People constantly struggle to break free of the entrapments that they themselves and society bind them in. Peering through the lens in which Tom revisits his memories, readers see that his experiences reinforce the observation that Tom is the most trapped throughout the Glass Menagerie. Tom constantly retreats to the movies as an escape mechanism, but is only able to temporarily escape his home, not the life he lives. Tom is bombarded with responsibilities that tie him to his family and is burdened by the trappings of society that expect his submission to them. Tom is finally able to escape his home, but is not able to escape the trappings his family, society, and self have bound him in. Infinitely trapped by society, responsibilities, and guilt, Tom is ultimately the most tightly trapped throughout the Glass Menagerie, constantly searching for an escape from reality.
Trapped by the expectations society inflicts, Tom is unable to justifiably escape his family. Tom’s father, who had abandoned the family years before, is showcased before the household as a painful reminder of their broken family. As Eric Levy discusses in his article, “Through Soundproof Glass: The Prison of Self Consciousness”, his portrait hanging in the house serves as a reminder to Amanda and Laura of what had been, but to Tom is what could be; the father was able to escape his family and burdens, and therefore mirrors Tom’s ultimate desires (Levy, 4). However, it is clear that that the man of the household is expected by society to protect and support his family. The image of the father ultimately enforces the selfishness and immorality of leaving one’s family, and although it tempts Tom to follow in his footsteps, it deters him from ever doing so, fearing to ...
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Although Amanda and Laura clearly struggle with their entrapments, Tom’s family, society, and self, successfully catch him in snares that he fails to transcend. Society imposes the belief that Tom cannot rightfully leave his family, while the family itself traps him financially and manipulates his guilt into a snare as well. Therefore, when Tom does finally escape, he cannot transcend the guilt that ties him back home. With the fear of being trapped again tormenting his mind, Tom is never able to escape his traps in the first place. Tom’s trappings were dependent on society, his family, his guilt, and also the trappings of his family members, making it almost impossible for him to escape on his own. Considering the trappings of Tom, Amanda, and Laura allows the reader to see characters in their own light, rather than being blinded by Tom’s perspective.
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.
Amanda is also well characterized by the glass menagerie. The glass sits in a case, open for display and inspection for all. Amanda try’s to portray herself as a loving mother, doing everything she can for her children, and caring nothing for herself, when in fact, she is quite selfish and demanding. Amanda claims that she devotes her life to her children, and that she would do anything for them, but is very suspicious of Tom’s activities, and continually pressures Tom, trying to force him in finding a gentleman caller for Laura, believing that Laura is lonely and needs a companion, perhaps to get married. Like the glass, her schemes are very transparent, and people can see straight through them to the other side, where ...
... he still feels guilt for leaving Laura behind. Tom cannot ignore his feelings towards Laura and accept letting her go. Tom is physically able to flee from his past and reality, but is unable to escape emotionally. Also, even a new life, filled with opportunities and self goals has troubles. Tom says that he does anything to keep busy so he can forget what he left behind. He is still not fully content with his life.
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.
This is also seen in the character Jim. While Jim is with Miss Watson, he is a slave. She isn't the one who made him that way, it was society. She was good to him and never did him any harm, but the fact is that no matter how good she was to him, he still was only a slave. When Jim runs away, he finally sees that there was a way to be truly free and that was to not live within society. When Jim is in the woods on the island, he just starts to realize what it is to be free and what it is like to live on his own. After he meets Huck in the woods he also realizes what it is like to have a friend. Society kept him from having both of these, freedom and friends.
A particularly strong theme in The Glass Menagerie is not being able to accept unfortunate reality or escape it. This theme is shown with the symbols of the movies and the fire escape which connect to Tom. Tom, who aspires to be a poet, is unhappy with his dull, suffocating life and his job at a warehouse in order to maintain the family. He longs for adventure and excitement in his life, yet he is constantly frustrated and argues with his mother frequently. In order to escape this, he ...
