How is escapisms presented through symbols used within ‘The Glass Menagerie’ and ‘Dancing at Lughnasa’

1045 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Themes in the glass menagerie

Escapism is a key concept within both plays ‘Dancing at Lughnasa’ and ‘The Glass Menagerie.’ Brian Friel and Tennessee Williams both use symbolism to present the female characters desire to escape their claustrophobic and melancholy environment. The two plays explore the contrast of reality and the illusory world that allows the characters to retreat from the harsh realities of economic depression and abandonment. D. Brent Barnard’s ‘The Symbolism of Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie: An inductive approach’ reveals Tennessee William’s discovery of escapism through writing that allowed him to ‘escape from the world of reality in which’ he felt uncomfortable. Perhaps expressing his use of symbolisms as a form of escapism within his plays, including ‘The Glass Menagerie’
Brian Friel’s ‘Dancing at Lughnasa’ is a memory play that consists of recreations of Michael’s experiences and memories growing up in the rural County Donegal during the summer of 1936 ‘when I cast my mind back to that summer of 1936 different kinds of memories offer themselves to me’ suggesting that this was a key part of his childhood and one that he remembers distinctively well. The Guardian review illustrates a less nostalgic view and focusses on the struggles faced by the sisters, revealing them as ‘women fighting to keep body and soul together.’ Memory is also a recurring theme within ‘The glass Menagerie’ as it too is a memory play consisting of only 4 characters ‘The play is a memory play. Being a memory play, it is dimly lighted, it is sentimental, it is not realistic.’ Tom the narrator and main character begins by setting the scene and giving a brief overview of the plays events ‘I am the narrator of the play, and also a character in it. The other ...

... middle of paper ...

...kites is mentioned frequently throughout the play, constantly reminding us of the hard work and progress Michael makes with them yet they never leave the ground ‘ill make a deal with you, cub: I’ll give you a penny if those things ever leave the ground. Right?’ However we can argue that the kites also represent the restrained freedom of the Mundy sisters. They appear to have independence as they are grown women with their own responsibilities and dependence, however we can see that their freedom is tethered by their strict catholic beliefs. As well as the fact they will not be fully accepted into society due to the controversial fact that Michael being an illegitimate child and Rose being ‘simple’ The kites act as a symbol to remind us that no matter how close they come to escaping they will never be fully accepted and will not escape their tethered freedom.

Show More
Related

  • The Symbolization Of Lobotomy In The Glass Menagerie

    506 Words  | 2 Pages

    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).”

    Read More

  • Symbols And Metaphors In The Glass Castle

    1104 Words  | 3 Pages

    The metaphor the Glass Castle represents is a perfect life that the family cannot have. The dad is a drunk, he has this big plan to build a castle made of gold with a cooling system in the desert. The only thing that makes that metaphor true is that it is impossible, the castle would overheat. Jeanette is important because she is the reason why the dad wants to build the castle, Jeannette is his little “mountain goat”, the child that he is really want to make happy. If he builds this castle they can have a perfect life, that is why he focus so much on trying to improve his prospector.

    Read More

  • A Quest for Redemption by The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

    1131 Words  | 3 Pages

    ... Kites are symbolic in the novel as it helps to support the themes of guilt, redemption and freedom in the novel. In the beginning of the story, Amir overhears Baba telling Rahim Khan that if Amir could not stand up for himself, he would never be able to stand up to anything when he becomes a man. It takes Amir over twenty years to finally muster up enough courage to stand up for himself in front of Assef. Amir takes the beatings from Assef as his punishment for what happened to Hassan. He rescues Sohrab and bonds with him through kite fighting, similar to when he flew kites with Hassan. Kites represent the freedom from the worries and burdens that Amir, Hassan and Sohrab has. It brings together the two participants in kite fighting. It gets rid of the discrimination of the ethnic caste system, any cultural differences, and also emphasizes unity amongst difference.

    Read More

  • A Comparison of Tennessee Williams´ The Glass Menagerie and Arthur Miller´s Death of a Salesman

    1150 Words  | 3 Pages

    The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams and Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller are two of the twentieth century’s best-known plays. The differences and similarities between both of the plays are hidden in their historical and social contexts. The characters of The Glass Menagerie and the Death of a Salesman are trapped by the constraints of their everyday lives, unable to communicate with their loved ones and being fearful for their future. There are a lot of comparisons that exist, especially between the settings, symbolism and characterization drawn between the two plays. The contrast comes form the ways that the characters choose to deal or not with the harsh circumstances of life.

