Analysis Of The Book ' The Glass Menagerie '

   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 Glass Menagerie, Tennessee Williams presents us with four characters whose lives seem to consist in avoiding reality more than facing it. Amanda lives her life through her children and clings to her lost youthfulness. Tom retreats into movie theaters and into his dream of joining the merchant seamen and some day becoming a published poet. Laura resorts to her Victrola and collection of glass ornaments to help sustain her world of fantasy. Finally, Jim is only able to find some relief in his glorified old memories. This essay will examine how Amanda, Tom, Laura and Jim attempt to escape from the real world through their dreams.

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.

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”

Tennessee William’s The Glass Menagerie demonstrates subtle plot devices and characters to tell the story (Brinkman 1). The main characters within the literary work comprise of the Wingfield family: Amanda, Luara, and Tom. Despite having three main characters, the main question still stands: The Glass Menagerie belongs to who (Garner I)? Does the story belong to Amanda, Laura, or Tom? With compiled evidence, I believe the literary work belongs to Laura.

The Glass Menagerie lures the audience into taking a voyeuristic glimpse into the private lives of the Wingfield family, which consist of Amanda, the domineering mother of two adult children, Tom and Laura, and who welcomes Jim, a “gentleman caller” hosting him to a gay evening in the grandest Antebellum tradition. The contrasts in William’s play are manifested through the character traits of Tom and Jim (the dreamer and the doer), Amanda, dwelling in the past, while colliding with the present, the mother and children, seeking escape into fantasy, denying reality, failing to come to terms with, or acknowledge that psychological and

Movies are the number one influential driving force for society today. You constantly see your favourite books, comics or plays turn into incredible movies. When one walks into a movie theatre, it is almost expected to see at least a couple of film adaptations being played somewhere in the venue. However, this wasn’t always the case. The Glass Menagerie is actually the first case of its kind to have implicated such thinking in the movie industry, with the iconic play receiving the honour of being turned into a movie.

To escape the harsh means of reality, humans gravitate to leaving in the past or a dream. Some people fear dreaming, while others live to dream. Tennessee Williams’ play The Glass Menagerie presents three incomparable worlds: dream, reality and memory. The members of the Wingfield family in The Glass Menagerie shield from the reality and choose to live in a dream or a memory. Williams conveys that each character has their own dreams, which are wrecked, by the real world. The whole Wingfield family chooses to live in a dream or a memory and disregards the expectation of the present. Accompanying with many ideas, Williams denotes the uncomfortable situations the Wingfield family faces many times. William explores the nature of dreams, memory,

A Glass Menagerie is a collection of small, wild animals which can be put out for display for public view. Tennessee Williams's play “The Glass Menagerie”, is about a family with personalities so different that they do not get along. The family could be considered wild animals all in their own way. In the story, Laura’s menagerie breaks multiple times at the slightest touch. The title of the play “The Glass Menagerie is represented by the entire family because, like the menagerie, each family member displays fragile characteristics.

The decisions that their dad made, greatly effected Tom, Amanda, and Laura. If I were to lose my father there would be many questions running through my head.If I were to be in Toms’ shoes, I have no clue what I would've done. Families would be hurt, souls would be hurt and relationships would be broken. Tom's father does not show any emotions or reactions on how he left the family.

Tom had a double role in the play as both the narrator and a main character that lived through a recollection of what life was like living with his mother and sister before he abandoned them to seek adventure. Tom’s behavior in the play could lead to question if his memory is truly accurate. SparkNotes comments, “…But at the same time, he demonstrates real and sometimes juvenile emotions as he takes part in the play’s action. This duality can frustrate our understanding of Tom, as it is hard to decide whether he is a character whose assessments should be trusted or one who allows his emotions to affect his judgment” (SparkNotes.com). Through his behavior a person is reminded that memory can be flawed by emotions or time elapsing, this would need to be taken into account when analysis of such a character is done. Tom is full of contradictions as he reads literature, writes poetry, and dreams of an escape; however he also felt bound by duty to his sister and mother. Another contradiction was that while he professed to care about his sister as seen in his ending comments in the play, “…I tried to leave you behind me, but I am more faithful than I intended to be!...” (Williams), Tom never went back to reconnect with his sister. This could be because of the great shame he felt for abandoning his sister or because of another reason. He stated that he had been in several cities over the years but never speaks of going back to St. Louis, making it unclear if he

All of the characters in The Glass Menagerie have specific symbols in the play representing

While reading Tennessee Williams play, “The Glass Menagerie”, readers are drawn into the drama and disaster that is the Wingfield family. This book was written very much like an autobiography of Williams life. 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.

The Glass Menagerie is an autobiographical story. All the characters have some relation in the real-life family of Tennessee Williams. The author of The Glass Menagerie tries to tell us the story throughout one of the characters memory. The scenes of The Glass Menagerie do not function nor try to give us a traditional plot but instead they give us a piece of line or timeline that the author once lived through.

“The Glass Menagerie,” by Tennessee Williams, is a memory play designed to reveal some type of truth by examining the life of a family living in St. Louis. However, what exactly the play is trying to reveal remains unclear even as the play draws to a close. The play ends on a slightly confusing note, with Tom, the narrator, saying “for nowadays the world is lit by lightning! Blow out your candles, Laura - and so goodbye....” (Williams 97) and then Laura blowing out her candles. However, upon closer examination, the meaning and significance of this line become clear. After examining the symbolism around candlelight and natural light, it is evident that the last line of the play is really Tom saying that he is seeing the harsh reality of the world, and therefore he is begging Laura to get rid of her kindness and hope. Only once he relays this message can he say goodbye and let go of her memory, which gives the reader a hint at his motivation for telling this story.