A Shattered Myth in The Glass Menagerie Essay

Tennessee Williams uses the character Amanda in “The Glass Menagerie” to express the attitude of how proper young men and woman should carry themselves. Amanda’s attitude towards her children sets the stage for their unhappy lives. Her refusal to accept her children for who they are has led to Tom drinking during the evenings and Laura having social anxiety. “The Glass Menagerie” reflects the social norms, roles, and values of the 1940’s when it was written. It depicts woman as helpless and unable to provide for themselves, while men should be focused on furthering their careers and providing for the family. Amanda believes that a young woman of Laura’s age should be attending social events and getting schooling till she can attract a gentlemen caller who will provide for her. Finally, she believes that Tom should be concerned with furthering his career to provide a better life for Laura and herself since he became the man of the house once his father left. Amanda’s attitude displays the social norms during the 1940’s and sets the framework for Laura’s disappointing meeting with a gentleman caller as well as Tom Leaving.

   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.

In the play, The Glass Menagerie, Tennessee Williams portrays his sister, Rose, as a character named Laura. Laura is a nervous, quiet girl who struggles with a mental disorder. “She has failed to establish contact with reality and continues to live vitally in her illusions.” (Williams xvii) This is a close comparison to his sister in real

In the beginning of the play, Laura sees herself as “crippled” and not “expecting any gentlemen callers,” for she is extremely shy and unconfident. Furthermore, she embodies her collection of glass menagerie, for when Tom hurls his coat across the room “It strikes against the shelf of Laura’s glass collection... [and] Laura cries out as if wounded.” Laura’s action in this scene symbolizes her frailness and how she is a piece of the glass menagerie. Being part of the glass collection, Laura is confined to the shelf which the collection is on. This metaphorical representation of Laura depicts how she prefers to stay inside rather than going out into the world and becoming truly independent. Nonetheless, when Jim, the ticket to break out of this confinement, arrives, there is a shift in Laura’s character. As Jim talks to Laura, her “shyness is dissolving in his warmth.” Moreover, the unicorn piece which is symbolic of Laura and was once addressed as “lonesome” loses its horn in an accident. When its horn is gone, Laura states, “The horn was removed to make him feel less - freakish! Now he will feel more at home with the other horses, the ones who don’t have horns.” (Scene 7:6-9) Laura has lost her metaphorical horn and therefore she fits in with the rest of the world. For once in her life, Laura feels normal and her shell is broken as she dances and engages with Jim. However, Laura’s escape is not complete liberation, for even though Laura has liking towards Jim, the so thought gentleman-caller, Jim is engaged and has a fiance. This shows that Laura and her family will not truly escape from their setbacks even if a glance of hope, such as Jim, arrives for a moment in their lives. Therefore, at the end of the play, Laura’s “silliness is gone and she has dignity and tragic beauty” for “glass breaks so easily. No matter how careful you

One of the big motivations shown through the characters in The Glass Menagerie is the yearning of escape from the real world. One example shown through Laura’s character is she finds a way to escape reality through her glass menagerie and the old records she plays that once belonged to their father. The mother, Amanda, tries to escape her current life as a deserted wife who must constantly scramble for money by retelling stories of when she was young. Her favorite story to retell regards one day when she received the attentions of seventeen gentleman callers. For her, those gentleman callers represent what her life was and what it could have been if she had not married her husband, “the telephone man who fell in love with long

If I could change the outcome of the story, I would have allowed Laura and Jim O’Connor to get married. I would have made this change because then Amanda’s problem would have been solved, and Laura would have had financial support in the future. Another reason I would have made this change is because Jim O’Connor would have been the ideal man for Laura because he connected with her. He saw past her awkward fondness of a glass animal set. He also got Laura to take pride in herself.

