Amanda Stern Essays

  • The Monster under My Bed

    1077 Words  | 3 Pages

    The Monster under My Bed “Mom, please!” I cried. “All my friends are outside waiting for me.” “Amanda, I told you not until your room is clean. Now, go get started. The sooner you start the sooner you will finish and can then go outside and play,” replied my mother with a firm voice. I was a very stubborn five-year-old girl. My friends were outside wanting me to play, but after much begging my mother was still refusing to let me out of the house until my room was clean. The thought

  • Essay on Escape in The Glass Menagerie

    1031 Words  | 3 Pages

    Escape in The Glass Menagerie In Tennessee Williams' play, The Glass Menagerie, none of the characters are capable of living in the real world. Laura, Amanda, Tom and Jim use various methods to escape the brutalities of life. Laura retreats into a world of glass animals and old gramophone records. Amanda is obsessed with living in her past. Tom escapes into his world of poetry writing and movies. Jim also reverts to his past and remembers the days when he was a hero. Laura retreats into a

  • Free Glass Menagerie Essays: Parallels to Williams' Life and Symbolism

    627 Words  | 2 Pages

    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

  • Free Glass Menagerie Essays: The Destruction of Laura

    1116 Words  | 3 Pages

    and brother shared some of her fragile tendencies. Amanda, Laura's mother, continually lives in the past. Her reflection of her teenage years continually haunts Laura. To the point where she forces her to see a "Gentleman Caller" it is then that Tom reminds his mother not to "expect to much of Laura" she is unlike other girls. But Laura's mother has not allowed herself nor the rest of the family to see Laura as different from other girls. Amanda continually lives in the past when she was young a

  • The Theme of Escape in The Glass Menagerie

    1977 Words  | 4 Pages

    The Theme of Escape in The Glass Menagerie In Tennessee Williams' play, The Glass Menagerie, Amanda, Laura, and Tom have chosen to avoid reality. Amanda continually attempts to live in the past. Laura's escape from the real world is her glass collection and old phonograph records. Tom hides from the real world by going to the movies and getting drunk. Each character retreats to their separate world to escape the cruelties of life. Living in the past is Amanda’s way of escaping her pitiful

  • Food Avenue

    875 Words  | 2 Pages

    night-crew member named Frank lets me in. As they pull the door back for me they ask, "So how are you this morning?" "Just fine thank you. If only I wasn’t so tired," I responded with a yawn. "I know how you feel." "Bye Frank." "See you later Amanda." I proceed onward in behind the mysterious "Employees Only" door to the time clock. As the clock turns to 7:25 I punch in. I pull my hair back and head my way towards the wonderful Food Avenue. On my way there I stop by the service desk and get

  • The Fantasy World of The Glass Menagerie

    682 Words  | 2 Pages

    Fantasy World of The Glass Menagerie In The Glass Menagerie, Tennessee Williams creates a world in which the characters are disillusioned by the present.  Amanda, Tom, and Laura achieve this disillusionment by resorting to separate worlds where they can find sanctuary.  Each character develops their own world, far away from reality. Amanda frees herself from the harsh realities of life by constantly reminding herself of the past.  To begin with, she continuously repeats the story of the "one

  • The Harsh Realities of The Glass Menagerie

    1623 Words  | 4 Pages

    his theme through the characters' incapability of living in the present. The apartment that Amanda, Laura, and Tom Wingfield share is in the middle of the city and is among many dark alleys with fire escapes.  Tom and Laura do not like the dark atmosphere and their mother always tries to make it as pleasant as possible.  The two women do not get out much to socialize.  Amanda sometimes goes to D.A.R. (Daughters of the Revolution) meetings, but Laura does not like to socialize

  • Essay on the Metamorphosis of Tom in The Glass Menagerie

    1018 Words  | 3 Pages

    of time that he spends writing poetry at work. Tom does not appreciate what he has or that his family is provided for. Tom also shows a hint of selfishness when he tells Amanda that there is nothing in that house that he can honestly call his own. Tom also goes to the movies or gets drunk almost every night and he knows that Amanda and Laura are worried about him but that changes nothing. He still goes out without thinking of how it affects his mother or sister. To escape from his slow life while

  • Free Glass Menagerie Essays: The Character of Tom Wingfield

    701 Words  | 2 Pages

    family's wishes that he wants to leave the dismal life of a factory job, to pursue a chance in the Merchant Marines. He realizes that he would be running off like his father and this is probably the only thing that kept him from leaving this long. Amanda, Tom's mother, deep down knows the day is coming that Tom will leave. She says "But not till there's someone to take your place." She wants Laura, if not herself to be taken care of. At that moment in the play Tom is the breadwinner in the family

