. Williams attended Soldan High School, a setting he referred to in The Glass Menagerie. Later, he attended University City High School. He then attended the University of Missouri. (Tennessee)
Tennessee Williams employs the uses of plot, symbolism, and dialogue to portray his theme of impossible true escape, which asserts itself in his play, The Glass Menagerie. Each of his characters fills in the plot by providing emotional tension and a deep, inherent desire to escape. Symbolism entraps meaning into tangible objects that the reader can visualize and attach significance to. Conclusively, Williams develops his characters and plot tensions through rich dialogue. Through brilliant construction and execution of literary techniques, Williams brings to life colorful characters in his precise, poignant on-stage drama.
Amanda a loving and caring mother devoted her life for her childern .she is abondaned by her husband,the only one she loved deeply.She struggles to secure her children`s lives and when she is overwhelmed by despair she resorts to her memories.
Synthesis Essay Control is a common theme in literature used in order to teach about the complicated relationships between parent and child, These themes are seen in “The Glass Menagerie” by Tennessee Williams and “The Fish” by Lila Zeiger. In both cases, the authors use parental authority over their kids to show the effects on the identity of the developing mind. In both the poem and the play, the author uses conflicts between family to illustrate the effects of harsh parental control on the identity of kids. In both texts there are similar ideas being shown about the alteration of a child’s identity when their parents are overbearing and controlling. Tom, the victim of an over-controlling parent, gets frustrated about the current condition of his life as he was so unexpectedly thrown into the role of “father figure” by his mother, once his own father left.
The Amanda Wingfield that we come to know is overbearing, worrisome, and full of regret. Amanda’s background of fortune and popularity has made it extremely difficult for Amanda to accept the life she has on hand, and to say the least she is not satisfied with the way her life has turned out. Amanda often relives her past in order to cope with the present, and she is described as a “disillusioned romantic” by Nancy Tischler (Fambrough 100). The statement Amanda made in (Scene 1) attests to her wealth and admirations.
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.
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
Dysfunctional. Codependent. Enmeshed. Low self-esteem. Emotional problems of the modern twenty-first century or problems of the past? In his play, The Glass Menagerie, Tennessee Williams portrays a southern family in the 1940's trying to deal with life's pressures, and their own fears after they are deserted by their husband and father. Although today, we have access to hundreds of psychoanalysis books and therapists, the family problems of the distant past continue to be the family problems of the present.
Laura's personality is characterized by her own collection of glass animals, especially the unicorn. Glass animals are fragile and beautiful and so is she: innocent and vulnerable. Laura is remote from real life, she finds it hard to cope with the world outside the Wingfields? tiny apartment. She is confined in the fantasy world of her glass ornaments: she spends time playing with them and taking care of them. In fact, it is the glass menagerie which she ?takes more interest in than anything else?, and Laura?s favorite one ? the unicorn, is the best reflection of her. The unicorn is different from other ones because it has a horn, it is beautiful and precious in its own unique way. Laura is also pretty ?in a very different way... And all the nicer because of the difference?. This suggests that Laura has unearthly beauty which is hidden by her limp and shyness. However, as Jim points out, unicorns are ?extinct in the modern world? and, therefore, ?must feel sort of lonesome? just as Laura?s inferiority complex have kept her away from human contacts.
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.
of - was charm!' - or trails off - 'And then I - (she stops in front
At first glance, Amanda Wingfield from Tennessee Williams’s The Glass Menagerie seems like a selfish women stuck in her past. In some ways this observation is correct; however, she is much more than that. Her kind and caring nature, and her insatiable love for her children has been overshadowed by her brash and insensitive dialogue. Her character is extremely complex and each one her actions reveals more of her overwhelming personality. Amanda loves her children and tries her best to make sure they do not follow in her path to downfall. Unfortunately, while she is trying to push her children toward her ideals of success; she is also pushing them away. Amanda Wingfield is a kind women stuck the wrong place and time; she
written in between 384 and 222 BC, and his views were taken on by some