Laura Wingfield has chosen to hide from reality in the play The Glass Menagerie. She seems to live in a world of her own, and hides from everything and everyone outside of the apartment. Laura is terrified of anything new or different. Her mother sent her to business college, but Laura was so afraid that ‘The first time [they] gave a speed-test, she broke down completely – was sick at the stomach and almost had to be carried into the wash –room.’ (p 243). Laura uses her limp as an excuse to hide from the world. She believes that her slight limp makes her crippled and that she cannot be a part of the real world because of it. Laura’s glass menagerie and the victrola act as things which protect her from the real world in the play. Whenever she is

“The Glass Menagerie” by Tennessee Williams, was written in the early forties but could be misconstrued as a present-day play, because of the family dynamic that has changed since the forties but has not been completed replaced. In this play, we are introduced to Tom Wingfield who is the breadwinner for the family, which consists of his mom and sister. Amanda Wingfield who is an overbearing mother that knows no boundaries, and Laura Wingfield who is the sweet, and embarrassingly shy daughter of Amanda. Their family dynamic is like most of ours. The mother loves her kids dearly but struggles with letting go of her old identity, the daughter who allows her disability to determine her happiness and the brother who is obligated to work but would rather drink and party his money away. I’m sure many of us can relate to this family in some form. My favorite character in “The Glass Menagerie” is Laura. I love Laura because I can relate to her in more than one way. I was a shy individual most of my life, but once people got to know me they realized I was no different from them. In the following paragraphs, I will share Laura’s character with you, the similarities between Laura and the glass unicorn and I’ll tell you how the glass unicorn represents Laura.

Laura is a very shy, sensitive person who is very fragile. Society in The Glass Menagerie wants her to go to business college, find a gentlemen caller, and not be so fragile. However, she has become so shy and vulnerable that she has forgotten almost completely about the real responsibilities of life. When Laura’s high school crush, Jim O’Connor, comes to Laura’s house for dinner she escapes her make-believe world. Laura’s make-believe world is characterized by “ I haven’t heard any arguments among them!” (Williams 122). Laura imagines her glass menagerie to be real which comes to show how

The human eye observes glass as transparent, but, when light hits it correctly, it refracts an entire rainbow of colors. Similarly, Laura, though quiet and lackluster in the presence of strangers, is a source of strange, multifaceted delight to those of who choose to look at her in the right light. The menagerie also represents the imaginative world to which Laura devotes herself—a world that is colorful and enticing yet based upon fragile illusions. She hopes she can find her a gentleman to take care of her and the family. In this play, Amanda, just as any mother would, wants the best for her children.

Broken Glass and Breaking from the Past In Tennessee William’s 1944 play entitled The Glass Menagerie, Williams employed prevailing symbolism to illustrate Laura’s odd habit and ultimate fate. Laura escaped from reality when she was in the presence of her glass animals, and suffered emotionally due to her physical deformity of one leg being shorter than the other. The figurine in her collection that she admired the most was her glass unicorn, which also served as a powerful representation of her oddness and physical defect. Throughout this essay I will further discuss the significance of the glass unicorn, by giving further detail on the connections made between Laura and the glass unicorn.

In The Glass Menagerie, Laura lives in her own illusion of what she feels like is reality. Laura is a girl with no motivation to pursue a career or relationship. She lives in a world of delicate and fragile glass animals, a lot like herself on the inside. For example, the book says “Whereas fabricating an idealized past becomes Amanda’s compensation for her present existence, Laura’s retreat

Laura has a collection of glass figurines, and gets lost in her imaginary world. Laura cleans her figurines for hours. “She is washing and polishing her collection of glass (Williams 37)”. She is always polishing her figurines and never pays attention to anything else. Laura likes to imagine herself as a glass figurine and that she fits in with them.

The glass menagerie is symbolic of the Laura’s life and personality. Laura resembles the nature of the glass animals due to her being a fragile character. She is extremely shy and can easily break down when is faced with adversity. For example, she is fragile as she sees her high school crush, refused to talk to him, and tripped knocking herself out. The unicorns represents how Laura is different than her peers around her. She stands out due to her shy and crippled nature. Similarly, a unicorn is unique because of its horn among horses. When the horn breaks off the unicorn, it represents that it can now be like the other horses to no longer be different. This is what Laura wants in her life.

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