    Read More

  • Tennessee Williams and His Message in "The Glass Menagerie"

    681 Words  | 2 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Theme Of Anxiety In The Glass Menagerie

    1538 Words  | 4 Pages

    The family in Tennessee Williams’ play, The Glass Menagerie, faces various dilemmas. One of the most prominent is the issue of anxiety. Throughout the play, the family focuses their attention mainly on Laura and her struggle with both her physical disability and social anxiety. However, closer analysis reveals that Laura is not the only character suffering, each family member displays signs of being affected by anxiety. Their interactions with one another trigger feelings of nervousness, unhappiness, and anger. The issue of anxiety extends beyond Laura, affecting the whole family, and ultimately leads to tragedy.

    Read More

  • Glass Menagerie: Symbolism of Laura’s Fragility and Escapism

    935 Words  | 2 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Free Glass Menagerie Essays: The Characters

    2168 Words  | 5 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Essay on Tom's Escape in The Glass Menagerie

    786 Words  | 2 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • The Glass Menagerie

    789 Words  | 2 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Symbolism in "The Glass Menagerie"

    2047 Words  | 5 Pages

    Symbolism is a type of literary device authors use to add special effect and meaning to their stories. According to The American Heritage Dictionary, symbolism is “The practice of representing things by means of symbols or of attributing symbolic meanings or significance to objects, events, or relationships (“symbolism”).” Objects, people, actions, and words often are used to symbolize a deeper meaning throughout the text of a story. As one reads a story, they must realize that each sentence they are reading could have a double meaning; this means that further thought is often necessary, on the part of the reader, to better understand the whole effect the author was trying to portray. Tennessee Williams wrote The Glass Menagerie in a somewhat complex and confusing manor; if the reader does not read into the meaning of the symbols that are scattered throughout the text, the story is misunderstood.

    Read More

  • Free Glass Menagerie Essays: Escape Symbolism

    415 Words  | 1 Pages

    If we take a look at the different symbols used throughout the play, I think that the most important one when it comes to escape is the fire escape. It is in the center from the very beginning, when Tom makes his opening addressing to the audience from it. To understand the role of the fire escape one has to see that it serves a different purpose for each of the characters. In general we can say that it represents the borderline between freedom and imprisonment. Apart from this, the different characters see it in different ways. For Tom, the fire escape is an opportunity to get away from the apartment and his nagging mother. For Amanda, on the other hand, it's a door through which gentleman callers for Laura can come into their apartment / into their world. For Laura, even though she's been outside, it's the border between the safe and the dangerous, between the known and the unknown.

    Read More

  • Theme Of Dreams In The Glass Menagerie

    1303 Words  | 3 Pages

    Tennessee Williams demonstrates through his play, The Glass Menagerie, that dreams do not always have happy endings and that dreaming can have a significant impact on those closest to an individual, be it in a positive or negative way. The character Tom is a dreamer who, in the absence of his father and under the watchful eye of his controlling but loving mother, Amanda, is constantly held between the responsibility to support his dependant mother and crippled sister and the freedom of following his dreams. Williams illustrates how dreams often detract people from reality which in turn causes frustration within those closest to them. He then further builds on this idea through the character Tom who is an example of how dreams can make people

    Read More

  • Symbolism in The Glass Menagerie

    1021 Words  | 3 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • The Glass Menagerie Theme of Abandonment

    569 Words  | 2 Pages

    The role of abandonment in The Glass Menagerie can best be described as the plot element that underlies the overall tone of despondence in the play because it emphasizes the continuous cycle of destruction and hardship that the Wingfield family experiences; indeed, abandonment in the play is a reiterative element that strips the excesses from the three main characters in the play and leaves them in their barest forms, united by a sorrowful reality and clutching each other through the ever-present need to sink into a self-constructed oblivion. The first, and perhaps the most notable and most frequently discussed, example of abandonment in the play would be that of Amanda Wingfield’s husband’s abandonment of his family; he left them at an unspecified time in the past because “he fell in love with long distances,” and evidently forsook any obligations and emotional affiliations that he may have had with his wife and offspring (Williams 5). Having been abandoned by a man who was both husband and father affected Amanda, Tom, and Laura in that it established many of their familial dynamics...

    Read More

More about How is escapisms presented through symbols used within ‘The Glass Menagerie’ and ‘Dancing at Lughnasa’

Open Document