The title of a book, play, short story is there to capture and project the type of storyline that is about to come. A title gives the readers an idea how the storyline will come to the end or even what the story is about. There is unknown significance to the “Glass Menagerie” at first glance; throughout the story there is an emphasis of the importance and universal capturing that is gained through Laura’s glass menageries. Not only are the glass menageries a main part of the symbols that are apart of the play but many of the themes and topics are captured through the characters come from the use of the glass menagerie, that gives complex implications throughout the play.
Throughout the play the audience can see Amanda as confused, and clinging to another time and place, a woman surrounded by her own paranoia. Laura is not only crippled emotionally but physically, with a beauty that is unique. Tome is a remorseless man looking for a way to escape without pity. (Insert the production notes) Many of the themes that the character go through revolve around the symbol that the glass menageries brings; fragile, animals, jewel box, proud, unique, extraordinary, fable, different beauty, death, and adventure. (Secondary source) Through the stage direction, lightning, and music the audience can focus their attention to the glass menageries. (Production notes) The themes and key concepts in the play tend to revolve around the impression that the glass menageries have and its own deeper meaning. The theme of accepting reality, impossibility of true escape and memory all come the impression that the glass menageries bring to the storyline.
It is important to remember that the play is a memory play because the lighting and music and stage dire...
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...e needs to realize the beauty and dreams of her children to not be disappointed in her children. Laura needs to realize her own beauty, without the help of a man telling her that she is unique. Tom needs to accept his new role and stand up for what he really wants.
With the symbolic implications of the glass menagerie the characters are truly reflected through the meaning of the glass animals and the unicorn. With many complex themes that reflect what the glass unicorn and animals mean, the characters in the play become stuck compared to a piece of glass that has more figured out in life. The themes and key concepts in the play tend to revolve around the impression that the glass menageries have and its own deeper meaning. The theme of accepting reality, impossibility of true escape and memory all come the impression that the glass menageries bring to the storyline.
The Glass Menagerie is a play about the character Tom trying to escape his living situation that traps him. He is doing to best to cope with his dependent, demanding mother Amanda and take care of his quiet sister Laura. Amanda and Laura solely depend on Tom’s income from his warehouse job, but Tom is desperately wanting to leave both his mother and sister to lead his own adventurous life. Laura is mainly embodied by her precious glass menagerie and Jim O’Connor’s nickname for her, “Blue Roses.” Her livelihood revolves around taking care of her glass animals and protecting them, and in doing so, she isolates herself from the normal world around her. In Tennessee William’s play The Glass Menagerie, symbolism is use to uncover the unearthly beauty and delicacy of Laura and to portray Tom’s need to escape from his oppressive responsibilities.
The masterful use of symbolism is delightfully ubiquitous in Tennessee Williams’ “The Glass Menagerie.” He uses a collection of dim, dark and shadowy symbols that constantly remind the audience of the lost opportunity each of these three characters continually experience. This symbolism is not only use to enlighten the audience to their neglected opportunities to shine, but it is also repeatedly utilized to reinforce the ways in which the characters try in vain to cross over turbulent waters into a world of light and clarity. It is thematically a wrenching story of life gone by, and the barren attempts to realize another reality that is made more poignant by symbolic language, objects, setting, lighting and music. The characters are trying to escape their own reality, and continue desperately to grasp at real life. The powerful use of symbolism in The Glass Menagerie exaggerates their missed opportunities, and their inability to step into a new reality. Through the use of symbolism, Williams continually illuminates the attempts of each character to break their bondage, and cross their own personal Rubicon into another reality. Because of his expert use of symbolism the audience can assuredly feel the full weight and impact of their imprisonment and actions.
"I have only one major theme for my work, which is the destructive impact of society on the sensitive non-conformist individual (Williams Netscape)." Symbols help to show the dreams and desires that the characters long for and also the restrictions that keep them from fulfilling those dreams. In The Glass Menagerie, the fire escape symbolizes the way for Amanda Wingfield to bring a man into the house to save her and her daughter. To Tom, the fire escape is a means of escape from the house that traps him- a path to the outside world (Susquehanna. "New Critical"). Rainbows in The Glass Menagerie symbolize hope and are associated with hopeful situations (Susquehanna. "New Critical.) When Tom Wingfield receives a rainbow-colored scarf at the magic show, he is amazed at the fact it turned a bowl of goldfish into flying canaries. Just like the canaries, Tom hopes to fly away- fly away to escape his imprisonment (Susquehanna. "New Critical"). At the end of the play when Tom looks at the "pieces of colored glass, like bits of a shattered rainbow (Williams 137)", he remembers that he has left his sister behind and prays that he will be able to move on without her. Even though the rainbows appear to be positive signs throughout the book, they eventually all...
