Reality vs. Illusion in The Glass Menagerie, The Death of a Salesman, and A Raisin in the Sun
All three stories are centered on lower income families in urban settings. Each story has one main dreamer with other characters being in various states of reality. Amanda Wingfield, Willy Loman, and Walter Lee Younger are all living on pipe dreams. Amanda dreams of her days on the front porch surrounded by her gentleman callers. Willy is the all time king of pipe dreams bouncing from past to future with imagining how everything would have been different if he had gone to Alaska (or Africa) with his brother Ben or will be different when Howard makes him showroom salesman at the home office or Biff gets ten (fifteen) thousand dollars for his new business idea. Walter Lee is a smart hard working man but he is so eager to be financially successful that his common sense is blurred and he allows con man Willie Harris to take him for the families ten thousand dollars.
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.
Willy gets it from all sides; primarily his conflict is with Biff but also Charley, Howard, and Bernard. He is an average man who truly believes he is better than those around him, and that his sons, especially Biff, are greater still, but people, he has very little respect for, are all more successful than he is. Biff starts out like Willy perhaps but comes to the realization that being an average man is okay. Willy never comes to that conclusion; in fact he decides he is more valuable dead than alive.
Walter Lee probably has the best grasp on reality and the highest hill to climb of all the dreamers in these stories. This story could probably only take place in a northern city in the United States at that time. His reality check comes from Lena Younger, his mother, a highly spiritual woman with a strong sense of what right and wrong is. Lena has raised Walter Lee to be a good man but he is eager to find a shortcut out of the ghetto and be treated with respect.
the recurring theme of night and darkness is used to symbolize guilt and conscience such
The vision of the dagger, the murder of Duncan, the murder of Banquo, the sleep-walking of Lady Macbeth, all come in night scenes. The Witches dance in the thick air of a storm or, 'black and midnight hags', receive Macbeth in a cavern. The blackness of night is to the hero a thing of fear, even of horror; and that which he feels becomes the spirit of the play. The faint glimmerings of the western sky at twilight are here menacing: it is the hour when the traveller hastens to reach safety in his inn, and when Banquo rides homeward t meet his assassins; the hour when 'light thickens', when 'night's black agents to their prey do rouse', when the wolf begins to howl, and the owl to scream, and withered murder steals forth to his work. (307)
Since the beginning of time there has been an ever present divide between the male and female genders in every way. From politics all the way down to expectations, the common denominator in categorizing who takes care of what has always been decided by gender. In earlier times this divide led to the strict and often harsh treatment of women, but as time continued and the emergence of equal rights and feminist movements arose, the divide between the two genders has since begun to close, and has led to better relations between men and women.
In the plays The Glass Menagerie and A Raisin in the Sun, both tried to soak up the dreams they all had envisioned. The hardships of life and trying to get that dream can be a struggle. In both plays reality was a major factor of disrupting them from pushing towards it. In a Raisin in the Sun it was Prejudice and being black people. In The Glass Menagerie it was probably Laura the disabled sister and daughter.
In Death of a Salesman and Of Mice and Men, Miller and Steinbeck present the idea of Illusion vs. Reality by characterising the main characters – Willy, George and Lennie – as so desperate to fulfil the American Dream, that they become trapped in a vicious cycle and fooled by the illusion of progress. Willy’s obsession with what could have been grows until it begins to poison his family, dragging them into the web of lies he has created, whereas in Of Mice and Men, Steinbeck focuses on how George becomes trapped and destined to blindly follow the other workers in their cycle of monotony due to Lennie’s death and the resulting loss of their dream. **Also linking into the American Dream, both writers focus on the hierarchical system which comes about as a result of those higher up trying to bring down those below them.**
The “Glass Menagerie” by Tennessee Williams shows a family facing economic and social hardships due to the father abandoning them. The father’s absence forces the rest of the family to fill roles that they wouldn’t be obliged to face if the father remained. The mother, Amanda, is a strong single mother who pushes her kids to be economically self-sustaining individuals. Amanda tries to impose her desires for her kids in a very direct and controlling manner which causes them to dislike her initiatives. The son, Tom, is the breadwinner for the family, however is dissatisfied with his situation due to his increased responsibilities. The daughter, Laura, is handicapped and dropped out of business school. Each member of the family is limited by their ability to grow out of their negative habits, however, it is likely that these habits or characteristics came from the family situation and the roles that each member was forced to fill.
