The Glass Menagerie
The Glass Menagerie, written in 1945 by Tennessee Williams, remains today as a great literary masterpiece. Williams gave unimaginable depth and uniqueness to each of his characters. Even though the play was written in the mid-forties it is timeless, in that the problems and troubles of the characters can be related to life today, more than 50 years later. The Glass Menagerie is a great play with a central theme of escape and many symbols to support this theme. In the following I will give a brief summary and discuss the theme.
The Glass Menagerie begins with Tom introducing the play as a memory, his own memory of the past. At the start of the play the Wingfield family is eating dinner, after constant harassment on how to eat his food Tom leaves the table to go smoke a cigarette on the fire escape. Amanda tells Laura her story of the old days when she received seventeen gentlemen callers in one day. The next day Amanda finds out that Laura has dropped out of business school, and confronts her, Laura explains that she could not handle the class and has been out walking every day. Amanda sits down with Laura and asks if “she ever liked a boy';?, Laura points to a picture in her yearbook. Later that evening Amanda and Tom argue, she does not understand why Tom goes to the movies every night. Tom states that he hates working for the family as he has been doing and leaves for the movies. He returns late that night drunk and after losing his key Laura opens the door for him. Tom tells her about the movie and of the magic show he had seen, giving her a scarf from the show.
The next morning Amanda wakes Tom for work and asks him to bring home a gentlemen caller for Laura. Tom came home from work and announced that he had invited Jim O`connor to dinner the next day. When Jim comes for dinner Laura recognizes him as the one she pointed out in the yearbook. Laura becomes sick and must excuse herself from the dinner table. After dinner Amanda tells Jim to keep Laura company in the parlor, at first Laura is scared but loosens up after some conversation. Jim ends up kissing Laura and regretting it after he announces that he is engaged. Amanda becomes angry with Tom for not telling of the engagement, Tom insists he did not know.
In one incident when a white teenager Deryl Dedman ran over his truck over Black guy James Craig Anderson by passing a racial slur, “ I ran that nigger over” (Rankine 94)(10). This shows the white’s extra ordinary powers to oppress the black community and the failure of legal system
Racism is not only a crime against humanity, but a daily burden that weighs down many shoulders. Racism has haunted America ever since the founding of the United States, and has eerily followed us to this very day. As an intimidating looking black man living in a country composed of mostly white people, Brent Staples is a classic victim of prejudice. The typical effect of racism on an African American man such as Staples, is a growing feeling of alienation and inferiority; the typical effect of racism on a white person is fear and a feeling of superiority. While Brent Staples could be seen as a victim of prejudice because of the discrimination he suffers, he claims that the victim and the perpetrator are both harmed in the vicious cycle that is racism. Staples employs his reader to recognize the value of his thesis through his stylistic use of anecdotes, repetition and the contrast of his characterization.
Consumerism is the idea that influences people to purchase items in great amounts. Consumerism makes trying to live the life of a “perfect American” rather difficult. It interferes with society by replacing the normal necessities for life with the desire for things with not much concern for the true value of the desired object. Children are always easily influenced by what they watch on television. Swimme suggests in his work “How Do Kids Get So Caught Up in Consumerism” that although an advertiser’s objective is to make money, the younger generation is being manipulated when seeing these advertisements. Before getting a good understanding of a religion, a child will have seen and absorbed at least 30,000 advertisements. The amount of time teenagers spend in high school is lesser than the amount of advertisement that they have seen (155). The huge amount of advertisements exposed to the younger generation is becomi...
In The Glass Menagerie, Tennessee Williams presents us with four characters whose lives seem to consist in avoiding reality more than facing it. Amanda lives her life through her children and clings to her lost youthfulness. Tom retreats into movie theaters and into his dream of joining the merchant seamen and some day becoming a published poet. Laura resorts to her Victrola and collection of glass ornaments to help sustain her world of fantasy. Finally, Jim is only able to find some relief in his glorified old memories. This essay will examine how Amanda, Tom, Laura and Jim attempt to escape from the real world through their dreams.
