Analysis Of The Play ' The Glass Menagerie '

In the play “The Glass Menagerie” each of the characters uses different escape mechanisms to avoid real life. Amanda, the mother, consistently tries to live in the past. Laura, the daughter, avoids the real world by using her own escape mechanisms; her glass figures, and her music and taking walks. Tom, the son, is always avoiding the real world by either going to the movies every night, or going to get drunk. Throughout this paper the reader will gain knowledge of how each character escapes from their everyday lives that they are living.

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.

   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 Tennessee Williams’ play, The Glass Menagerie, all four members of the Wingfield family have chosen to hide from reality. Amanda tries to relive her past through Laura, and denies anything she does not want to accept. Laura is terrified of the real world, and choses to hide behind her limp, her glass menagerie and the victrola. Tom hides from his reality by going to the movies, writing poetry, and getting drunk. Mr Wingfield hides from his reality by leaving his family and not contacting them after he has done so. Each member of the Wingfield family has their own escape mechanism which they use to hide or escape from the real world.

In The Glass Menagerie, Tennessee Williams beautifully encapsulates man’s desire to escape from uncomfortable emotional and physical situations. Whether he’s showing a young man trapped in a factory job he hates, an aging single mother who mourns for her life as Southern belle, or a young lady who fears that she’ll spend her life alone, he clearly demonstrates these desires and fears for his audience. Williams shows us through the actions of his characters how humans handle a wide variety of uncomfortable situations, and how these situations dramatically influence one’s ability to thrive. The playwright doesn’t seem to believe in the idea of “bloom where you’re planted”, and the desire to escape becomes a major theme of the play, demonstrated across multiple characters in a wide variety of ways. Creative individuals often do not thrive in noncreative, industrial environments. Williams demonstrates this clearly in this “memory play”, which carries many autobiographical element. Tom Wingfield represents his own character, Williams himself, and also serves as a narrator, making him quite the complex character. Williams’s uses Tom to show how an emotionally complex, creative individual can quickly feel trapped and tied down in a factory job, longing to get out, see the world, and pursue a job with more creative elements. Tom’s escapism, drinking, and evening theatrical adventures all reflect the life of the playwright himself, as Williams was known to struggle with alcoholism

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.

The Glass Menagerie is a memory play narrated by the main character and son, Tom Wingfield. It takes place in their apartment in St Louis, 1937. The father left them years ago leaving Tom to support the family. He works in a shoe warehouse, a job in which he hates and wants to leave, but can't because he has a duty to support the family. His mother, Amanda is loving and caring but nags too much, annoying Tom. She expresses the desire for her daughter, Laura, who is crippling shy, to have "gentlemen callers". Amanda finds out that Laura dropped out of college because of her shyness and she demanded Tom to choose a gentleman caller for her. He chooses Jim O'Connor, a boy who she liked in high school, but was too shy to talk to him before. Tom invites him for dinner and Jim talks to her and gets her to open up a little. He leads her on by kissing her then after tells her he is engaged. He then leaves and Laura gets sad. Amanda yells at Tom, blaming him for it. Tom reveals to the audience that he abandons his family later that night and has been haunted by Laura ever since.

TThis essay will discuss the metaphors associated with the characters in The Glass Menagerie and how each of these metaphors represents a fragment of the American Dream. She is like a piece of her glass collection, too fragile to be brought into the real world without being devastated. Because of her sensibility, she has avoided dealing with people for so long that when she finally tries to socialise with Jim, she fails to see that she is being manipulated. Amanda is a faded Southern belle who is trying to relive her past by using her daughter to mirror her former self. She represents nostalgia for the Old South in the play. Tom is a struggling poet who dreams of real adventures but has to provide support for his family. Jim, despite

Having been born crippled, Laura suffers from extreme anxiety at the thought of people judging her imperfections, exemplified in her panic towards Amanda, “Oh, Mother, please answer the door, don’t make me do it” (Williams 56). Due to her fears, Laura continuously searches for ways to avoid confrontation and people, despite her mother’s attempts to push her to become more of an extrovert (Brinkman 1). Laura, depicted as the ‘antagonist,’ verifies as the main focus of The Glass Menagerie due to her mother and brother’s actions for her, from wasting money on her to become a lady, to Tom bringing home Jim as a potential caller (Brinkman 1). Despite Laura’s shortcomings and weak character, I believe the story belongs to Laura. Laura, within the script, establishes a three-dimensional characterization.

