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Symbolism the glass menagerie
The glass menagerie character essay
Symbolism the glass menagerie
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The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams Within the play The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams, there is a significant use of symbolism. One of the foremost uses of symbolism is seen through the character of Laura Wingfield, and her collection of glass animal figurines. Throughout the play, Laura's collection of glass ornaments is constantly referenced. Because she is crippled and suffers from extreme social anxiety, Laura is portrayed as living in a private world, which is populated by these glass animals. This reference is used as a symbol representing the parallels between the glass facet of the ornaments and the delicate condition of Laura. As a result of her unvarying solace while embracing her collection of glass ornaments, Laura develops a dependence upon the delicate glass menagerie. Laura's collection of glass represents her own private world. Set apart from reality, a place where she can hide and be safe. The events that happen to Laura's glass affect Laura's emotional state greatly. Laura's crippled physical and mental condition cause her to have no motivation to pursue professional success, romantic relationships, or even ordinary friendships; preferring to retreat to her fantasy world of glass ornaments. An example of this lack of motivation and reliance upon her menagerie is displayed in the second scene, when Amanda tells Laura to practice typing; Laura instead plays with her glass. When Amanda is heard walking up the fire escape, Laura quickly hides her collection; she does this to hide her secret world from the others. Another example of Laura's intimate connection with her glass ornaments occurs when Tom leaves to go to the movies. In an angered rush, Tom accidentally breaks some of Laura's glass when he throws his coat off. As a result of the glass shattering, Laura's feelings immediately shatter; she begins to cry as if a piece of her had shattered along with the ornaments. A more specific example of the importance of Laura's collection of glass is the unicorn. This is Laura's favorite, and the most important of the symbolic ornaments, representing Laura directly. This ornament comes into play when Laura is introduced to her brother's friend Jim; who turns out to be the former high school crush of Laura. When Jim asks Laura what she has done since high school, she immediately displays her collection of glass figurines. Laura specifically points out the unicorn and the fact that it is different, just as she is different.
"The Glass Menagerie" is a play about intense human emotions; frustration, desperation, sadness, anger, shyness, and regret. Perhaps the most intense scene in the play is when a gentleman caller, Jim O'Connor, finally does come. All of their futures hang in the balance during this scene. Laura is actually drawn out of her shyness with someone besides her family, and she actually begins to feel good about herself.
The symbolic use of glass not only in the title, but also in the little glass animals Laura collects and the fourth wall used in the stage directions creates a window, or prison through which they view the world. This window keeps the characters separated from the real world and skews the view of the reality they see. It is often said that people view the world through figurative lenses, and that those lenses determine how people are willing to view and act in t...
Laura is the owner and caretaker of the glass menagerie. In her own little fantasy world, playing with the glass animals is how she escapes from the real world in order to get away from the realities and hardships she endures. Though she is crippled only to a very slight degree physically, her mind is very disabled on an emotional level. Over time, she has become very fragile, much like the glass, which shatters easily, as one of the animals lost its horn; she can lose control of herself. Laura is very weak and open to attack, unable to defend herself from the truths of life. The glass menagerie is an unmistakable metaphor in representing Laura’s physical and mental states.
Everybody has something about them that makes them unique, but sometimes they tend to not realize how special they are because of it. In the play, The Glass Menagerie, Laura possesses a collection of glass figurines that symbolize how others see her despite her limp. She has allowed her limp to define who she is, as well as play a major part in the way that she acts around other people. Laura’s limp has restricted her life in certain ways and because of it, she has become a delicate, radiant, and unique individual.
Laura unable to survive in the outside world - retreating into their apartment and her glass collection and victrola. There is one specific time when she appears to be progressing when Jim is there and she is feeling comfortable with being around him. This stands out because in all other scenes of the play Laura has never been able to even consider conversation with a "Gentleman Caller."
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.
When he asks what she gives it to him for, she replies, “A—souvenir.” Then she hands it to him, almost as if to show him that he had shattered her unique beauty. This incident changed her in the way that a piece of her innocence that made her so different is now gone. She is still beautiful and fragile like the menagerie, but just as she gives a piece of her collection to Jim, she also gives him a piece of her heart that she would never be able to regain. Laura and her menagerie are both at risk of being crushed when exposed to the uncaring reality of the world.
