Dreams of Escape in The Glass Menagerie Essay example

Tom was bequeathed the position of head of the house after his father, a former telephone man, “fell in love with long distances.” Nonetheless, Tom still craves “long distance.” He spends his daily life stuck in a shoe warehouse only to “[retire] to a cabinet of the washroom to work on poems.” Tom realizes that his family

Both beneatha and Laura have suitors. Mama would like for her family to know and learn values and heritage not money, even though it is sometimes needed. In Amanda’s case she is more concerned of her daughter Laura. Amanda also wants Laura to see what she’s experienced by her husband tom walking out and she needs a man that would not do what her fathers done.

The text from A Streetcar Named Desire and The Glass Menagerie, both written by the renowned author Tennessee Williams, deal with the topics of life's pressures, and the desire to succeed in everything we do. Oftentimes, people place unrealistic expectations upon us and set the bar higher than we can achieve, or even want to reach. People end up developing mechanisms to deal with these stresses and tensions that have been created (Billington 2016). We find other unhealthy habits and vices to supplant the reality we are trying to escape, that hopefully will take away this pain and suffering we are experiencing. In both of these plays, the characters are not able to live in their present realities. Two of the main characters are closely listate.

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,

Amanda is obsessed with her past, and uses it to escape reality, as she constantly reminds Tom and Laura of the time she received seventeen gentlemen callers. The reader cannot even be sure that this actually happened. However, it is clear despite its possible falseness, Amanda has come to believe it. She refuses to acknowledge that her daughter is crippled and refers to her handicap as "a little defect - hardly noticeable" (Williams 1648). Only for brief moments does she ever admit that her daughter is "crippled" and then resorts back to denial. Amanda doesn't perceive anything realistically. She believes that this gentleman caller, Jim is going to be the man to rescue Laura and she hasn't even met him yet. When Jim arrives, Amanda is dressed in a "girlish frock" she wore on the day that she met their father and she regresses to the childish, giddy days of entertaining gentleman callers. Amanda uses her past as a means to escape the reality she does not want to face.

   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 complexity of Amanda's character directly affects her action and dialogue with her children. In her role as mother she exhibits an overwhelming desire to see her children succeed in life. In trying to push them toward her ideal of success, she at times unwittingly hurts them even though she means well. Her actions often hide her intense love for her children, but it is an important driving force in her motivations. She loves them too well--at times to a point of smothering them (perhaps the reason for the departure of her husband)--which results in her attempt to push them towards all the good things she has known and remembered and away from anything that does not suit her ideal.

Throughout both of these works one thing is very clear that both of these women live in the past. Amanda goes on about how she was a young Southern Belle with all these gentleman callers she did not even know what to do with.

She has never worked a day in her life because she had numerous gentlemen calls to rely on. These gentlemen callers basically robbed her of any thoughts of getting a dependable job. Furthermore, I found it sad that she selected the wrong man to be her husband. Additionally, I agree that Tom and Laura are both wrong and right when judging their mother. Tom may be the only person bringing in money for the family, but he should listen to his mother to responsibly keep the family afloat. Laura sees her mother in a more gentle and understanding manner, however she is often to ignorant to see Amanda’s

The Glass Menagerie In The Glass Menagerie, Tennessee Williams places his characters in difficult situations throughout the play. Laura Wingfield is a very shy person with an illness that has left her crippled. This illness makes Laura fearful and it causes her to think less of herself. Amanda Wingfield (laura's mother) fancies laura to marry a man that will care for her, since she is young and dependent.

Amanda daily routine is selling subscriptions to a magazine and nagging her children always finding fault. After Tom’s father left he took a job at the factory which he hates but it pays the bills for the family and Amanda places on the responsibility on him to support the household until Laura finds a husband to take over. Amanda makes Tom and Laura feel bad for anything they do that does not meet her standard therefore treating them as kids almost refusing to allow them to have a life. When Laura finally does get a gentleman caller it almost seemed Amanda took over and made the dinner about her instead of Laura. She put on a nice dress and sat with Jim asking what seemed to be a million questions.

Answer: Tom is torn between his responsibility to his mother and sister and his dreams. He copes

The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams had ordinary people in an ordinary life that closely resembled the influences of Williams’ personal life while having reoccurring themes and motifs throughout the story. The play has been done by many with some variations in the scripts and setting while still clinging to the basic ideas of the original play.

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

Amanda truly wants to live her life though her children life at any cost. Just like any parent Amanda wants to have her children succeed in life. She truly wants her children to go on and enjoy their life and I believe that she feels disappointed because she can’t give them what they need to survive the rest of their life’s because she isn’t financially stable enough for this. Since she can’t give them what they need, she pushes them to