The Reality of Illusions:
Research Analysis of Theme in Tennessee Williams The Glass Menagerie
Reflective of the depressed age it was written in, Tennessee Williams play, The Glass Menagerie, reveals a host of antisocial personalities, each with their own psychosis and methodology of self-medicating. This glimpse into the lives of the Wingfield family’s dysfunction is both sobering and memorable. When brought to the stage as was originally intended, William’s play articulates each character’s quirkiness and in doing so, bears witness to the different illusions, delusions, and fantasy they use as coping mechanisms. These recurring behaviors exhibited at different intervals and scenes of the play form a patterned motif and accentuate one the plays most prominent themes; the struggle between illusion and reality for each present member of the Wingfield family.
The plot contains several varieties of illusion and methodical breaks from reality. Each one is important to understanding the dynamic struggles the characters have with their own circumstances and how they choose to deal with them. Funk and Wagnall describe illusion as : false sensory perception of an actual stimulus. In abnormal psychology, the term denotes misperceiving stimuli, arising from such disorders as an abnormal irritability of the sensory centers of the brain cortex, caused, for example, by drug intoxication or withdrawal, or by sleep deprivation. Such illusions, which are usually based on habits, attitudes, suggestions, and unconscious motivations, are sometimes called active illusions. In one type of active illusion, an external happening may be greatly exaggerated in a person’s mind, as when a gentle knocking at a door is taken for thunder. (Illusion)
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...aders. Williams’ exposition of the Wingfield’s collective inability to accept or even acknowledge their realities reveals just how deeply defunct familial bonds and lost dreams can create prisons and paradises.
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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).”
Tennessee Williams is one the major writers of the mid-twentieth century. His work includes the plays, The Glass Menagerie and A Streetcar Named Desire. One theme of The Glass Menagerie is that hopeful aspirations are followed by inevitable disappointments. This theme is common throughout all of Williams' work and throughout his own life as well. It is shown through the use of symbols and characters.
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.
The Glass Menagerie is a modern American play written by Tennessee Williams in 1944. The Glass Menagerie entails the genre of tragedy and family drama in the aftermath of The Great Depression. The play is based off of the narrator and protagonist, Tom Wingfield’s, memory. Williams uses several symbols throughout the play, but he focuses mainly on the title of the play as the most important symbol throughout. As the title of the play tells us, glass menagerie are collections of glass animals. Laura Wingfeild, Tom’s sister in the play, is the collector of these little glass animals. Laura is a very peculiar person who struggles both physically and emotionally. She collects them as her own way of coping with her physical disability and emotions. One glass animal of her collection in particular that the author, Williams’s, uses to symbolize and compare her to the most, is the unicorn. The unicorn symbolizes loneliness and uncommonness, directly meant to represent Laura. Most importantly the unicorn represents a very strong connection and similarity of Laura and how she is perceived.
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.
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.
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.
Broken glass, unfulfilled fantasies, and a family of lackluster people striving for a better life. “The Glass Menagerie” by Tennessee Williams is a play in which the main character Tom relives the days lead up to him leaving his family. Williams uses a collection of glass animal figures, called a glass menagerie, as a symbol for a multitude of elements and characters. The menagerie represents each individual character in the family and the family as a whole while representing plot progression and the aspirations of the family. The glass menagerie is the most important element in the play.
Alcoholism has a harsh effect on not only the victim itself, but the family as well. The presence of an alcoholic in a family can alter the environment and cause social, cultural, and behavioral issues within the family members. Tennessee Williams’ play, The Glass Menagerie, illustrates how the characters in the play adapt and cope with the departure of their alcoholic father. The topics of alcoholism and the effects of abandonment within the play is discussed in “Tennessee Williams’ Dramatic Charade: Secrets and Lies in The Glass Menagerie”. In the article, Gilbert Debusscher identifies the behavior of the family in relation to Mr. Wingfield’s alcoholism. In his article, Debusscher argues that
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.
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.
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.
People have the tendency to block out the things that aren't going well in their lives, this can be called denial. No member of the Wingfield family has a perfect life, they each have various issues. In the play The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams, every member of the Wingfield family denies reality and withdraws into their own private world of illusion. Amanda denies how her life turned out, Tom denies the fact his life is boring, and Laura denies herself; they each have a way of coping.
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.