The Glass Menagerie, a play by Tennessee Williams, is well written with a significant/influential theme, an engaging plot, and a cast of eclectic characters. The play contains four main characters: Amanda, the mother, Tom, the son, Laura, the daughter, and Jim, the gentleman caller. Throughout the play Amanda wishes for Laura to find a husband, even though she is shy and crippled. Tom is the man of the house, meaning that he is obligated to pay the bills. Tom must push his dreams of being a poet in order to do this. Amanda, towards the end of the play, persuades Tom to invite one of his supposedly single coworkers to dinner to meet Laura. In scene seven, several unexpected events transpire that astonishes the audience, such as Jim having a fiancé and Tom leaving Amanda and Laura. The beginning portion of the last scene of The Glass Menagerie contributes to the audiences understanding of Luara, the theme of the play, and the play as a whole.
Scene seven in The Glass Menagerie is critical for the audience to fully understand Laura. In this scene, Laura begins to show a different side...
"The Glass Menagerie" is a play about intense human emotions; frustration, desperation, sadness, anger, shyness, and regret. Perhaps the most intense scene in the play is when a gentleman caller, Jim O'Connor, finally does come. All of their futures hang in the balance during this scene. Laura is actually drawn out of her shyness with someone besides her family, and she actually begins to feel good about herself.
In Tennessee Williams The Glass Menagerie, we are given opportunity to see and understand that even truth can be cloaked by illusion. There are four main characters, we have Tom Wingfield whom is the narrator of the play. By day is a warehouse worker in a shoe factory, often absent minded for he would must rather be focusing on his passion for poetry and writing. By nightfall he often finds refuge from his mother's constant berating in the local movies. Laura Wingfield is Tom's beloved sister. Crippled since childhood from a disease known as plurosis, Laura is also emotionally crippled as an adult, in the sense that she is so incredibly shy attending business school was simply too much for her. To others it is no issue but to her it's all than she can see. Instead of fulfilling her mothers wishes she spends her days carefully attending to her delicate glass animals and listening to her father's record collection.
...nd some relief in his glorified old memories saved by Laura and is overwhelmed by the magic of the American Dream. Like many great plays, The Glass Menagerie transcends time inasmuch as contemporary versions of the four characters abound in the ever-changing modern world. After all, these are the people to whom the play addresses today.
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 Tennessee William's play, The Glass Menagerie, the character of Laura is like a fragile piece of glass. The play is based around a fragile family and their difficulties coping with life.
Seen as the only stability and object to bring her joy, laura creates and attachment to the menageries. After a feud between Tom and Amanda, Tom accidentally knocks a menagerie over. Here, Laura shrieks, “My glass!- menagerie”, and covers her face, clearly upset. (Williams 24) The depiction and addition to the scene of the menagerie shattering depicts the shattered relationship tom and his mother share in this scene. In the beginning of this scene, Tom and Amanda re seen fighting over his apparent late night disappearances by going to what he states is the movies. In his mother's eyes, this is because of the books and their impact on him. Annoyed by the constant nagging when she takes his books insisting that she will not “ALLOW SUCH FILTH BROUGHT INTO … [her]... HOUSE”, he is taken aback by the statement and reminds her of his rent payments. (Williams 21) In doing so, he creates a bigger argument fueling her fears by stating that instead of going to the movies, he is committing an unspeakable act.Because of this, Tom ruins his relationship with his mother and forces her to not speak with him until he apologizes. Although the glass menagerie is not broken until after this scene, the understanding of the glass shattering after the argument allows the audience to understand why Willams included the glass piece and Laura's disabilities. By
Tennessee Williams employs the uses of plot, symbolism, and dialogue to portray his theme of impossible true escape, which asserts itself in his play, The Glass Menagerie. Each of his characters fills in the plot by providing emotional tension and a deep, inherent desire to escape. Symbolism entraps meaning into tangible objects that the reader can visualize and attach significance to. Conclusively, Williams develops his characters and plot tensions through rich dialogue. Through brilliant construction and execution of literary techniques, Williams brings to life colorful characters in his precise, poignant on-stage drama.
Did you know that most of the plays written and performed in twentieth century America where based off of what was happening in the world at that time? The Great Depression, new inventions, and The Great War influenced the ideas of plays. The twentieth century American history takes a role in the ways of life in The Glass Menagerie which is set after the Great Depression in the late 1930’s.
