Conflict Between Reality and Illusion as a Major Theme of ‘the Glass Menagerie’

They hope Laura will eventually be able to find a husband or a job, but Laura always knows she will never be able to. Her self esteem issues play a key role in keeping her from doing either of those. Laura’s anxiety has affected her entire life without being dealt with properly. Tom’s decision to leave could potentially force Laura to find a job or husband to help her and her mother, but her anxiety and other issues would only get worse until she is unable to function anymore. Also, Laura knows Tom was never fully happy at their home, yet she could do nothing but hope beyond any reason she and her mother would survive. While Laura does face her reality to some extent, she clouds herself in the illusion that everything is fine how it is even farther than anyone in her

The play, The Glass Menagerie, by Tennessee Williams is a play that focuses on the flaws of people and the overwhelming feeling that many face throughout their life. Tennessee Williams was quite familiar with this feeling. During his career Tennessee Williams even said:

The world is crafted through humanity’s perceptions, shaped by their shared experiences of the world, yet differentiated by each individual experience. Within The Glass Menagerie, by Tennessee Williams, the ideas of overwhelming truth, individual perceptions, and the flaws of humanity are all explored. Through the various characters, with a specific focus on Tom’s narration, Williams argues that the truth is only a subjective idea that is created through the perceptions of humankind, molded through humanity’s flaws.

In Tennessee Williams's drama The Glass Menagerie the setting and dramatization in the play are used to convey each member of the family's hopes, desperations, and fears. He uses symbols throughout the story to add a deeper meaning and give his characters a sense of mystery. Also, though maybe inadvertently, The Glass Menagerie actually parallels the people and events in Tennessee Willliams's life.

Individualism is a staple piece of a person’s character not only in a book, but in life as well. Some people pride themselves on their individuality, while others spend their lives working to establish a concrete personality and purpose in life. In The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams, individualism is a key component in the themes of the story and portrayal of unique characters. With there being only four characters in the play, each of them have to be vibrant, diverse individuals in order to keep the reader in touch with the story. Each character in this play has their own flaws, as well as positive attributes that provide the reader with deep and interesting characters with layers of personality to analyze. One such character

Have you ever watched a play and been amazed to how real the play appears? Refer to this as realism. Realism tries to create an illusion that makes a certain situation look like that action is actually happening. Realism can also refer to certain social issues. Something that provides to realism is the spectacle. The spectacle is what the audience sees and hears during the play. In the play The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams, there are several different examples of spectacle. These example gives the audience an entertaining value and sets the tone for the plot. During the play, the spectacles that contribute to the realism would be the screen and the music.

The Glass Menagerie means the glass animals collected by Laura. Laura is as beautiful, fragile and vulnerable as the animals. The slight leg disability made Laura sensitive and inferior. As she was afraid to face the teachers and students, she dropped out. Her mother sent Laura to business school to learn typing in order to find a job. But Laura vomited during the speed typing exam as she was too nervous, so she had to drop out again. Laura was afraid of reality and only willing to stay in a fantasy world. Thus, she spent her day at home

Laura spends most of her time with her collection. But the unicorn is Laura’s favorite. The broken glass unicorn represents her being different from others,“I’ll just imagine he had an operation. The horn was removed to make him feel less-freakish! Now he will feel more at home with the other horses, the ones that don’t have horns...”(Williams 86). The unicorn is the outsider of the horses and Laura is the outsider in her reality. Laura wishes she could fit in with her society and not be a freak.But she is comparable to the unicorn because it has to break to fit in. Laura has to break to fit in her society’s

In “The Glass Menagerie”, by Tennessee Williams, Jim O’Connor calls Laura Wingfield a blue rose and it represents the first feelings of love between Laura and Jim, the delicacy of Laura, and a sense of caution or the impossible. Jim and Laura know each other from high school, and when they once spoke to each other, Laura tells him that she had been absent from school because she had pleurosis, but Jim hears blue roses. From this point on, he calls her blue roses. When they are “reunited”, Jim remembers what he once called her, and once again, he calls her blue roses. Throughout the book, the symbolism of blue rose is shown.

In The Glass Menagerie, one of the characters in named Laura. Laura has the figures of glass that she takes care of. Her mother doesn't want her to be doing that. Her mother tried to do everything to have Laura doing something “I put her in buisness college- a dismal failure! Frightened her so it made her sick at the stomach. I took her over to the Young People’s League at the church. Another fiasco. She spoke to nobody, nobody spoke to her”(Williams 31). Laura was concerned not a modern man because of how shy she was. Yet Laura knew what she was doing. Even though she wasn't the proper woman of that day and age, she knew what she wanted to do. It wasn't that she wasn't able to talk it was the people she was going to talk to.

The Glass Menagerie is a memory play by Tennessee Williams that highlights major memories he has of his life through Tom, the narrator of the play who dwells on a time of his life in which he endures with his mother Amanda and sister Laura.

Since its very first production, The Glass Menagerie has remained a treasure of modern, American theater, partly through playwright Tennessee Williams's masterful utilization of symbolism. One of these symbols, the glass unicorn, seeks to represent Laura and her development throughout the play. Williams establishes the symbolic relationship between Laura and the unicorn through the use of mutually shared characteristics, the most prominent ones being their lack of reality, shyness, and frailty. Readers will come to appreciate the subtle craftsmanship of the play's symbols and how the use of symbolism further develops Laura's character. To come to this appreciation, readers must first establish the symbolic connection shown through the shared

She discusses how she finds the clamping sound as she walks to be like 'thunder' while Jim says he hardly hear it at all. Laura is represented by several symbols including the glass menagerie, unicorn and blue roses. While she is always isolated in her 'own world of small glass ornaments', these glass represents her fragility. She is fragile to the outside world, easily broken. The unicorn just like Laura, stands out from the rest of the horses.

The Glass Menagerie, a play written by Tennessee Williams, portrays the Wingfields’ constant disappointments with reality, love, as well as the hardships that come with having their own image of the ideal human experience. To help the Wingfields get through some of these hardships, they possess many objects and make references throughout the play, which allows their family to escape from reality. Symbols and metaphors such as the glass menagerie, Laura’s nickname, Blue Roses and the glass unicorn affect the theme of the characters refusal to accept reality because those examples affect Laura’s everyday life. One example of a symbol used throughout the book, the glass menagerie, affects the overall theme of the characters refusal to accept

People who are different are sometimes seen as inferior individuals with subordinate lives. Tennessee Williams, playwright of the famous, The Glass Menagerie, exposes these ideas through the development of the character Laura, while tying her to strong symbolic features such as her glass unicorn in order to show the audience everyone has hope. On the surface, Laura is seen as a bleak character with an empty future, but with the symbolism utilized by Williams, Laura’s tremendous strength is revealed as she recognizes her abilities as well as a positive future for herself. At first, the breaking of the glass unicorn can be seen as a troubling experience for Laura, because throughout the play the reader has seen her emotional attachment with