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Sketch the character of Amanda from the Glass menagerie
How parents influence their kids
Sketch the character of Amanda from the Glass menagerie
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Contemporary physiologist and parenting expert, Shefali Tsabary, states, “When you parent, it’s crucial you realize you aren’t raising a ‘mini me,’ but a spirit throbbing with its own signature…When we know this is in the depths of our soul, we tailor our raising of them to their needs, rather than molding them to fit out needs.” Being a strong parent involves a person focusing on the needs of their children, even if they need to sacrifice their own desires too. In the play, The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams, Amanda does not adhere to this philospohy of parenting. Amanda tries to live vicariously through her children, and this results in her putting un-necessary pressure on Tom to keep his job and on Laura to think about her future. …show more content…
Believing that so if their children achieve the goals originally set by the parents, they will feel better about themselves. For example, if a parent failed to make the football team when they were in high school, they may push to have their child be the high school football star. The parent wants to feel accomplished, so they end up putting added pressure on their child, even if they are doing it sub-consciously. Amanda’s husband left the Wingfields when he was supposed to be financially and emotionally supporting the family. Amanda feels like she is a failure because she has a minimal amount of income, few friends, old clothes, a small apartment, and little self-worth and confidence. Due to the fact that Amanda feels financially insecure, she pushes Tom to take the place that her husband used to fill, which means keeping his job and being the primary supporter for the family. Amanda tells Tom, “What right have you got to jeopardize your job? Jeopardize the security of all of us? How do you think we’d manage if you were-“(Williams 23). Amanda puts pressure on Tom to take on the position his father should have had, because she feels that she chose the wrong man to marry. Marrying her husband is a regret she lives with everyday. She takes that anger and uses it to push Tom to live a life he doesn’t want to live, hoping that he will fill this void in her
Parenting styles play an huge role in the development of a child. In fact, research has shown that parenting styles can influence a child’s social, cognitive, and psychological growth. Which affects children both in the childhood years, and as an adult. So this brings up the question what is the best parenting styles. I will be talking about some different parenting styles and how I feel about them.
Through this quote Williams incorporates heartache into Amanda’s voice depicting her ambition for Laura to succeed. She also feels, “So weak I could barely keep on my feet!”(Williams 14). These two quotes illustrate that Laura’s own being is extremely important to Amanda and to an extent, acts as if Laura’s failure is her own failure. This sense of care that Amanda shows is essential to help Laura make something of herself and appears to the reader as a deep aspiration of Amanda’s conscious. While Troy only cares for Cory because , “It is my job...cause it’s my duty”(Wilson 38).
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 ...
Amanda's reality check comes from another dreamer, her son, Tom who is totally annoyed by Amanda's nagging and domineering, he thinks that everything will be better if he can just get away. Amanda and her family go on living their fantasy lives.
Parents Rex and Rosemary Walls in, The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, seems to demonstrate permissible parenting throughout the memoir. Out of the 4 parenting paradigms the Walls reside well within the permissive category with Rex showing “non-traditional and lenient ways” (Kendra Cherry, The Four Styles of Parenting). Jeannette vividly recounts when her in a drunken haze “took my hand and slowly guided it to the cheetah’s neck” in the zoo enclosure (108). Extremely non-traditionally Rex lets him and his kids into the cheetah’s enclosure, despite protests from the ‘normal’ nuclear family’s at the zoo. “Permissive parents believe in self-regulation” (Cherry) when it comes to the maturing of their kids. Rosemary firmly says “children shouldn’t
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 has probably not done everything right for her family, but her intentions have always been good. Tom has lost patience and wants to pursue his journey away now. There's no waiting to save the money for the dues. He doesn't stop going to the movies for a week or quit smoking to save money. He takes the money for the light bill. We know this is a painfully big deal and he has intentionally hurt his family at this point. He knows he has put himself in a position of no turning back. Now, he has to go. As if to make it okay in someway, he says, ""I'm like my father. The bastard son of a bastard! See how he grins? And he's been absent going on sixteen years!" Now we know, he doesn't plan to come back. He has justified his not feeling obligated to his family by saying he gets it naturally. He is his father's son. Of course we have to decide if Tom has a choice. Is Tom withering away where he is. His family is full of dysfunction and he wants to help Laura out also.
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.
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.
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
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.
...o have an employed man in her life. Amanda served as a perfect model to exemplify this belief, and the way that Williams’ makes use of naturalistic themes in his play. He proves that without a strong man in the house to support Amanda and Laura, the women would not survive. While Amanda tries to raise her children without a husband, she exhibits many naturalist mannerisms. Williams’ reveals examples of Charles Darwin’s theories of “survival of the fittest”, and of natural selection through Amanda, and her interactions with her son, her daughter, and her character and disposition. Williams’ also demonstrates the naturalistic principle that character traits and personalities are hereditary. Tom Wingfield was the main provider for the family, and when he followed his father’s footsteps and abandoned Laura and Amanda, the women were left unaided and hopeless.
Williams sees abandonment, if preformed without reason, as an egregious thing. Tom, being tired of the pressure from his family, decided to leave them and go on his own. On the contrary, his father left because, as an itinerant man, he “fell in love with long distances.” This is his reason for abandoning his wife and two children; he left them alone with nothing. This shows his weak character. Also, Amanda, the mother, always brings up the fathers dirty ways and dark past. “And you – when I see you taking after his ways! Staying out late – and – well, you had been drinking…”(Scene IV). Additionally, Amanda is constantly pushing Tom to fill in his father’s shoes and take care of her and Laura like his father never did.: “But until that time you've got to look out for your sister. I don't say me because I'm old and don't matter. I say for your sister because she's young and dependent.” (Scene IV). Additionally, she urges Tom to maintain and try to keep his job even though he does not like it: “What right have you got to jeopardize your job? Jeopardize the security of us all?” (Scene III). Amanda knows he is not happy but she also knows that his job is what puts food on the table and a roof over their heads, so she encourages him to try and
Amanda loves her children and tries her best to make sure they do not follow 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 woman stuck in the wrong place and time; she is trying to make her children’s life perfect while attempting to get a re-do on her love life with Laura and forcing Tom to fill the role that her husband abandoned. Amanda Wingfield was never meant to be in the situation that she finds herself in.
The role of abandonment in The Glass Menagerie can best be described as the plot element that underlies the overall tone of despondence in the play because it emphasizes the continuous cycle of destruction and hardship that the Wingfield family experiences; indeed, abandonment in the play is a reiterative element that strips the excesses from the three main characters in the play and leaves them in their barest forms, united by a sorrowful reality and clutching each other through the ever-present need to sink into a self-constructed oblivion. The first, and perhaps the most notable and most frequently discussed, example of abandonment in the play would be that of Amanda Wingfield’s husband’s abandonment of his family; he left them at an unspecified time in the past because “he fell in love with long distances,” and evidently forsook any obligations and emotional affiliations that he may have had with his wife and offspring (Williams 5). Having been abandoned by a man who was both husband and father affected Amanda, Tom, and Laura in that it established many of their familial dynamics...