The Glass Menagerie is a play written by Tennessee Williams. It involves a mother, Amanda, and her two children, Tom and Laura. They are faced with many problems throughout the play. Some of these problems involve: Amanda, the mother, only wants to see her kids succeed and do well for themselves. How does her drive for success lead the book?
Although the glass menagerie is meant as a direct metaphor for Laura, it also serves as a metaphor to the other characters in the play through various means. They are all interconnected in some way, depending on each other, and when things don’t turn out right, everything begins to fall into a downward spiral, with little or no hope for improvement.
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.
The Glass Menagerie is an eposidic play written by Tennesse Williams reflecting the economic status and desperation of the American people in the 30s.He portrays three different characters going through these hardships of the real world,and choosing different ways to escape it.Amanada,the mother,escapes to the memories of the youth;Tom watches the movies to provide him with the adventure he lacks in his life;and laura runs to her glass menagerie.
Tennessee Williams’ play, “The Glass Menagerie”, depicts the life of an odd yet intriguing character: Laura. Because she is affected by a slight disability in her leg, she lacks the confidence as well as the desire to socialize with people outside her family. Refusing to be constrained to reality, she often escapes to her own world, which consists of her records and collection of glass animals. This glass menagerie holds a great deal of significance throughout the play (as the title implies) and is representative of several different aspects of Laura’s personality. Because the glass menagerie symbolizes more than one feature, its imagery can be considered both consistent and fluctuating.
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.
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.
In The Glass Menagerie, Tennessee Williams uses the roles of the members of the Wingfield family to highlight the controlling theme of illusion versus reality. The family as a whole is enveloped in mirage; the lives of the characters do not exist outside of their apartment and they have basically isolated themselves from the rest of the world. Even their apartment is a direct reflection of the past as stories are often recalled from the mother's teenage years at Blue Mountain, and a portrait of the man that previously left the family still hangs on the wall as if his existence is proven by the presence of the image. The most unusual factor of their world is that it appears as timeless. Amanda lives only in the past while Tom lives only in the future and Laura lives in her collection of glass animals, her favorite being the unicorn, which does not exist. Ordinary development and transformation cannot take place in a timeless atmosphere such as the apartment. The whole family resists change and is unwilling to accept alteration. Not only is the entire family a representation of illusion versus reality, each of the characters uses fantasy as a means of escaping the severity of their own separate world of reality. Each has an individual fantasy world to which they retreat when the existing world is too much for them to handle. Each character has a different way of dealing with life when it seems to take control of them, and they all become so completely absorbed in these fantasies that they become stuck in the past.
Tennessee Williams's brilliant use of symbols adds life to the play. The title itself, The Glass Menagerie, reveals one of the most important symbols. Laura's collection of glass animals represents her fragile state. When Jim, the gentleman caller, breaks the horn off her favorite unicorn, this represents Laura's break from her unique innocence.
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.
Tennessee Williams employs the use of symbolism in The Glass Menagerie. Among the many symbols within the play is the fire escape. In the context of The Glass Menagerie, the fire escape represents an escape from the dysfunction of the Wingfield family. It is used as a door to the outside world, an escape, and it is integral to the plot of the story. Tom views the fire escape as a way out, it reminds him of the decision that he needs to make - should he stay and be miserable or leave and be happy, but abandon his sister? Laura is bound by the fire escape, it is an outlet into a world of the unknown, it is both a physical and emotional barrier for Laura. Tennessee Williams use of symbolism in The Glass Menagerie is exemplified through the fire
Symbolism is an integral part of every play. The author uses symbolism in order to add more depth to the play. In Tennessee Williams’ play, The Glass Menagerie, he describes three separate characters, their dreams, and the harsh realities they face in a modern world. The Glass Menagerie exposes the lost dreams of a southern family and their desperate struggle to escape reality. Everyone in the play seeks refuge from their lives, attempting to escape into an imaginary world. Williams uses the fire escape as a way for the Wingfields, the protagonists of the play, to escape their real life and live an illusionary life. The fire escape portrays each of the character's need to use the fire escape as a literal exit from their own reality.