In The Glass Menagerie, the play raises questions of desire and responsibility. The character in the play that struggles with this conflict is Tom, who is also the narrator of the play. Tom spends the majority of his dreadful days working in a shoe warehouse, in order to support his mother and sister after his father deserted the family. Tom desires to be a poet as well as leaving his job and family, but feels obligated to stay and support his family financially and his sister emotionally. Throughout the novel Tom feels a strong responsibility

In Tennessee William’s work “The Glass Menagerie”, a theme that is well developed is feeling trapped. Williams and Tom, both share similarities. This theme fits well with Tom, Laura, and Amanda. They each have a feeling in which they are trapped. The family overcomes many obstacles from their past.

Set in the memory of narrator Tom Wingfield, an aspiring writer who works in a shoe factory yet longs to travel beyond the city of Chicago where he provides for his mother Amanda and sister Laura as his father left them in , the Glass Menagerie explores multiple themes through in depth instruction for actors and casual dialogue which follows a simple plot filled with complex ideas and characters. While the mother Amanda expresses concern about their future and worries Tom will follow in his father’s footsteps, foreshadowing the finale of the play, Laura lives isolated in a dream work separate from reality where she faces overwhelming anxiety that she distracts herself from with old records that belonged to her father and now serve her in drowning

Nora’s sudden transformation from dutiful housewife to fiercely-independent spinster with a mind of her own is bound to keep some readers confused because of Ibsen’s theatrical decision to keep Nora’s thoughts largely internal during the height of the play’s dramatic tension (Ibsen 73). Williams, primarily through the framing of The Glass Menagerie as a ‘memory play,’ places the audience more squarely in tune with Tom’s psychological justifications for leaving his family through his constant breaking of the fourth wall, emphasizing that the “tricks in his pockets” will come out in full view for the audience to see to fully understand his abandonment of the Wingfields (Williams 29). Tom is finally spurned by the lingering presence of his father’s adventurous spirit, symbolized through his internment in picture form on the Wingfields’ mantle, to act upon impulse and finally escape the restrictive bonds that living with his mother and sister has placed upon

The Glass Menagerie, a play written by Tennessee Williams, is in a play full of emotion. The writer envelopes his audience in a cloud of feelings, as he describes the lives of a family who faces poverty and diversity each day of their lives( Williams 2013.) This play is situated in a little, poor loft. The play happens inside the parlor and dining room of the loft. In the Glass Menagerie, the play focuses itself on four characters.These four characters include: Amanda Wingfield, (the mother) and a ladies of a confusing nature; Laura Wingfield, (the little girl) who is injuried from a childhood sickness, and Tom Wingfield, (the more seasoned child) who feels caught and is searching for away out of the life he is living and Jim (Tom 's companion ) who is lost in the past when he was a star football player. Williams ' characters are unequipped for living in this present reality. Amanda Wingfield uses sticking to her recollections to escape from reality. She is from the old south. Her old molded method for living keeps her fantasizing about when she used to go on McGuire 2rides to the ball with her noble men guests. She stresses so much because she settled on terrible decisions in her own particular life. Amanda is fantasizing at whatever point she needs to escape from the truth that she is poor and is not going anyplace. She describes stories of ballsand moves, church socials and noble man guests. She continues reminding herself, and everybody inthe room, that she was well

In Tennessee Williams' play, The Glass Menagerie, none of the characters are capable of living in the real world. Laura, Amanda, Tom and Jim use various methods to escape the brutalities of life. Laura retreats into a world of glass animals and old gramophone records. Amanda is obsessed with living in her past. Tom escapes into his world of poetry writing and movies. Jim also reverts to his past and remembers the days when he was a hero.