The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams
-Joseph K. Davis, " Landscapes of the Dislocated Mind in Williams'
'The Glass Menagerie'," in Tennessee Williams: A Tribute
Tom and his sister Laura is symbolically the actual glass menagerie, the play belongs to neither of them. The play belongs to their mother, Amanda, as substantiated by
the above quote from Joseph K. Davis. Amanda indulges herself in
memories of the past and refuses to accept the present. The play is
also hers because it is her "tragedy". It is about how she behaves
after her husband leaves her and her reaction when her son shows signs
of doing the same. She also controls the two conflicts of the play, as
well as the glass menagerie represents her fragile world of illusions
and memories of the past.
Amanda's control over the two conflicts of the play exists in the fact
that she creates them. She supplies the conflict between herself and
Tom as well as provides the conflict of having Laura marry. In the
case of Tom she constantly nags him and questions where is he.
Is going and then openly states her doubts of his truthfulness. Her
nagging starts in the beginning of the play in her conversation with
Tom, in which she tells him how to eat his food. Later she tells him
how costliness of his smoking habit, " You smoke too much. A pack a
day at fifteen cents a pack. How much would that amount to in a month?
". Later in the play she also manages to comment on Tom's appearance
and how she wished he would take better care of himself in that
respect. She also accuses Tom of lying about where he is going at
night. When he says that he is at the movies she states that he could
not possibly be going to the movies every night, " Nobody goes to the
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...longer a Southern Belle just standing around
waiting for rich men to come by and propose.
By her speaking like a Southern Belle, she is connected her to the
world she creates of illusions and the one for show. The connections
are achieved by the fact that in the past she was Southern Belle with
many rich suitors vying for her hand in marriage. This is also an
illusion because she is no longer a Southern Belle but tries to
maintain that front.
It is also this connection to her illusions of the past that combines
the proof that this is her play. She is the one who creates the world
she lives in to protect herself from the tragedy of her husband
leaving her. She is also the one who causes the conflict of the play
out of her illusions of the past and therefore she is the person who
dramatizes the tragedy of not living honestly and fully in the
present.
In The Glass Menagerie, by Tennessee Williams, the glass menagerie is a clear and powerful metaphor for each of the four characters, Tom, Laura, Amanda, and the Gentleman Caller. It represents their lives, personality, emotions, and other important characteristics.
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.
he knows is right. Amanda drives home the latter by asking, ―How do you think we‘d manage if
The lacking of a positive male role model can be very troublesome for any family; especially during the mid-thirties. Prior to the Second World War, women did not have significant roles in the workforce and depended on their husbands or fathers to provide for them financially. There were limited government assistance programs during the era of The Great Depression, and it was up to the families to provide for themselves. The absence of Mr. Wingfield placed enormous strains on the physical as well as mental wellbeing of his family. The effects the abandonment of their father had on the Wingfield family from Tennessee William’s The Glass Menagerie are undeniable.
Later, Amanda once again harrasses Tom for jeopardizing his job and the family’s security, all to go to the movies and drink liquor. Foreshadowing his own leaving, Tom angrily gestures to his father’s picture on the wall saying to his mother, “you say self [myself], self’s all I ever think of. Why, listen, if self [myself] is what I thought of, Mother, I'd be where he is - GONE!” (3. Tom) To elaborate, Tom is saying that if he was truly as selfish as his mother describes, he would have left long ago, just like his father. Throughout The Glass Menagerie, Tom remains hateful to his mother, and even names her a witch during one of their arguments. It is safe to say that Amanda is the one person that really drives Tom
Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie. If The Glass Menagerie were performed without the effects Williams written into the script, then the play would barely have a plot. Williams' use of music, lighting and a television screen add depth and. meaning to the play.
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...