  • Free Glass Menagerie Essays: The Characters’ Weaknesses and Strengths

    1189 Words  | 3 Pages

    weakness of an unrealistic world (p. 17). She states that Amanda's character is made up of "the Good Mother, the Terrible Mother, the seductive young witch, and the innocent virgin" (Thompson 17). She supports her theory with the incident in which Amanda says that she had seventeen gentlemen callers in one day. Thompson goes on to say that the "exaggeration of the number of Amanda's beaux recalls fairy tale and legends of romance in which the princess is beleaguered by suitors until the ideal knight

  • The Personal Strife of Tennessee Williams

    922 Words  | 2 Pages

    Williams, was a shoe salesman at a shoe factory. He was an alcoholic and he was often verbally abusive to his family. Williams's mother's name was Edwina Lanier Williams and she encouraged the young Thomas to write. Williams later based the character of Amanda from his play "The Glass Menagerie" on his mother. He had a sister named Rose, who was two years older, and when they were growing up they were very close. Rose was a very sensitive child and by her early twenties she was classified as a schizophrenic

  • Essay Comparing Glass Menagerie and Streetcar Named Desire

    1070 Words  | 3 Pages

    features the Wingfields. Amanda is the mother and her two children are Tom and Laura. A gentleman caller named Jim O’Connor comes in at the end of the play.  This play is basically about Tom’s memories of the last bit of time he was with his family, before leaving them as his father did. Since the play takes place in the memory, it is dark and some things are very exaggerated. Laura is a cripple who is lost in her own world, with no hope of ever finding someone to love her. Amanda is also living in her

  • Fragile as Glass in The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams

    1142 Words  | 3 Pages

    In Tennessee Williams‘ play The Glass Menagerie, the audience believes that the menagerie simply refers to a glass collection owned by Laura Wingfield. Laura lives with her brother Tom and her mother Amanda. Due to her mother‘s desire for her to marry, Jim‘s introduction to the play is one as a gentleman caller. When Laura describes her glass animals to Jim, she uses her mother‘s term ―glass menagerie‖ (Williams 414) for them. All of the figures are glass, but the animals in it vary, and thus

  • Essay on Escape Mechanisms in The Glass Menagerie

    502 Words  | 2 Pages

    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.

  • Essay on the Dysfunctional Family of The Glass Menagerie

    1074 Words  | 3 Pages

    continue to be the family problems of the present. The three family members are adults at the time of this play, struggling to be individuals, and yet, very enmeshed and codependent with one another. The overbearing and domineering mother, Amanda, spends much of her time reliving the past; her days as a southern belle. She desperately hopes her daughter, Laura, will marry. Laura suffers from an inferiority complex partially due to a minor disability that she perceives as a major one. She has

  • Dreams of Escape in The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams

    2191 Words  | 5 Pages

    consist in avoiding reality more than facing it. Amanda lives her life through her children and clings to her lost youthfulness. Tom retreats into movie theaters and into his dream of joining the merchant seamen and some day becoming a published poet. Laura resorts to her Victrola and collection of glass ornaments to help sustain her world of fantasy. Finally, Jim is only able to find some relief in his glorified old memories. This essay will examine how Amanda, Tom, Laura and Jim attempt to escape from

  • Tyrus Raymond Cobb

    517 Words  | 2 Pages

    On December 18, 1886 Tyrus Raymond Cobb was born into the famliy of W. H. Cobb and his fifteen year old wife Amanda Chitwood. Ty grew up in the southern town of Royston, Georgia. Ty’s father W. H. Cobb was a schoolteacher and a college graduate at a time when there were few. W. H. raised Ty on a 100 acre farm where he taught Ty the values of hard work and preservance. Ty’s mother Amanda Chitwood was only twelve when she married W.H.. She had Ty at the age of fifteen and lived to see her son get elected

  • Married with Children

    1670 Words  | 4 Pages

    Married with Children The television series Married…with Children started in late 1987 and had a schedule for thirteen shows. It came about from the minds of two directors named Amanda Bearse and Gerry Cohen. Their goal was to bring up a comedy series different than others in the recent past. The series was taped in Sony Studios and had brought up many controversial issues. For example, the third season of the show is the time when the show got increase fame. A woman by the name of Terry Rakolta

  • Good Advice

    846 Words  | 2 Pages

    the same gender. Sons had their dads and daughters had their mothers as advisor. Maybe this was so because they could relate more with them and had more of a closeness. Still others in the class illustrated good advice from teachers or counselors. Amanda, Lee, and Jackie Brooks took advice from those. Advice works when it is taken or not taken, but is clearly the right way to go. Advice that works doesn’t have to be deep or inspirational. Take for example when a mother gives her children the advice