Dreams of Escape in The Glass Menagerie
"Anyone can handle a crisis, but day-to-day living is the most trying aspect of life" (Jackson 19). This is especially true in the drama The Glass Menagerie. None of the characters in this tale is willing to or capable of living in the present. Everyday life becomes so mindless and oppressive that each character's dreams and fantasies become more important than reality itself. Through their dreams, Amanda, Tom, Laura, and Jim attempt to transcend reality in order to escape the monotony of life.
Having lost her husband and being left alone to raise her two children Tom and Laura, Amanda finds herself in a very undesirable situation. This situation is only made worse through Amanda's disappointment in her children, whom she considers lost. She believes her son to be unrealistic, as he is constantly dreaming about becoming a respected poet rather than committing to a steady job. As a result, Amanda is very confused and uncertain about her and her children's future. Worse still, the fact that Laura is crippled, which she refuses to acknowledge however, worries her even more, insofar as she tries to arrange everything for her lest she will live paralyzed in the threatening world. Aware of the reality, she enrolls her in a secretarial course in the hope that she would become, if not successful in her career, at least independent in making ends meet. Disappointed by Laura's inability to cope with the studies in the business school, Amanda cannot but desperately find her a reliable husband who can provide material and emotional...
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...gni. "The Southern Gentlewoman." Modern Critical Interpretations Tennessee Williams The Glass Menagerie. ed. Harold Bloom. NY: Chelsea House Publishers, 1988.
Jackson, Esther Merle. The Broken World of Tennessee Williams. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1965.
Levy, Eric P. "'Through Soundproof Glass': The Prison of Self Consciousness in The Glass Menagerie." Modern Drama, 36. December 1993. 529-537.
Parker, R.B., ed. Twentieth Century Interpretations of The Glass Menagerie. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice, 1983.
Thompson, Judith J. Tennessee Williams' Plays: Memory, Myth, and Symbol. New York: Peter Lang, 1989.
Williams, Tennessee. The Glass Menagerie. Masterpieces of the Drama. Ed. Alexander W. Allison, Arthus J. Carr, Arthur M. Eastman. 5th ed. NY: Macmillan, 1986.
The family dynamics for Tennessee Williams are evident of a lifestyle of despondency and tension within the household. Tennessee Williams mother Edwina Williams she considered herself a Southern Belle, and his sister Rose Williams was a sickly adolescent whom he shared his imaginative dramatizations with as he transcribed his plays. While Williams was in graduate school at the University of Iowa, Rose was institutionalized for schizophrenia and was underwent a pre-font lobotomy. “The symbolization of lobotomy in the “Glass Menagerie” play signifies the hurt that Tennessee Williams felt by his parents by not collaborating to him that his sister underwent surgery. In the play, Williams substitutes the mental illness of his real sister, with a physical limitation “a limp” which Williams substituted for the mental illness of his real sister, Rose. Even the father’s absence reflects periods when his bullying sales man father, Cornelius Coffin Williams, would go on the road, leaving Tom, Edwina and Rose at one another’s mercies (Charles Matthews, 1996-2016).”
Riddel, Joseph N. “A Streetcar Named Desire—Nietzsche Descending.” Tennessee Williams. Bloom’s Modern Critical Views. Ed. Harold Bloom. Philadelphia: Chelsea, 1987. 13-22. Print.
In my original paper on Carl Gustav Jung, I took a rather skeptical view of the doctor and his work, for several reasons that I will reiterate. However, after studying further into his work, I realized that these objections only related to his early psychiatric cases, and I found myself to be far more intrigued and impressed by his later work and theories. While I had stated in my first consideration of Jung that, “there is a frustratingly limited, almost biased quality to much of… his work”, I was pleasantly surprised later on to find that many of his later theories and assumptions were anything but limited. I still believe that in his early case work he took tremendous risks, both clinically and professionally, yet it is that risk-taking aspect of his personality that ultimately allowed, or rather, propelled him to boldly go forward with some of his most groundbreaking and controversial contributions to the fields of psychology, and philosophy as well. It can even be said, and has been, that Dr. Jung is the father of modern “new-age” thinking. He also laid the groundwork for those who were inspired by his thoughts, perhaps much in the way that he himself was originally inspired by Freud. Once again, while my original opinion of Dr. Jung caused me to “wonder how much of Jung’s work was truly visionary, and how much of it benefits from a positive hindsight bias because of the successes he was able to achieve” in his early casework, I must say that my current opinion, early casework aside, is that Jung was in fact truly visionary, and was the originator of some of the most revolutionary conceptual thinking that the human experience has to offer.
