In his critical essay “The Green Goddess of Realism,” Sean O’Casey solicits what it entails to create “a real play about real people” (295). O’Casey believes playwrights embellish and emphasize their imaginative works in order to create a connection with the audience and evoke a specific reaction. Thus, the more realistic and similar to actual life a play is, the further it deviates from being a real play. According to O’Casey, theatre “is not[…] the locus of real life but an artistic presentation of stories that serve the narrator’s purpose” (293). In his play The Glass Menagerie, Tennessee Williams attempts to convey, through characterization and expressionism, the human tendency to allow the past to control one’s present actions and thoughts.
William’s tragic life created the framework for The Glass Menagerie. Aside from the obvious similarity of Tennessee’s name being Tom, he also felt responsible for his disabled sister, Rose, who was eventually institutionalized. His mother arranged a lobotomy in an attempt to cure her; however, Rose spent the remainder of her life in the mental institution (Shute). Laura represents William’s sister, Rose, with her nickname being blue Roses and her physical and mental disabilities. The blue roses are an allusion to their frail nature and inevitable death (Cardullo). Williams’ acknowledgment of human’s imminent ending hints at a line in “The Timeless World of the Play,” his critical essay: “we are all haunted by a truly awful sense of impermanence” (275). Humanity’s fear of death and insignificance is the root of human’s tendency to allow the past to intrude on the present and future, and to, either intentionally or subconsciously, escape reality.
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...ussion with ART Dramaturge." Reserve Room. Mugar Library, Boston University, Boston. 7 Feb. 2013. Speech.
O'Casey, Sean. "Green Goddess of Realism." 1956. An Anthology. Ed. David Krasner. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2008. 293-97. Print.
Shute, Sarah. "The Glass Menagerie." KnowledgeNotes™ Student Guides. ProQuest Information and Learning, 2002. Web. 13 Feb. 2013. .
The Glass Menagerie. By Tennessee Williams. Dir. John Tiffany. American Repertory Theatre, Cambridge. 9 February 2013. Performance.
Williams, Tennessee. The Glass Menagerie. New York: New Classics, 1949.
Williams, Tennessee. "The Timeless World of the Play." 1951. An Anthology. Ed. David Krasner. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2008. 274-77. Print.
Williams, Tennessee. The Glass Menagerie. 1945. The Bedford Introduction to Drama. 5th ed. Lee A. Jacobus, ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2005.
Ardolino, Frank. “Tennessee Williams’s The Glass Menagerie.” The Explicator, Vol. 68, No. 2, 131–132, 2010
Bloom, Harold, Frank Durham, and Nancy M. Tishcler. Tennessee Williams's The Glass Menagerie. New York: Bloom's Literary Criticism, 2007. Google Books. Web.
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.
Tennessee Williams is one of the best play writers in American history. Tennessee Williams's life experiences has been used as subject matter for his dramas. Tennessee Williams uses his experiences and express them through plays. His life experiences are used over and over again in the creation of his dramas.
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.
Life in the 20th century, where the innocence and morality dominated the streets, should not have been easy for a writer that was unafraid to openly express his thoughts of depravity and repressed desires that dwelled in the depths of his being. Tennessee Williams, one of the greatest playwrights in American history, managed to open a place in that world of ideals to express through his work his so chaotic reality. Even though he was derided by critics and blacklisted by Roman Catholic Cardinal Spellman, who condemned one of his scripts as “revolting, deplorable, morally repellent, and offensive to Christian standards of decency” (quote), Williams achieve lots of recognitions from his so peculiar plays. One of his most important writings, The Glass Menagerie, reveals and exposes premises about William’s personal life including abandonment, deception, and escape.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Williams, Tennessee. The Glass Menagerie. Masterpieces of the Drama. Ed. Alexander W. Allison, Arthus J. Carr, Arthur M. Eastman. 5th ed. NY: Macmillan, 1986. 779- 814.
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.
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.
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.