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.
Shakespeare uses symbolism throughout Lady Macbeth’s soliloquy to convey different emotions, or to express the character’s personality. An example of this is when Lady Macbeth asserts, “The raven himself is hoarse/That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan/Under my battlements.” The raven is often portrayed as a symbol of death, and croaks when someone dies. In this instance the raven is hoarse, meaning it has no reason to make noise now, but when her plan to kill Duncan is executed It will croak. He also uses night as a tool ot only to set the scene but to show their actions are frowned upon. Because night is dark, it can cover your sins, so when Macbeth and his Lady are murdering Duncan, “the blanket of the dark” (1.5.60) can cover their sins. Another symbol that is used both in this excerpt and throughout the
In fact, one of the first flashback scenes primarily explore the egotistical effect Willy passes onto Biff, as he praises him for his ‘bright future’. Additionally, the flashbacks expose Willy for his true, insecure, and unsuccessful life that he had once originally boasted about towards his children. In fact, the flashback in the diner, with The Woman, showcases Biff's discovery that his father was delusional and that he had never been continuing someone else's dream. Furthermore, the hallucinations, described, demonstrate the primary cause of Willy’s dream of being a successful businessmen. Many of his illusions are of Willy and his dead brother Ben, who was a major success. The basic information is also given ithin these flashbacks. The audience can understand that Biff was a all-star football player with scholarships to three major colleges. It is also described that Biff needs help to not “flunk” a math exam, which introduces Charley’s son,
Willy is a salesman. Willy believes that success comes from being well liked and popular and has tried desperately to instill his notions to his two boys Happy and Biff, Willy's biggest aspirations in life. His wife Linda is extremely supportive and is Willy's only connection to reality. While raising his boys and trying to instill his "American Dream", he fails to teach them any sense of morality, leading them down to what he feels is the wrong path. At one point, he defended Biff for stealing just because he was an amazing football player.
... did not have tyrannous men overlooking them as men did to women in Athens. Although these two ancient societies were in the same country, the value of women and their freedom were very different. By comparing and contrasting we are able to better understand the concept of gender, how gender inequalities have changed from the past, and what we have learned about the history of women and gender. In analysis, the value of women in these two societies was greatly influenced by their role and contribution to society. Women in Sparta were valued more because they gave birth to potential warriors and since Sparta was a militarized state more warriors were needed. Spartan women hired lower class women for the chores. In Athens, women were less valued because household role such as taking care of the house, chores, and cooking were not equally important to society as men.
In Macbeth there are many examples of light verses dark imagery. In Macbeth light is represents peace. Darkness represents horrible events or death. In the beginning of the play Macbeth started out as a friendly guy that would not kill someone who does not deserve it. He started out in light by killing the traitors to the king. Later on in the play he becomes greedy and kills King Duncan to take his place. Once he kills Duncan he turns into this killing machine. Lady Macbeth started out the play on in the dark side, she wanted to have no feeling for anything that she did, and she just wanted power. Later on she became guilty and started sleep walking; she became insane and committed suicide. In the beginning of the play all of the murders were committed in darkness. This changes once the three murders kill Banquo, he is killed in torch light.
Perhaps all of our pleasure, comes from the anticipation of memories that will be developed while taking part in said activities. Our bodies give us memory aids, i.e. Epinephrine (adrenaline), endorphins. Our bodies come to recognize these chemicals as a point in time which we will later look back on. Different peoples bodies release these memory aids in different quantities, in very different activities. Some people's bodies release epinephrine when they partake in a physical activity such as bungee jumping, yet others release it when they take the life of another. Our bodies releasing these memory aids, is the reason that we enjoy different activities, to different...
Lille is right by the border of Belgium. Which means many people can travel from Belgium to Lille for work. There are no more borders gates now. The E.U took them away so more people can travel to the city.