Tennessee Williams’ Life and The Glass Menagerie
The Glass Menagerie first opened on March 31, 1945. It was the first big success of Tennessee Williams’ career. It is in many ways about the life of Tennessee Williams himself, as well as a play of fiction that he wrote. He says in the beginning, “I give you truth in the pleasant disguise of illusion'; (1147). The characters Tom, Laura, and Amanda are very much like Williams, his sister Rose, and his mother Edwina. We can see this very clearly when we look at the dialogue, and the relations between the action in the play and the actions in Tennessee Williams’ life.
The first character that we will look at is Tom, the narrator. It can be interpreted that Tom is a likeness of Tennessee Williams. There are many similarities between his life and Tom’s life. Some of them are about his own actions, and some of them are about the actions in the life of his family. First we will look at Tennessee Williams life, and how it is much the same as the life of the character Tom in The Glass Menagerie.
He is the narrator, “an undisguised invention of the play. He takes whatever license with dramatic convention as is convenient to his purposes'; (1147).
“I am the narrator of the play, and also a character in it. The other characters are my mother, Amanda, my sister, Laura'; (1147). Because Tom is the narrator, and the narrator is the one who tells the story, we can decide already that he stands for Tennessee Williams, who wrote the play and tells the story through Tom. Also for the same reason, Amanda is Williams’ mother Edwina Williams and Laura is his sister, Rose Williams.
Tennessee Williams dropped out of school when his father asked him to. He went to work in a shoe factory, but he hated it. In the play, Tom says, “Listen! You think I’m crazy about the warehouse! … You think I’m in love with the Continental Shoemakers? You think I want to spend fifty-five years down there in that – Celotex interior! With – fluorescent – tubes! Look! I’d rather somebody picked up a crowbar and battered out my brains – than go back mornings!'; (1156) . Both Williams and Tom blamed their families for the horrible jobs that they were in.
Also Williams had a habit of go...
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...t excused from the table … You smoke too much.'; (1148). There are many instances where it is shown that, like in real life, the mother and son have a difficult time with each other. Tom is very impatient of his mother. But later he says about her as a “narrator'; does, “now that we cannot hear the mothers speech, her silliness is gone and she has dignity and tragic beauty'; (1188). This shows that in the end Williams had a great love for his mother.
It is visible when you look closely at the lines in the play that Tennessee Williams was writing about himself and his family when he wrote The Glass Menagerie. In the end Tom cries, “Oh Laura, Laura, I tried to leave you behind me, but I am more faithful than I intended to be! I reach for a cigarette, I cross the street, I run into the movies or a bar, I buy a drink, and I speak to the nearest stranger – anything that can blow your candles out! … For nowadays the world is lit by lightning! Blow out your candles, Laura – and so good-bye…'; (1188). Tennessee Williams’ entire life’s work was, in many ways, recognition to his sister Rose.
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.
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. She was later institutionalized and eventually given a lobotomy. His sister's condition devastated Williams, and he was afraid throughout his life that he would succumb to madness as well. He based the character of Laura from "The Glass Menagerie" on his sister Rose. Williams had a younger brother named Dakin, who was eight years younger.
The final clause of the first section of the fourteenth amendment explains, "nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." 2 The 1976 ruling of Gregg v....
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.
One strong influence that is evident in Tennessee Williams' plays is his family life, which was "full of tension and despair". His father, a businessman who owned a show warehouse, was known for his gambling and drinking habits. He was often engaged with violent arguments with his wife that frightened Tennessee's sister, Rose. Williams cared for Rose most of her adult life, after his mother, Edwina, allowed her to undergo a frontal lobotomy. This event greatly disturbed him. Many people believe that Williams' first commercial success, The Glass Menagerie, was based on his own family relationships. This play tells the story of Tom, his disabled sister, Laura, and their controlling mother, Amanda, who tries to make a match between Laura and a Gentleman caller. The characters seem to resemble the people in Williams' immediate family.
The Glass Menagerie was a great interpretation of Tennessee William 's early life. It showed how hard he had it being raised by a single mother and having a sister with a handicap. In the story it shows
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.
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.
Cat on a hot tin roof, published in 1954 was met with a wealth of criticism. The play is about the sexual ambivalence of males towards females, and a debilitated family that are compelled to deal with hidden deceptions. This play shows the effect of Tennessee William’s life, being homosexual and the impact that it had in his writing. All the characters in the play, in some way are a double of Williams’s life. ‘The characters in Williams’s play are not caricatures or stereotypes; they are based on aspects of Williams’s personality and people that he knew in his past’ (Kerkhoffs, 2000). Not only do William’s characters mirror his life, but they also depict how society acted throughout this time. In the play, Big Daddy the owner of the plantation had a preference for his son Brick. He tends to have an affection towards him that could have easily been mistaken as a relationship of more than a father, son bond. ‘Big Daddy shocks his son by alluding to his knowledge of and tolerance for homosexual experiences. When Brick rejects his father’s touching attempt to reassure him of his understanding, Bid Daddy retaliates by accusing his son of a kind of self- righteous hypocrisy’(J. Huzzard, 1985). This quote ties back to the Homosexuality impact of William’s life, where depicts
The Glass Menagerie, written by Tennessee Williams in 1944, tells a tale of a young man imprisoned by his family. Following in the footsteps of his father, Tom Wingfield is deeply unhappy and eventually leaves his mother and sister behind so he may pursue his own ambitions. Throughout the play, the reader or audience is shown several reasons why Tom, a brother to Laura and son to Amanda, is unhappy and wishes to leave his family. However, the last scene describes Tom’s breaking point in which he leaves for the last time. Amanda tells Tom to “go to the moon,” because he is a “selfish dreamer.” (7. Amanda and Tom) The reasonings for Tom’s departure are due to his mother’s constant nagging, hatred for
In Tennessee Williams' play, The Glass Menagerie, each member of the Wingfield family has their own fantasy world in which they indulge themselves. Tom escaped temporarily from the fantasy world of Amanda and Laura by hanging out on the fire escape. Suffocating both emotionally and spiritually, Tom eventually sought a more permanent form of escape.
...t even. Oburon takes the flower that Puck had previously collected and put the flower juice in Titanias’ eyes. When she woke she fell in love with the first thing she saw. She saw a donkey and was immediately in love with it. Eventually Oburon fixes it and turns her back to normal. Hermia marries Lysander and Helena marries Demetrius.
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.
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 role of a narrator. One role he takes on in the play is the voice