Part of Tom’s desire to leave is this treatment at the hands of his mother. In the beginning of the play, he loses his appetite because of his mother’s “constant directions of how to eat it” (923), and at one point she said that, in reference to books that she took from Tom, she “took that horrible novel back to the library,” (931) and that she “won’t allow such filth brought into [her] house!” (931). Part of Tom’s desire to leave is this treatment at the hands of his mother; another part is his job, and how monotonous and stagnant it is at the workshop. [PP2] Together, they leave Tom feeling trapped in his lifestyle of struggling through the days. He mentions to seeing a magician show at the movies, which sums up his feelings of
Jim points out how Tom could be an enhanced person numerous times during the final scenes, including when he tells Tom that he will be fired if he doesn’t start working harder at work (935). Tom responds by saying that he doesn’t plan on working in the warehouse for long, as he plans to leave his family to be a merchant sailor. This illustrates Tom’s character and his tendency to follow unrealistic desires before addressing his responsibilities. He wants to be analogous to his father who abandoned their family. Furthermore, Tom refuses to move past his ways to accept the responsibility of his family to aid them. Amanda, shows a similar trait when she continually brings up her past life by attracting suitors. Moreover, Amanda remains stuck in her past glories and remains unable to move forward and support her children attain self-sustainability and
As Winfield 's wife, Amanda is worthy of love and respect. Amanda is a southern lady, when she was young, she had an attractive appearance and graceful in manner, and her families were also quite rich. These favorable conditions made her the admiration of many men. Still, her final choice was a poor boy. She did not hesitate and bravely to choose her own love. Though her marriage was not as good as she had imagined the happiness of life, and the husband, Winfield meager income also drinking heavily, finally abandoned Amanda and two young children, but she still remembered and loved her husband. Her husband 's weakness did not make Amanda fall down; instead, she was brave enough to support the family, raising and educating of their two young children. Daughter Laura was a disability to close her fantasy world, and she was collection of a pile of glass small animals as partners. Amanda knew Laura sensitive, fragile, she was always in the care and encourages her daughter. Because of her shortcomings, Laura sometimes frustrated and Amanda immediately replied that "I 've told you never, never to use that word. Why, you 're not crippled, you just have a little defect". Amanda for the care of the children was more reflected a mother 's strong from the play that Amanda paid money to send Laura to typing school. She hoped daughter have a better future and married a good man to take care of the family, and encouraged her daughter, prompting her to go out of the glass menagerie to experience her real life, but Amanda placed more expectations for his son Tom because her husband left home, Tom is the only man and the mainstay of the family. She wanted Tom to realize that is a kind of family responsibility, also is a kind of essential social
The third and final reason Tom is unhappy and wants to leave, is due to his dreams being put on hold to support his family. Tom envisions a life of adventure, something of which he feels his life is meaningless without. After his father leaves, though not his obligation, Tom takes over the role as the man of the house. Tom feels that he is now responsible for taking care of his mother and sister. Even though Amanda and Laura need him, Tom decides anyway to leave them in search of his own adventures. Tom does not necessarily want to be unlike his father, he thinks of his wanting leave as a gene of sorts, a destiny, something he is supposed to do. When Tom’s coworker, Jim, is invited to dinner, Tom even confides in Jim that Tom is “like my [his] father” and that he is “the
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.
In Tennessee Williams' play, The Glass Menagerie, each character attempts to escape the real world by creating their own “reality”. Laura hides from the world by magnifying her illness. Tom convinces himself that his needs supersede the needs of his family. Amanda focuses almost exclusively on the past - when she saw herself as a desirable southern belle. Even Jim focus his hopes on recapturing his good old high school days. Each character transposes their difficult situations into shadows of the truth.
...e. As time goes on Tom finds it harder and harder to deal with the responsibilities of taking care of his family and the home. He decides to leave his job and his family for the merchant marines. He believes he will find the adventure he’s always been looking for. Instead of being free like he thought he would be, Tom is trapped by the memories of his sister. He says “I tried to leave you behind me, but I am more faithful than I intended to be!
“The Glass Menagerie” is a play about a fatherless family for whom the youngest and only son, Tom, is the sole provider. The play is Tom’s memory of his family and the events leading up to his departure. He and his mother, Amanda, argue quite frequently in the story, which causes Tom to run off every night and return in the wee hours of the morning for work. After Tom brings home one potential suitor who he didn’t know was engaged, for his sister Laura who cannot seem to get married because of her terrible shyness, his mother chastises him for bringing an engaged man to meet Laura. However in the words of Preston Fambrough, “Amanda is unjust to Tom in blaming him for the failure of her ham-handed campaign to ensure a suitable husband for daughter Laura, unreasonably faulting him for not knowing that the gentleman caller was engaged to be married and forgetting that Tom tried to dissuade her from the ill-fated scheme in the first place” (Fambrough 100). Tom subsequently runs away for being falsely accused and not respected. The play prompts the audience to ask whether or not Tom was justified in leaving his family behind because they didn’t respect him as the main contributor for their wellbeing. Tom is
Tennessee Williams’ excellent use of themes to portray characters in his world class, classic play “The Glass Menagerie” makes the play enthralling till the very end of it. Out of many themes like loneliness, illusions and distress; disintegration of the family seems to be a major plot of the play. Undoubtedly, all the themes displayed in “The Glass Menagerie” are as much important for the success of the play which keeps the audience indulged into it throughout. Nature and lifestyle of each character plays a vital role in creating events and setting the theme of the story. From an ambitious, energetic and hard-working young man, Tom to a physically challenged and unsociable girl, Laura; many qualities of a human being have been portrayed in