The Glass Menagerie, a play by Tennessee Williams, is set in the apartment of the Wingfield family, housing Amanda Wingfield and her two children Tom and Laura. The father left many years ago, and is only represented by a picture on the living-room wall. The small, dingy apartment creates a desperate, monotonous feeling in the reader. None of the Wingfields has any desire to stay in the apartment, but their lack of finances makes it impossible to move. Escape from this monotonous and desperate life is the main theme throughout the play.
Throughout the play the audience can see Amanda as confused, and clinging to another time and place, a woman surrounded by her own paranoia. Laura is not only crippled emotionally but physically, with a beauty that is unique. Tome is a remorseless man looking for a way to escape without pity. (Insert the production notes) Many of the themes that the character go through revolve around the symbol that the glass menageries brings; fragile, animals, jewel box, proud, unique, extraordinary, fable, different beauty, death, and adventure. (Secondary source) Through the stage direction, lightning, and music the audience can focus their attention to the glass menageries. (Production notes) The themes and key concepts in the play tend to revolve around the impression that the glass menageries have and its own deeper meaning. The theme of accepting reality, impossibility of true escape and memory all come the impression that the glass menageries bring to the storyline.
Tennessee williams’s uses all of his tragic life experiences and and misfortunes in this play to tell this story. In the glass menagerie Tom leaves his helpless mother and sister to become a travel salesman which is comparable to how his father use to be a travel salesman who was absent for wife and children when tennessee was young. In another instance, Tom accidently breaks some of ornaments from laura’s glass collection after having a fight with Amanda. This scene shows the parallels of how the conflict between tom and amanda and Mr. and Ms. Williams affected laura in the play and in tennessee williams’s sister’s life. This shows how the plot of the play romanticised and tranquilized the tragedies of tennessee williams’s own
On the surface of the play the issues present seem to be rooted in the fact that Laura is “crippled” and unwed, however, upon further examination it is seen that there are other deeper issues. Williams writes in his production notes that this is a “memory play” (1041). What is interesting about The Glass Menagerie is the point of whose memory the audience is exposed to. Tom acts as the protagonist because it is his memory that audiences must trust, as the narrator in addition to being the man of the house in the absence of his father.
"The principal symbol in the play is, as the title suggests, the glass menagerie. It is specifically Laura's symbol, the objective correlative of her fragile, other-worldly beauty. Its stylized animal forms image her own immobilized animal or sexual nature, her arrested emotional development, and her inability to cope with the demands of a flesh-and-blood world" (145) says Judith J. Thompson, author of the essay, "Symbol, Myth, and Ritual." We are first shown the connection between Laura and her glass collection in Scene 3, during an argument between Tom and Amanda. Tom, in a burst of anger, hurls his overcoat across the room striking the table where Laura's collection is placed on display. Stage direction indicates "there is a tinkle of shattering glass. Laura cries out as if wounded" (Scene 3). It is as if Laura and the collection of glass are one. The glass breaks, but she cries out as if she physically felt the pai...
Glass, although beautiful, can break with even the slightness of breath. Behind beauty, there is fragility and Tennessee Williams represents this idea in his play, “The Glass Menagerie”. Williams infuses symbolism into the play by incorporating the glass menagerie, to portray the underlying fragility of the Wingfield family. The glass menagerie symbolizes fantasy and escape for Laura, a distraction from reality for Amanda, and is the object of eventual scorn for Tom. Through the symbolism that the glass menagerie signifies we are able to uncover the fragility, vulnerability, and need for escape that is apparent within the Wingfield family.
“The Glass Menagerie,” is a woeful play, plagued by a missing father, a young man walking in the very father’s footsteps, and a mother whose only life is lived in the past. There is one other unfortunate member of this dysfunctional family—Amanda’s daughter, Laura. Laura lives in a fantasy world, afraid to face the reality of her crippled destiny. She exists in a world of glass, pretty and flawless. Laura represents the glass menagerie; this is reinforced by the disjunction of the horn from the misfit unicorn which in turn represents her handicap.
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