A tragic hero can be described as a person of honorable or heroic qualities who has a flaw in character that is eventually the persons demise in a play. In the play, “The Glass Menagerie”, the mother of Tom and Laura, Amanda, is the modern tragic hero of this play. Published in 1944, The playwright, “The Glass Menagerie” was written by Tennessee Williams and was first performed in 1945. The play takes place in St. Louis, Missouri, during the Great Depression, which is important to understand why the characters are who they are. The play is all from Tom’s prospective who is an inspiring poet that works at a warehouse in order to support his loving but controlling mother Amanda, and his younger, shy sister, Laura. Out of all the characters in …show more content…
The setting in this play is a great example as to why she isn’t rich. The play take place during the Great Depression, which is one of the worst financial declines America has ever gone through. In the play, Amanda finds out Laura dropped out of school, and explains how her “Fifty dollars’ tuition...just gone up the spout” (Williams 683). Implying that the money Amanda spent to put Laura through college is wasted. This is another good example of how Amanda isn’t rich because she is really distraught not only about Laura dropping out of school, but because of the $50 wasted. Another example why Amanda isn’t rich or famous is because she and Laura depend on Tom to help and pay the bills. Now, Tom works in a shoe warehouse making just enough to scrape by, or at least less money than his co-worker Jim. In the play, he explains to his to Jim that he paid his dues to The Union of Merchant Seamen that month instead of paying the light bills. Now, if Amanda was rich or famous, I would suppose that she does not have to depend on anybody to pay bills, but the Great Depression is one of the most economic declines ever, so it would make perfect …show more content…
Amanda is always living in the past. She wants to escape her reality with her daughter, that’s not married, and a son that’s always coming home late and drunk. Also mentioned in the play, the author explains how in her past, Amanda was a young and popular southern belle. In the play, she brags about how she once had “17 gentlemen callers” (Williams 680) one night in her past. Amanda also keeps a “larger-than-life-size photograph over the mantel” (Williams 679) of Tom and Laura’s father who “gave up his job with the telephone company and skipped the light fantastic out of town…” (Williams 679). To keep a huge, framed photographed of an ex-husband can only mean that she is either still hung up on him after he left, or she wants her children to know what their father looked like. Either way, this is still an excellent example as to how Amanda is living in the past. Another way Amanda is always living in the past is how she reacts when she finds how there is a gentlemen caller for her daughter Laura. She wants to make a good first impression on Laura’s first gentlemen caller, as she sees it as a ticket for Laura to be successful, so she puts on an old dress that she has and mentions how she “had it on the day (she) met her father” (Williams 699). She basically saves that out of date dress for special occasions. But it is very old considering she wore it when she first met her ex-husband. If she was not
Williams’s play is a tragedy, and one of quietude. He once expressed that “Glass Menagerie is my first quiet play, and perhaps my last.” It is a play of profound sadness, and through relationships between characters, portrays the “cries of the heart.” There is no cry more powerful that the cry and inner desperation of the heart. Williams’s has very little social context, but rather focuses on the conflicts within a domestic family. Such a focus is powerful, and the playwright expresses this power and importance implicitly through the estranged relationship between Amanda and Tom Wingfield.
The Glass Menagerie is arguably the most symbolic and deep plays ever written. The Glass Menagerie isn’t just a story of Laura’s disability, it has a deeper meaning behind it, and it can be easily overlooked by mediocre minds. Although the story revolves around the Wingfield family, Tennessee Williams throws in symbolism that corresponds with his childhood. In a way, he found closure for the loss of his sister Rose through writing The Glass Menagerie. One of the symbols is the play that holds a different meaning for each of the characters is the fire escape. As the play evolves the fire escape brings out Laura’s, Tom’s, and Amanda’s true desires.
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,
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.
Amanda is obsessed with her past, and uses it to escape reality, as she constantly reminds Tom and Laura of the time she received seventeen gentlemen callers. The reader cannot even be sure that this actually happened. However, it is clear despite its possible falseness, Amanda has come to believe it. She refuses to acknowledge that her daughter is crippled and refers to her handicap as "a little defect - hardly noticeable" (Williams 1648). Only for brief moments does she ever admit that her daughter is "crippled" and then resorts back to denial. Amanda doesn't perceive anything realistically. She believes that this gentleman caller, Jim is going to be the man to rescue Laura and she hasn't even met him yet. When Jim arrives, Amanda is dressed in a "girlish frock" she wore on the day that she met their father and she regresses to the childish, giddy days of entertaining gentleman callers. Amanda uses her past as a means to escape the reality she does not want to face.
The theme of Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie is conflict. The play contains both internal and external conflict. The absence of Tom's father forces external turmoil and conflict between Tom the protagonist, and his mother the antagonist. The internal conflict is seen within Tom through his constant references to leaving home and his selfishness. The play is about a young aspiring poet named Tom, who works at a shoe warehouse. Tom is unhappy with is life at home mainly because of his overbearing, over protective mother named Amanda. Tom also has a sister within the play named Laura who chooses to isolate herself from the rest of society. During the play Tom's relationship with his mother is filled with very harsh and abrasive
The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams had ordinary people in an ordinary life that closely resembled the influences of Williams’ personal life while having reoccurring themes and motifs throughout the story. The play has been done by many with some variations in the scripts and setting while still clinging to the basic ideas of the original play.
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
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
Tennessee Williams play, "The Glass menagerie" is the precise example of a sad mundane world. The story consists of average people suffering from the pain of living. Williams focuses on the tragedy of unrequited love. The characters being delusional by the woes of love. Love tends to be a key element in Williams plays with the similarities of Dubois and Laura.
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
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.
“The Glass Menagerie” by Tennessee Williams written in 1944. In many of his plays the circumstances reflect his own life, in the Glass Menagerie this is especially true. His father, a violent traveling salesman, and mother a puritanical, preacher’s daughter. He also had an older sister named Rose, whom he cherished, she suffered from psychological problems which lead to an institutionalized life. The Glass Menagerie represents a somewhat altered image of the Williams family, set in the 1930’s in the Wingfield’s meager apartment; which is in a lower-class tenement building in St. Louis, it’s a “memory play,” in which Tom (after his own real name Thomas) recalls scenes from his youth during the height of the Depression. Outspoken Amanda, Tom’s
Amanda coddles Laura so that she can stay care free forever by making “plans and provisions” (Williams 1175) for her, but at the same time she degrades her, and attempts to control Tom. She tells Laura, “Now look at yourself, young lady. This is the prettiest you will ever be” (Williams 1184). She forces Laura into thinking that she can never become better than she is now and that “she has reached her peak at this moment” (Levy). She also nags Tom about his going to the movies and becoming like his father. She pushes them both further and further until they can’t take it anymore. Tom eventually leaves and Laura is left with no self-worth or prospects for the future.
“The Glass Menagerie” is an autobiographical play, written by Tennessee William in 1945. Each character is a prototype of a real person, who played a significant role in the author’s life. It is a memory play, which based on author’s own life story and a point of view at the family problems and ways to solve them. The main problem in the play is the conflict between parents and children, which leads to adverse consequences for all members of the family.