Kristin Gonzales
E. Masterson
Engl. 1302.02
12 August 2016
Drama Essay
The prime component that sparked this play’s key success is its use of symbolism. Alike many other literary devices, symbolization contains a hidden message, only a select few can comprehend. The symbol that cannot go unnoticeable is the unicorn. The unicorn’s compatibility with Laura’s character is the standing out factor. This comparison between the two gives a better understanding of Laura and the play “The Glass Menagerie.” It only requires a short period of time for the audience to come to this realization.
Laura, the female protagonist, is a disabled woman with little to no confidence. These attributes send her into a shy state of mind. The nickname given to her by her first gentleman caller, Jim, is “Blue Roses!” (Williams 224). Jim calls her Blue Roses because she was out sick and when she came back to their shared high school, he asked her, “...what was the matter” and she had said pleurosis. When she told him that, he mistakenly thought she had said “Blue Roses” (Williams 225). When further analyzed a deeper meaning can be discovered. Metaphorically speaking, the blue explains her shy, melancholy side. Laura threw up at school and she told her mother that she, “couldn’t face” the tension she was feeling at
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The rainbow indicates that there is some type of hope in the future. Tom give Laura an impression of hope when he, “pulls out the rainbow-colored scarf” (Williams 195). Near the end of the play, Tom thinks about Laura as he looks at some broken colored glass, and pictures his shattered sister Laura and her injured spirit (Williams 238). Tom hopes in the figurative sense that he was able to extinguish the candle’s flame of his sister’s misery. He then looks back upon the long methods Laura would use to polish her glass collection, keeping it safe from the
The Glass Menagerie is a play about the character Tom trying to escape his living situation that traps him. He is doing to best to cope with his dependent, demanding mother Amanda and take care of his quiet sister Laura. Amanda and Laura solely depend on Tom’s income from his warehouse job, but Tom is desperately wanting to leave both his mother and sister to lead his own adventurous life. Laura is mainly embodied by her precious glass menagerie and Jim O’Connor’s nickname for her, “Blue Roses.” Her livelihood revolves around taking care of her glass animals and protecting them, and in doing so, she isolates herself from the normal world around her. In Tennessee William’s play The Glass Menagerie, symbolism is use to uncover the unearthly beauty and delicacy of Laura and to portray Tom’s need to escape from his oppressive responsibilities.
Laura is the owner and caretaker of the glass menagerie. In her own little fantasy world, playing with the glass animals is how she escapes from the real world in order to get away from the realities and hardships she endures. Though she is crippled only to a very slight degree physically, her mind is very disabled on an emotional level. Over time, she has become very fragile, much like the glass, which shatters easily, as one of the animals lost its horn; she can lose control of herself. Laura is very weak and open to attack, unable to defend herself from the truths of life. The glass menagerie is an unmistakable metaphor in representing Laura’s physical and mental states.
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.
... to symbolize her yearning for both ideal or mystical beauty and spiritual or romantic love” (Cardullo 161). Also “Laura thinks that ‘blue is wrong for roses’, but Jim insists that it’s right for her because she is pretty ‘in a very different way from anyone else…other people are… one hundred times one thousand. You’re one times one!...They’re common as –weeds, but—you—well, you’re—Blue roses!’ (105)” (Cardullo 162).
Fire. Neglect. Sexual Molestation. No one child should have to face what Jeannette Walls had to endure as a young child. However, Walls clearly shows this chaos and the dysfunctional issues that she had to overcome while she was growing up. Within her memoir, The Glass Castle, Walls incorporates little things that were important in her life in order to help the reader understand her story even more. These little things amount to important symbolisms and metaphors that help to give the story a deeper meaning and to truly understand Jeannette and her family’s life.
really a place for someone like him and his mind rebelled. Lastly you can see
Another aspect of Laura’s personality, which is portrayed by the glass menagerie, is her extreme fragility. At first, Laura calls this “a blessing in disguise” – that he has made her normal. But when he reveals to her that he is engaged to another woman, her hopes are shattered, just like the unicorn’s horn. Now the unicorn is just like all the other horses, therefore, she decides it is more fitting for Jim than it is for her.
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.
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.
Time progression, education, and social justice movements have weakened the grasp of female oppression. Yet, the wounds of inequality are continuously bleeding, despite having years to heal. Modern women face unequal pay in the workforce, little representation in congress, female genital mutilation in 29 countries, a lack of education, etc. Laura’s unhealable wound is representative of this truth. Interestly, Laura’s character is not an empowering feminist hero, as her situation and disability suggest. There are no heroes or villains within this story as Lori Leathers Single argues in Flying the Jolly roger: Images of Escape and Selfhood in Tennessee William’s The Glass Menagerie, “Because the play is about familial dysfunction, there are no heros or villians in The Glass Menagerie. In order to understand the truth beneath the surface, the audience needs to maintain its objectivity.” (152 Single). Literary heros customarily gain unhealable wounds during an encounter with “hell”, or a low point in their journey. The wound allows the hero to become wiser, mature, and strong. Laura’s wound does not lead to these positive traits however. Alternatively, the unhealable wound eats Laura alive, drowning her in the typical psyche of an oppressed woman. As Robert J. Cardullo introduces in the academic journal entitled Liebestod, Romanticism, and Poetry in The Glass Menagerie, “Laura Wingfield of The Glass Menagerie (1944) hardly qualifies as a Romantic superwoman, a majestic ego to transcend the “mereness” of mundane human existence.” (Cardullo 76). Laura does not defeat the malevolent presence of female oppression, but instead embraces it through the victimization of
Tennessee Williams's brilliant use of symbols adds life to the play. The title itself, The Glass Menagerie, reveals one of the most important symbols. Laura's collection of glass animals represents her fragile state. When Jim, the gentleman caller, breaks the horn off her favorite unicorn, this represents Laura's break from her unique innocence.
Dysfunctional. Codependent. Enmeshed. Low self-esteem. Emotional problems of the modern twenty-first century or problems of the past? In his play, The Glass Menagerie, Tennessee Williams portrays a southern family in the 1940's trying to deal with life's pressures, and their own fears after they are deserted by their husband and father. Although today, we have access to hundreds of psychoanalysis books and therapists, the family problems of the distant past continue to be the family problems of the present.
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.
In The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams, the glass figurine of the unicorn plays an inherently important role as a representation of Laura's self esteem. The collection of glass figurines is used by Laura to escape from the dangers of the outside world. The unicorn is the central piece to her collection and is important because it directly symbolizes Laura. The unicorn represents Laura's obsession with her handicap and also represents the uniqueness in her character. As the play develops, the fracture of the unicorn's horn represents a change in Laura's perspective of self and also gives a reason to why she parts with the figurine in the end.
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.