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Critical analysis thesis on tennessee williams. the glass menagerie
Drama analysis essay tennessee williams the glass menagerie
Critical analysis thesis on tennessee williams. the glass menagerie
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The dictionary defines a menagerie as a small collection of valuable or precious items. In Tennessee Williams' novel, The Glass Menagerie, a family is indeed shown as a menagerie and how all the members of that family have a false reality, which is made of glass and can easily break at any time. Tom's, Laura's, and Amanda's false realities are combined to form a menagerie of dreams. Tom?s mental façade is composed of pirates and films to escape regularity, Laura's, built of glass animals to take her mind from physical and mental deformities, and Amanda's, dreaming of olden days, of gentlemen callers and of beauty to escape her loss of social status.
To begin, action movies and images of freedom illustrate Tom?s false reality.
Tom?s mental reality is the repeated visits to the motion pictures. Towards the beginning of the book, Tom gets in a heated argument with Amanda and says,? I?m going to the movies (24).? Tom even returns from a show he has just visited and is even intoxicated (26). By going to the movies, Tom lives his life through the silvery lives on the screen. This fasc...
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.
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.
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.
Because the glass menagerie symbolizes more than one feature, its imagery can be considered both consistent and fluctuating. The consistent side of this portrayal is that the menagerie is a constant symbol of Laura’s personality.
As humans, we are all born by those who raised us such as families and guardians. Family is where we all belong in that helps us identify who we are as an individual. It helps us grow as a person in order to realize what we have located in front of us. We all belong to a family and it is our family that keeps us together through thick and thin. Without having a family, the person feels isolated and the relationship that ties the family together tears apart. We need others who are close in our lives in order to function properly with those we are surrounded by day in and out. From The Glass Menagerie the play by Tennessee Williams and movie by Paul Newman, shows lower-middle class family living in an apartment in St. Louis. In the play, The
Tom escaped from the fantasy world of Amanda and Laura by hanging out on the fire escape, even though he could never fully escape. Unfortunately for Tom, his life was cramped like the coffin and he was slowly suffocating emotionally and spiritually. Unhappy with the lifestyle he followed in the footsteps of his father, he searched for adventure, escaping the nagging of Amanda.
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 Glass Menagerie reflects Williams's own life so much that it could be mistaken as pages from his autobiography. The characters and situations of the play are much like those found in the small St. Louis apartment where Williams spent part of his life. Williams himself can be seen in the character Tom. Both worked in a shoe factory and wrote poetry to escape the depressing reality of their lives, and both eventually ended up leaving. One not so obvious character is Mr. Wingfield, who is the absent father seen only by the looming picture hanging in the Wingfield's apartment. Tom and Williams both had fathers who were, as Tom says, "in love with long distances." Amanda, an overbearing mother who cannot let go of her youth in the Mississippi Delta and her "seventeen gentleman callers" is much like Williams own mother, Edwina. Both Amanda and Edwina were not sensitive to their children's feelings. In their attempts to push their children to a better future, they pushed them away. The model for Laura was Williams' introverted sister, Rose. According to Contemporary Authors "the memory of Rose appears in some character, situation, symbol, or motif in almost every work after 1938." Edwina, like Amanda, tried to find a gentleman caller for Rose. Both situations ended with a touching confrontation with the caller and an eventual heartbreak
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.
The main symbols in The Glass Menagerie are the glass menageries themselves. Laura, the daughter in the story, collects little glass figurines or animals; these figurines are called menageries. The small, glass, figures represent numerous elements of Laura’s personality. Both Laura and the figurines are fragile, whimsical, and somewhat behind the times. As Anita Gates writes, in her article "When Appearances Aren't What They Seem" Laura “is as delicate as the tiny glass animals she collects” (10). Laura is very fragile and weak in body, mind, and spirit. The menageries are weak also because they are made of glass. Therefore, both the figurines and Laura have to be cared for and treated lightly because of the possible damage that could be done to them if they were not properly taken care of.
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.
Tennessee Williams’ play, The Glass Menagerie, depicts the Wingfield family in a naturalistic viewpoint that highlights the importance of a man in the life of a woman. Without a husband in the play, Amanda’s son Tom is rendered as “the man of the house.” Williams attributes the monetary stability of the Wingfields entirely to Tom. Williams stresses the necessity of a working man through Tom so that women and children can be financially stable. As a naturalist, Tennessee Williams illustrates the characters’ reactions to various events and circumstances in accordance with man’s natural instincts of survival. Williams reveals Amanda in this approach, and he portrays naturalistic tendencies in her personality and character, her relationship with her son, and her connection with her hopeless daughter, Laura. Amanda is trying to survive and raise her children without a husband to support her economically.
of - was charm!' - or trails off - 'And then I - (she stops in front
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.
written in between 384 and 222 BC, and his views were taken on by some