In Tennessee Williams The Glass Menagerie, we are given opportunity to see and understand that even truth can be cloaked by illusion. There are four main characters, we have Tom Wingfield whom is the narrator of the play. By day is a warehouse worker in a shoe factory, often absent minded for he would must rather be focusing on his passion for poetry and writing. By nightfall he often finds refuge from his mother's constant berating in the local movies. Laura Wingfield is Tom's beloved sister. Crippled since childhood from a disease known as plurosis, Laura is also emotionally crippled as an adult, in the sense that she is so incredibly shy attending business school was simply too much for her. To others it is no issue but to her it's all than she can see. Instead of fulfilling her mothers wishes she spends her days carefully attending to her delicate glass animals and listening to her father's record collection.
The main symbols in The Glass Menagerie are the glass menageries themselves. Laura, the daughter in the story, collects little glass figurines or animals; these figurines are called menageries. The small, glass, figures represent numerous elements of Laura’s personality. Both Laura and the figurines are fragile, whimsical, and somewhat behind the times. As Anita Gates writes, in her article "When Appearances Aren't What They Seem" Laura “is as delicate as the tiny glass animals she collects” (10). Laura is very fragile and weak in body, mind, and spirit. The menageries are weak also because they are made of glass. Therefore, both the figurines and Laura have to be cared for and treated lightly because of the possible damage that could be done to them if they were not properly taken care of.
For Laura, it represents what she will never be able to do, because of her severe social anxiety and physical disability. Tom sees the escape as a choice, he freely uses it to come in and out of the apartment and it is up to him to choose to escape, his mother, Amanda, will not freely give him the opportunity to. The fire escape plays a major role within the plot of The Glass Menagerie and is symbolic to the characters within the novel.
Laura has a physical handicap with one leg being shorter than the other. With this handicap Laura was picked on and led to having high anxiety and stress. The anxiety and stress led to her not going to business college as stated when Amanda went to Laura’s class and talked to Laura’s teacher. To escape from 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 broke 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, there is a tinkle of shattering glass. Laura cries out as if wounded” (Williams 1257). Laura has one piece in her collection that wasn’t broken till later and means the most to her and that is the unicorn, Laura states this with “I shouldn’t be partial, but he is my favorite one” (Williams 1282). The unicorn represents her because the unicorn is different from a normal horse just like how she is different from other women, she then allows her gentleman caller Jim O’Connor to hold the unicorn and saying “Go on, I trust you with him”
The first time I saw the comparisons between Laura and the glass unicorn is when the story says, "Hold him over the light, he loves the light! You see how the light shines through him?" (7.201-202). This is the part of the play where Williams shows us that like the unicorn, Laura needs to be placed in a position where she can also shine. We can see this because in the moments that she is talking to Jim, Laura has really opened up and left behind the shy girl she has always been. Just because she found her perfect position, or that somebody placed her in the right spot, she can also shine just like the unicorn can when it is placed in the perfect
The delicacy of the glass unicorn reflects the fragility of Laura, emotionally and physically. Laura describes the unicorn as being the most fragile out of the group, indicating how she feels about herself in a world with normal people. Laura can be broken both literally and figuratively as easily as glass. "If you breathe[on glass], it breaks." (101)
“A unicorn, huh? Aren't they extinct in the modern world. I know! Poor little fellow, he must feel sort of lonesome” (83) this quote is said from Jim and Laura, in this scene Laura informs him to be careful with the glass figurines because they are easily broken. At this point the reader is aware that the glass menagerie symbolizes Laura.
Wiliam’s use of symbolism in The Glass Menagerie adds a lot of meaning to the play. The fire escape has important meanings for each of the characters. For Tom, the fire escape is the way out of the world of Amanda and Laura, and an entrance into a world of adventure. For Amanda, the fire escape is perceived as a way for gentlemen callers to enter their lives. She is also trying to escape her own vacant life. And for Laura, the fire escape is a way into her own world where nobody else can invade. The fire escape portrays the escape from reality into a world of illusion for each character.