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 is a play written by Tennessee Williams in 1945. The play takes place in the Wingfield’s apartment in St. Louis. Tom is the protagonist in the play and he stays at home with his mother Amanda and his sister Laura. Tom’s Father left the family when he was younger leaving him as the man of the house. His mother Amanda expects him to do everything a man would do. This included working, paying bills, and taking care of herself and Laura. Laura is disabled and she doesn’t work therefore Tom is left providing for his whole family. Being abandoned by Mr. Wingfield left the family distraught. No one seemed to be able to cope with the fact that he was gone even though he left many years ago. Amanda is constantly treating Tom like a child. She tells him how to eat, when to eat, and what he should and should not wear. Tom eventually gets fed up with everything. He can’t stand his factory job, the responsibility of being the man or being treated like a child by his mother. Tom decides to follow in his father’s footsteps and leave the family. It seems as if Tom thinks that running away from his problems will make them go away but things didn’t turn out that way. Although the play was written many years ago, young adults in this day and age can relate to Tom and his actions. The main theme in the play is escape. All of the character use escape in some way. Laura runs to her glass menagerie or phonographs when she can’t handle a situation, Amanda seems to live in the past, and Tom constantly runs away when things aren’t going his way. Escape is a short term fix for a bigger problem. Running away may seem like the easiest thing to do, but in the end the problem is still there and it may be unforgettable. As time goes on esc...
Although the glass menagerie is meant as a direct metaphor for Laura, it also serves as a metaphor to the other characters in the play through various means. They are all interconnected in some way, depending on each other, and when things don’t turn out right, everything begins to fall into a downward spiral, with little or no hope for improvement.
When Jim O’Connor came for dinner Laura’s stomach also turn because Jim was the first person she had ever like and when they were talking she had evened remembered the first time he called her “blue roses.” Hence ‘the glass menagerie’ is used to escape reality, real world and her avidness as it is Laura’s desire to. Laura has a habit to try and avoid people because of how shy she is. Perhaps, Laura has a phobia of people and that is why she always drops out and her best friends are her glass collection? This is effective as it helps convey the idea of ‘to have the desire to escape’ (Cardullo). When Laura’s mother Amanda found out that she dropped out of school for being shy Amanda asked Laura were she goes and Laura said, “I went in the art museum and the bird-houses at the zoo. I visited the penguins every day! Sometimes I did without lunch and went to the movies. Lately I’ve been spending most of my afternoon in the jewel-box, that big glass-house where they raised tropical flowers” (Williams). Boxill said that “Laura as the predestined spinster with a lost love.” This is said because Laura never stopped liking Jim. When Jim came in the room she instantly remembered the past. Eventually Jim went to go talk to Laura and remembered that she was the girl that was quiet and came late every day and Laura remembered what days they saw each
Like the glass menagerie, the only people who see her unique beauty are the ones who take the time to look at her in the right light. One of the first people outside the family to see the more vibrant side of Laura is Jim, a friend of her brother’s as well as an old high school crush of hers. While having dinner at their house, Jim takes interest in Laura’s collection of glass animals and records. They reminisce about high school and when Jim begins to understand why she is so shy, he says, “You know what I judge is the trouble with you? Inferiority complex! Know what that is? That’s what they call it when someone low-rates himself!” Seeing her now as the vibrant creature she is, Jim is intrigued by her exotic beauty. Though Laura’s entire collection represents her personality, the unicorn in particular, symbolizes her unique and rare soul. When she shows Jim her menagerie, she declares the unicorn to be her favorite. “Aren’t those extinct in the modern world?” Jim replies. He also says that the unicorn must be lonely because he is not like the other horses. It seems that the unicorn is Laura’s favorite because she can easily identify with it, its beauty, its distinctiveness, and its solitary
‘ The Glass Menagerie’ is a very poetic play. The play has a great deal of metaphors and symbolism in each and every scene. Each character has their own way of saying things. Both Tom and Amanda use heavy figurative language in their dialogue; but each in a different way. Laura, on the other hand, does not talk much but her small actions and the different objects she uses speak louder than words. Tom starts off the play with a clever play on words: “Yes, I have tricks in my pocket, I have things up my sleeve. But I am the opposite of a stage magician. He gives you illusion that has the appearance of truth. I give you truth in the pleasant disguise of illusion.”(1.4)
One of the major themes in the Glass Menagerie is the difficulty accepting reality. This is demonstrated each member of the Wingfield family. In the case of Amanda, she often seems to be stuck in the past and constantly recalls events of her youth. Terry Teachout describes Amanda in the Irrelevant Masterpiece as one who, “longs to retreat into her own dreams of her genteel southern youth” (59). Amanda often compares Laura to herself when she was younger, telling her stories of the night she attracted seventeen gentlemen callers as though she expects Laura to be capable of the same . Amanda has a very strong influence on Laura and comes across very overbearing. Eric P. Levy states that, “she turns her daughter into a mirror in which her own flattering self-image is reflected, but to do so she must first turn herself or, more precisely, her judgment, into a mirror reflecting Laura’s limitations” (530). This refers to Amanda’s inability to accept that Laura is not like her and is handicapped, due to one leg being shorter than the other, which in turn made her very self-conscious and shy. Levy goes on to further say, “Amanda slights Laura’s appearance even as she praises it.” (530). Amanda then goes on to tell Laura ...