Claudia Rankine’s Citizen is the blood flowing out from a bleeding, injured America. Only a tragic symptom of a larger trauma, one can trace this blood and book back to the greater issue: the deep gash of racism. Overt and obnoxious, the gash screams for attention; it is large and apparent and seen by all. It exists in the public space, displayed for any to see, undeniable and visible and rambunctious. But Rankine’s Citizen is not that gash. It is none of these things, yet calls attention to the existence of the gash through its depiction of the myriad microaggressions that plague race relations in America. Claiming instead the private, personal space as its territory, microaggressions describe the various ways in which racism
Tom, in which she tells him how to eat his food. Later she tells him
Throughout the last couple of years, tensions between the African American community and police departments across America have been at an all-time high. According to Alex Piquero’s Race, Punishment, and the Michael Vick Experience, “Blacks are generally less trustworthy of police and have been or know someone who has been mistreated by them” (537). This may be because the United States’ criminal justice system, as described by Rachel Feinstein, can be seen as a white-dominated institution, functioning in the interests of white people (“White Privilege, Juvenile Justice, Criminal Identities” 315). If the criminal justice system is operated mostly by whites, then they have little to no consciousness of the negative and dangerous effects its
In “Citizen” by Claudia Rankine, she discusses and uses film scripts that relate to blacks’ incidents. Rankine writes the story of “Jena Six” case where six black students at Jena High School who were convicted of beating a white student. Rankine asserts: “Boys will be boys feeling their capacity heaving butting heads righting their wrongs in the violence of aggravated adolescence...the fists the feet criminalized already are weapons already exploding the landscape and then the litigious hitting back is life imprisoned.” (Rankine 101). This portrays that sometimes there is a circumstance where boys are fighting into another and that is normal, but in this case, it shows that there is injustice where life imprisoned is the punishment for six
On April 12th, 2014, Syracuse Stage presented the play The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams. The play was directed by Timothy Bond, and turned out to be an interesting production. The Glass Menagerie is a memory play that is set in St. Louis in 1937. Its action is taken from the memories of the narrator, Tom Wingfield. Tom who has a dream of being a poet works in a shoe warehouse to support his mother, Amanda, and sister, Laura. Their father, Mr. Wingfield ran off years ago. They had not heard from him except for in one postcard, they said he fell in love with long distance. Their mother Amanda, who genuinely wants the best for her children, pressures them with her uncontrollable desires for them. She is disappointed that Laura, who is crippled and is painfully shy, does not attract any gentlemen callers. She is even more disappointed to see that her son is following in his father’s footsteps.
For centuries, the world has witnessed the different peculiar forms of the racism in the form of prejudice and stereotyping. Millions of the people has been haunted by this issue of racial discrimination worldwide. This essay discusses the current issues of racial inequality on the basis of color, race, sex, etc. as well as portraying the real picture of the present United States of America, where the law has come to support and legitimize benefits that accrue to white people only. Claudia Rankine in her poetry ‘Citizen – An American Lyric’ and African American legal scholar Cheryl Harris in her article ‘Whiteness as Property’ develop their arguments about the ongoing exploitation of the people of color and agree that the black community is
In Claudia Rankine’s article ‘The Condition of Black Life Is One of Mourning”, she describes systemic racism as “Vulnerability, fear, recognition, and an absurd stuckness.” Living in America as a white person is completely different than if you were black. If you are black, you
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.
The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams is a touching play about the lost dreams of a southern family and their struggle to escape reality. The play is a memory play and therefore very poetic in mood, setting, and dialogue. Tom Wingfield serves as the narrator as well as a character in the play. Tom lives with his Southern belle mother, Amanda, and his painfully shy sister, Laura. The action of the play revolves around Amanda's search to find Laura a "gentleman caller. The Glass Menagerie's plot closely mirrors actual events in the author's life. Because Williams related so well to the characters and situations, he was able to beautifully portray the play's theme through his creative use of symbolism.
The Glass Menagerie, written by Tennessee Williams in 1944, tells a tale of a young man imprisoned by his family. Following in the footsteps of his father, Tom Wingfield is deeply unhappy and eventually leaves his mother and sister behind so he may pursue his own ambitions. Throughout the play, the reader or audience is shown several reasons why Tom, a brother to Laura and son to Amanda, is unhappy and wishes to leave his family. However, the last scene describes Tom’s breaking point in which he leaves for the last time. Amanda tells Tom to “go to the moon,” because he is a “selfish dreamer.” (7. Amanda and Tom) The reasonings for Tom’s departure are due to his mother’s constant nagging, hatred for
An influential factor in Tennessee Williams's writing was his own personal experience. The Glass Menagerie is a play that originated in the memory of the author. Williams drew heavily on his own family experiences, describing the lives of his mother, sister, and himself. Many aspects of the play resemble some of Williams's past experiences during childhood. The apartment that Amanda, Laura, and Tom Wingfield share is in the middle of the city, and it is among many dark alleys with fire escapes. Tom and Laura do not like the dark atmosphere of their living conditions, and their mother tries to make it as pleasant as possible. This apartment is almost a mirror image of one of the apartments that the Williams family lived in St. Louis, Missouri (American Writers IV). Amanda Wingfield is a typical Southern belle who fantasizes about her seventeen gentlemen callers back in Blue Mountain. She regularly attends meetings of the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR), which are important outlets for her social...