Amanda Wingfield's Childhood

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,

The play The Glass Menagerie, written by Tennessee Williams, is told as a flashback from the point of view of the character Tom Wingfield. He narrates the play as well. It is set in St. Louis in the year 1937. Tom works to support his mother, Amanda, as well as his sister Laura. Laura is extremely shy, and her mother is not happy with her because she does not attract any “gentlemen callers.” Laura gets enrolled in a business school by her mother, in hopes that she will go into a business career and earn money for herself and her family. A few weeks after, Laura drops out of business school due to her shyness, and wanders the streets of St. Louis during the day. When she is caught by her mother after she visits the business school, Laura tells her “I’ve just been going walking” (Williams 1166). It is then decided that the only hope left in Laura is in marriage. Laura then begins to sell magazine subscriptions in hopes that this job will not only earn her money, but attract a gentleman caller as well. Tom, who works in a shoe warehouse, is a slight alcoholic. He tries to get away from the job that he doesn’t like by drinking, watching movies, and reading literature. Tom often argues with his mother Amanda, and in one of these frequent arguments, Tom accidently breaks a few of Laura’s glass animals. These glass animals are her most prized possessions, so Laura is upset but forgiving.

Amanda and Tom share a familial relationship of mother and son. Williams depicts Amanda at first interpretation as overbearing, hypercritical and controlling. However, on further assessment, the audience is able to acknowledge a more admirable facet to her character: her evident persistence in trying to love her children. Through her attempts in perpetuating her youth and past glory, she distorts reality to fit her

   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 members of the family are selfish; everyone is abandoning everyone and everything to chase their own aims and dreams. The character of Tom and Laura portray the story of Tennessee Williams’ life. Like Tom, Tennessee was a shoe clerk that love to write but was held back by his relatives. All the events in the story are based on the life of Williams and his friends. This is like his autobiography with a twist. “All work is autobiographical if it’s serious. Everything a writer produces is his inner history, transposed into another time. I am more personal in my writing than other people, and it may have gone against me.” (Spoto 114) Tennessee was a man that wanted the reader to see what his life really looked like in the time of the Great Depression: how people lived, and how they escaped reality. This tale is a lesson to show the reader that every negative side can have a positive

Glass Menagerie” is a tragic story of the Wingfield family, a dysfunctional family of dreamers

“The Glass Menagerie” by Tennessee Williams is a play about desire to escape and this concept is conveyed through a variety of techniques and ideas shown in this play of exploration by the playwright, Tom Wingfield. First, Jim tries to escape his engagement by having a romantic night with Laura. Then, Tom’s father escapes for the same reasons Tom did. Thirdly, according to Roger Boxill from ‘The Glass Menagerie’ Amanda escapes by reminiscing “Blue Mountain ... And the seventeen gentleman callers.” Fourthly, Laura escapes with romance, going for walks, her “Glass Menagerie, stomach pain, and the broken horn from the unicorn. Finally, Tom escapes by traveling, going to the movies, drinking, and hanging out on the fire escape looking at the moon. Symbolism is also used in many literary works to for shadow or emphasizes an event that is about to happen or already has happened in the story. Hence the title ‘The Glass Menagerie’ in the play foreshadows/emphasizes the event happening or about to happen. The action of “The Glass Menagerie” takes place in the Wingfield family’s apartment in St. Louis, 1937. The events of the play are framed by memory Tom Wingfield is the play’s narrator, and usually smokes and stands on the fire escape as he delivers his monologues.

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

Many stories have a certain event that provides a plot to a story. From a big battle scene to a quest or journey, every good narrative has a conflict. An exception to this recurring plot point is The Glass Menagerie. The play was written in 1944 by the playwright Tennessee Williams. Williams wrote the story without a physical antagonist, but rather an abstract notion of hopelessness that is bestowed upon the characters. Every character in the Wingfield family struggles with this in their own way. With these struggles, the climax of each character can be derived. The Glass Menagerie was written with the theme of the play as a priority, rather than the story being the conductor of the theme.

In Tennessee Williams, “The Glass Menagerie” all four characters consist in avoiding reality more than facing it, Amanda, Laura, Tom, and Jim. Amanda lives her life through her children 's and clings to her past. Tom constantly stays in movie theatres and into his dream of joining the merchant seamen and someday becoming a published poet. Laura resorts to her victrolla and collection of glass ornaments to help sustain her world of fantasy. Finally, Jim is only able to find some relief in his praised old memories. Amanda, Tom, Laura and Jim attempt to escape from the real world through their dreams of a fantasy life they desire.

Each character in the Glass Menagerie is living in their own fantasy world, which reflects that during the period of World War II and the Great Depression, the U.S. working people in lower middle class worked hard in different ways in face of cruel reality. Whether live in the past, hide themselves from others, walk out bravely, or even completely escape from the result, they all struggled between the real and were unable to escape the tragic fate. The beautiful fantasy is as beautiful and fragile as the glass menagerie.

Laura is Tom’s brother and Amanda is their mother. Amanda living in the past, Laura collecting her glass menagerie and Tom going to the movies every night show that each of them try to escape reality. First, Amanda escapes reality by reliving her own past. In the play, Amanda relives her own past to escape her current problems. “I’m not expecting any gentleman callers”

After she says this, Tom walks into the kitchen to have his morning coffee, eventually talks to his mother, and apologizes for the things he’s done, no doubt because Laura was so convincing (4.3. 5-20). The family has their differences and it is a perfect representation of the sort of family Williams had at this age; they sometimes fight, but they cannot function without one another. Without Tom, the family has no financial income and Laura does not have a brother in which she can confide in. Without Laura, Amanda and Tom would fight all the time and neither of them would apologize because there is a huge lack of motivation due to Laura’s absence. Without Amanda, there is no one to take care of the two of them, and neither of them would have a motherly figure around the house. All of the members of the family are critical instruments in conveying the story of Williams’

Tom also enjoys writing poetry, and does so while he is at his job. This causes his employers to consider firing him later in the drama. In the climax of the play, Tom invites over a gentleman caller for Laura, by the name of James O’Conner, but unfortunately, Mr. O’Conner is engaged. Amanda believes that Tom had prior knowledge to this fact, but Tom insists he did not. In the final argument and climax of the play, Amanda blames Tom for all of the expense that was wasted in preparation for the gentleman caller.

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