Death Of A Salesman And The Glass Menagerie Essay

The characters that come alive in Williams' works represent people from his life. Amanda Wingfield from The Glass Menagerie holds strong resemblance to Tennessee's mother Edwina Williams. Williams described his mother as "a woman whose endurance and once fine qualities continued to flourished alongside a narrowness of perception and only the dimmest awareness of human feeling (Susquehanna. "Biographical Criticism)." Amanda easily mirrors this description of Edwina because of her selfishness concerning Laura's being unattached; Edwina was much like Amanda, getting numerous gentlemen callers as a young woman. Laura Windfield in The Glass Menagerie is very much like Williams' sister Rose Williams. Rose was institutionalized for having schizophrenia and was not able to interact with the outside world. Having pleurisy, Laura was also kept from being a part of the world she longed for. By using examples of people from his own life in

If there is any signature kind of character that marks Tennessee Williams’s plays, it is without a doubt the faded Southern belle. The Glass Menagerie’s Amanda Wingfield, the mother of Laura and Tom, is a perfect representative of this type, not unlike Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire, also by Williams. A proud and effervescent woman, Amanda passionately holds on to memories of a happier time, of days long gone by. Generally, a faded belle in a Tennessee Williams play is from a wealthy Southern family, raised by parents with traditional beliefs, and has suffered an economic or social, or both, downturn of fortune at some point in her life. Like Amanda, these women all have difficulty accepting a status in society different than what they are used to, as

Both settings are up-to-date, reflecting the time period in which they were written. In each play, the setting for the characters’ homes symbolizes the imprisoned, powerless nature of its residents. Overwhelming features surrounds both homes: in The Glass Menagerie, frightening tenements and dark alleys; in Death of a Salesman, tall apartment buildings that block out the light. In each case, the message seems to be that as difficult and restrictive as life may be inside the home, the outside is terrifying and overwhelming. For both Amanda Wingfield and Willy Loman, the configurations that outshine their homes are like the fears that outshine their own lives. Amanda is worried that her son Tom will leave home, or even worse. She is also afraid that if Tom leaves, she cannot rely on her daughter Laura to support the household. When Amanda founds that Laura has dropped out of Business College, she feels petrified for her future. Willy is afraid of being unable to support his family after losing his job.

     In Death of a Salesman, a play written by Arthur Miller, Miller reflects the theme that every man needs to be honest with him self and act in accordance with his nature by displaying success and failure in different lights. Miller embodies the theme through characters in the play by explaining how their success and failures in being true to themselves help shapes their fates. Strongest evidence of Miller’s theme is reflected in the characteristics of Biff Loman, Benard, and Willy Loman. Through out the play, these three characters never give way to other’s influence and what other’s view of being successful is.

The story ‘Death of a Salesman’ written by Miller focuses on a man doing all he can to allow him and his family to live the American dream. Throughout the story it is shown how the Loman’s struggle with finding happiness and also with becoming successful. Throughout their entire lives many problems come their way resulting in a devastating death caused by foolishness and the drive to be successful. Ever since he and his wife, Linda, met she has been living a sad and miserable life, because she has been trying support his unachievable goals. Also by him being naïve put his children’s lives in jeopardy and also made them lose sight of who they really were. Miller uses the Loman family to show how feeling the need to appear a certain way to the public and trying to live a life that is not really yours can turn into an American nightmare.

Both Death of a Salesman, and The Glass Menagerie have many things in common. They are both great plays, and both concern dysfunctional families. But there is a deeper similarity to these great literary works. The similarity between the parents. Due to Willy Loman and Amanda Wingfield's lack of coping skills, as well as their inability to let go or accept their past, their children are ill-equipped to deal with the future.

The glass menagerie symbolizes Amanda Wingfield's overwhelming need to cling to her past and her fulfilled fear of being alone.  Amanda resents the poverty-stricken neighborhood in which she lives so

    Tennessee Williams has a gift for character. Not many playwrights do, and even fewer possess the unique ability to craft a character as paradoxical and complex as Amanda Wingfield. In The Glass Menagerie, Amanda is a very difficult character to understand because of her psychological disposition. Williams realizes this and provides the reader with a character description in hopes of making the character more accessible to meticulous analysis.