Learning how to remain optimistic and fulfilled in a rough situation is one of the most important skills a person can develop.. In Tennessee William’s The Glass Menagerie, the Wingfield family has trouble separating what is real and what is not, but they always manage to stay pleased with themselves. Laura spends her time with her glass menagerie and trinkets. Tom uses art, literature, and substance abuse to distract him from his current situation. Amanda indulges into the past and lives vicariously through her daughter as to not be in the moment. When an individual is forced to comply to a certain standard of living, then they must artificially escape their reality, because if they do not, they will never be able to sustain
In the study of Tennessee Willliams' plays: "Suddenly Last Summer" and "The Glass Menagerie", we can find a great deal of autobiographical connections. "The Glass Menagerie" is particularly considered the author's most biographical work. It is described by the playwright as "a memory play"; indeed, it is a memory of the author's own youth, an expression of his own life and experiences. Similarly, "Suddenly Last Summer" includes many of Tennesse Williams' real life details.
Williams, Tennessee. The Glass Menagerie. In Literature: An Introduction to Reading and Writing, 4th ed. Ed. Edgar V. Roberts and Henry E. Jacobs. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1995. 1519-1568.
Carl Jung came into the world in 1875 in the country of Switzerland and he passed in 1961. He was a very famous psychologist who founded the habits of analytic psychology in response to Freud’s psychoanalytic theory. He had many finding that still affect today such as extroverted and introverted personality types, archetypes, and collective unconscious. Jung was a very lonely child and had a rather ...
Jackson, Esther M. The Broken World of Tennessee Williams. Madison and Milwaukee: University of Wisconsin, 1965.
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.
My objective in the long term is to provide therapeutic and counseling services that assist persons suffering with traumatic brain injury (TBI) or acquired brain injury (ABI) in coping and recovering from the mental illnesses that often accompany such tragedies. TBI/ABI has shown a proven link with “anxiety, depression, personality changes, aggression (National Alliance on Mental Illness Veterans Resource Center May 8, 2009 Traumatic Brain Injury)”, as well as many other issues. As the caregiver for a survivor of a rare and deadly strain of encephalitis, I have a personal perspective that I feel brings much to the discussion. I see the information I am currently gathering at Empire State College as the building blocks that pave the way to a thrilling career in a growing segment of the mental health industry. The CDC claims that approximately 1.4 million Americans suffer TBIs annually (Centers for Disease Control Injury Center May 30, 2007 Traumatic Brain Injury in the United States: Emergency Department Visits, Hospitalizations, and Deaths) and it has been called the “signature injury” of the current wars in Iraq & Afghanistan by the National Alliance on Mental Illness. As such, it is my belief that we need to focus time and energy on developing new programs to help these patients to cope with the new limitations and encourage rehabilitation and restoration.
...Trauma Foundation, medical care is improving (Ross 27). Constant learning about the brain is fundamental to discover better medications for those affected after experiencing a traumatic brain injury. Scientists are always finding stronger treatments for patients that have had a TBI. In a couple years, doctors see patients with severe cases being able to live a normal life (28). With improving technology, the medical field will always continue to grow.
This essay aims to discuss the various forms of domestic violence, what leads to domestic violence, and the impacts of domestic violence on the physical and mental health of the women who experience it, the effects on the children who witness it, and the barriers that hold women back from leaving the abusive relationships.
In Tennessee Williams' play, The Glass Menagerie, each member of the Wingfield family has their own fantasy world in which they indulge themselves. Tom escaped temporarily from the fantasy world of Amanda and Laura by hanging out on the fire escape. Suffocating both emotionally and spiritually, Tom eventually sought a more permanent form of escape.
Williams, Tennessee. The Glass Menagerie. In Literature: An Introduction to Reading and Writing, 4th ed. Ed. Edgar V. Roberts and Henry E. Jacobs. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1995. 1519-1568.
Williams, Tennessee. The Glass Menagerie. In Literature: An Introduction to Reading and Writing, 4th ed. Ed. Edgar V. Roberts and Henry E. Jacobs. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1995. 1519-1568.