A Glass Of Menagerie Essay

The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams is a celebrated and cherished play that has affected generations. Written in 1945, the play very well may have been an outlet for Williams to accept what had happened to his own sister. Rose Williams had been lobotomized due to schizophrenia, affecting her brother greatly. While Williams’ family may be real, his characters are over dramatic and eccentric. The characters of Amanda, Tom, and Laura make up an extremely dysfunctional family living together in a 1930’s Saint Louis. By the end of the play, each character has affected themselves and each other. The characters spend the majority of their lives inventing someone who will make the rest of their family members happy, and when these facades crumble,

a future. To cope with this predicament Amanda tries to relive her youth. Once, after eating dinner Amanda mentions how she received seventeen gentlemen callers in Blue Mountain. She boasts that her callers were the most prominent men of Mississippi. Amanda says she knew how to entertain company and that she had a pretty face and a graceful figure.

   Tennessee Williams' play, The Glass Menagerie, 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. Williams' use of symbols adds depth to the play. The glass menagerie itself is a symbol Williams uses to represent the broken lives of Amanda, Laura and Tom Wingfield and their inability to live in the present.

The other well-known and beloved play of Tennessee Williams is The Glass of Menagerie. It takes place between World War I and World War II in St. Louis, Missouri. After World War I, the stock market crash of 1929 came which sent the American nation into the Great Depression. Formerly well-to-do families found themselves underprivileged, and the poor seemed to get even lesser. The story of the Wingfield family is a close-up look how people dealt in various ways with their impoverished circumstances. To express his universal truths Williams created a term, which he uses in this play, the plastic theatre, which is distinctive new style of drama. He insisted the setting, properties, music, sound, and visual effects – all the elements on the staging – most combine to reflect and enhance the action, theme, characters, and language. For instance, “a single recurring tune,” The Glass of Menagerie”, is used to give emotional emphasis to suitable

The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams narrates the story of a dysfunctional Southern family during the Great Depression struggling to achieve their dreams. The novel is written as a memory from Tom Wingfield’s mind as he looks back on his past. Amanda Wingfield, the mother, unable to come to term with the reversal of economic and social fortunes, controls her children’s lives. Laura Wingfield, her daughter, is terribly shy and just wants to stay home, while Tom, Laura’s brother, hates his job. Amanda wants Laura to become get married soon, while Tom wants to escape his boring life and experience adventure. The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams should be added to next year's curriculum because of its insight on distorted reality and

During the 1930s, the US went through a rough period in their history. Due to a major stock market crash, the US fell into the Great Depression. Many people were forced to live with little or no money. The play, The Glass Menagerie, by Tennessee Williams is set in St. Louis, Missouri during this period of time. Amanda, the mother of the family, lives in an apartment in the city with her two children, Tom and Laura. Tom's job at the warehouse and the small pay from Amanda's telemarketer job help to provide for the three of them. They did not have much money but were a typical family for the time they were living in. Wearing typical clothes, experiencing difficulties, and living in a common home are all characteristics of the cast in this play.

     The Glass Menagerie, by Tennessee Williams contained well-characterized characters. The "Dead Poet’s Society" also contained a great set of characters that were similar to those in The Glass Menagerie. It is fair to say that the characters of The Glass Menagerie and the characters of "Dead Poet’s Society" are more similar than different.

Over the course of The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams, three major characters are introduced. Tom, the son, and provider of the family, serves as both a main character and the narrator. Tom feels trapped by his mother. He feels that, since his father left long ago that he is the only means for which the family to survive. Tom has a somewhat dysfunctional relationship with his mother, Amanda, and he feels as if she won’t just loosen her grasp on him and let him live his life.

In the play, The Glass Menagerie, by Tennessee Williams, the protagonist, Tom, runs away from home in an attempt to find truth and meaning in his life. He leaves behind his mother Amanda and sister Laura who is crippled. As Tom narrates the play by recalling his memories he talks about the night when Laura has her first gentleman caller over, Jim O’Connor. Over the course of the evening Jim breaks Laura's glass unicorn and shines a light through it, thereby breaking Laura free from her own caged life. Although Tom does not call home to check up on Laura and his mother, it is inferred from the narration of his story that Jim, in fact, saves Laura from a lifetime of continuous falsity. Jim O’Connor acts as a savior of Laura’s by breaking her

On Sunday, March 11th, I went to see a live production of “The Glass Menagerie” at 2:30 P.M. in downtown Chattanooga. I chose to see “The Glass Menagerie” because it was in Chattanooga, which I thought it would be the easiest place to find a production to go to on the weekend so I did not have to worry about going to one later in the semester. When I was seated, the first thing I noticed was the age group that was attending. It consisted of almost completely of elderly white woman and men. There was only one couple that looked like they were in their late thirties. I felt a little out of place because Chase Pruitt and I were the youngest ones there. We were all seated in uncomfortable black plastic chairs. I was able to find a seat in the second

In the play, The Glass Menagerie, Tennessee Williams addresses the hardships of a small, lower-middle class family in St. Louis. The family's future is controlled by the Amanda but, Tom will accept that no longer as he strives for independence. With their absent father, Amanda is placing the weight of the world on her children’s shoulders as she continuously comes up with ways her and her family could potentially get ahead in life. Tom feels the pressure of being the man of the house, as he’s responsible for the family’s income and works daily to provide for his mother and sister. After analyzing the characters, one might say that Tennessee Williams has used the title The Glass Menagerie to directly relate to the children being held captive

We all have illusions. We can hardly live without them. Most of the time they are harmless thoughts about things that are usually unattainable. An example would be when a person sees something that they want and then dreams of having it. Whenever someone holds an opinion based on what they think is true, or in some cases what should be true, rather than what actually is true, then that is an illusion. Illusions sometimes help people cope with painful situations, but in the end, illusions are only a false escape from reality. The characters in the book The Glass Menagerie are each affected by their own different illusions. Tom, Laura, and Amanda all survive because their illusions protect them

Written in 1944, Tennessee Williams wrote a play during World War II when people were barely making ends meet. Centering on the Wingfield family, the story consisted of five characters: Amanda Wingfield (the mother), Laura Wingfield (the daughter), Tom Wingfield (son, narrator, Laura’s older brother), Jim Connor (Tom and Laura’s old acquaintance from high school) and Mr. Wingfield (father to Tom and Laura, and Amanda’s husband)- who abandoned the family long before the start of the play. The title, “The Glass Menagerie”, represented a collection of glass animals on display in the Wingfields’ home. At one point or another, these animals then represented each character when they couldn’t accept reality. The theme of this play were about the

A person’s path to enlightenment and understanding can be tumultuous and challenging. In the play, The Glass Menagerie, by Tennessee Williams, each character has difficulty accepting reality. This makes them withdraw into their own little world of illusion to find a sense comfort and peace. In The Glass Menagerie, the author presents the glass figurines as a metaphor for the Wingfield family along with other families during the Great Depression.

While reading Tennessee Williams play, “The Glass Menagerie”, readers are drawn into the drama and disaster that is the Wingfield family. There were several different film and television versions of this play done thru the years from 1950 to 1987. After watching several different adaptations, Paul Newman’s film adaptation in 1987 is extremely faithful to the written version. Focusing on plot, setting, and character development the audience is introduced to a family with an austere future structured around a series of abandonments, difficulty accepting reality and the impossibility of true escape.