In the play Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller, Willy is both sympathized with and looked down upon throughout the story. Willy is a very complex character with problems and faults that gain both sympathy and also turn the reader off to him. Willy Loman is both the protagonist and the antagonist, gaining sympathy from the reader only to lose it moments later.

One dreams, through the use of imagination, of what will become of them as life progresses. In some cases that person lives passionately with desires of self fulfillment, eventually reaching their goals in an ever so content way. At other times one remains lost, underappreciated, and ultimately carries with them a perilous, loathing attitude. Willy Loman drives his life to the point of no return where images of his past become his contorted reality. Amanda Wingfield slips on the white dress of her adolescence and is suddenly thrown back in time, living as if she were the young girl she once was at Blue Mountain. Death of the Salesman by Arthur Miller was published in 1949, only four years preceding Tennessee Williams play of The Glass

"After all the highways, and the trains, and the years, you end up worth more dead than alive," (Miller, 98). This quote was spoken by the main character of the Arthur Miller play Death of a Salesman: Willy Loman. This tragedy takes place in Connecticut during the late 1940s. It is the story of a salesman, Willy Loman, and his family’s struggles with the American Dream, betrayal, and abandonment. Willy Loman is a failing salesman recently demoted to commission and unable to pay his bills. He is married to a woman by the name of Linda and has two sons, Biff and Happy. Throughout this play Willy is plagued incessantly with his and his son’s inability to succeed in life. Willy believes that any “well-liked” and “personally attractive

In Tennessee Williams’, “The Glass Menagerie” Amanda was a woman who liked to reminisce about the past in order to escape from reality. Amanda was not wicked but intensely flawed. Her failures were centrally responsible for the adversity and exaggerated style of her character. Certainly, she had the endurance and heroism that she was able to support her children when her husband was gone. In her old life, she was once a Southern Belle with a genteel manner who lived on Blue Mountain. This was a place where Amanda’s version of the good old days back when she was young and popular. Amanda was full of charm in conversation that she managed to have seventeen gentlemen caller in a single day.

In “Death of a Salesman” Willy is left abandoned by his father and brother early in life, leaving him materially and emotionally thirsty for fulfillment. However, there’s a natural gravity that emanates from this childhood environment that doesn’t allow Willy to leave loneliness. From his job as a salesmen where he’s naturally gone for long periods of time, pushing him to abandon his wife and take a mistress, to unachievable goals for his sons and business plans, Willy drives away any chance of achieving his goals. As hard as Willy tries to give his children a connected life, he end up driving his son, Biff, away for years after he finds out about his Willy’s affair. Willy ends his chapter in the story by committing suicide to give his children monetary fulfillment. Ironically, by doing so, Willy permanently abandons his sons and family. As for the “Glass Menagerie” Abandonment has a slightly more natural and sometimes necessary feel. Amanda and Laura are abandoned by the male characters in the play. The father, whom we never see, is described as the “father who left us a long time ago. He was a telephone man who fell in love with long distances.” As members of the family abandon each other and learn to achieve fulfillment, Amanda's own helplessness is represented through her drive to live vicariously through Laura

Linda is the heart of the Loman family and devotes to her time to her family, especially to her marriage with Willy who is difficult to deal with. She loves Willy unconditionally and defends him at all costs. She easily chooses him rather than her sons, when it comes to arguments between then men of the house. Not to mention, she goes along with Willy in his delusional moments and fantasies of grandeur (“Death of a Salesman”). For instance, as Willy explains to Linda how he suddenly could not drive anymore, Linda states, “Maybe it was your steering again… Maybe it’s your glasses. You never went for your new glasses” (Miller, 13). Linda constantly finds excuses for Willy when she knows that he is suicidal and irrational because in order to protect him from the criticism of others. Furthermore, “…selflessly subordinating herself to serve to assist…” ("Death of a Salesman Themes") Willy’s needs. In comparison, the prostitutes are two young women whom Biff and Happy meet at Frank’s Chop House while waiting for their father. Miss Forsythe and Letta provide character and plot development when Happy showers compliments on Miss Forsythe such as, “You ought to be on a magazine cover” (101). At this point, the theme of deception and lies is emphasized. Happy lies to the women so that he lures her into entertaining him and his brother for the evening. As a result, the prostitutes go off with the men to assist to their sexual needs and

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