Glass Menagerie Essay

Tennessee Williams uses the character Amanda in “The Glass Menagerie” to express the attitude of how proper young men and woman should carry themselves. Amanda’s attitude towards her children sets the stage for their unhappy lives. Her refusal to accept her children for who they are has led to Tom drinking during the evenings and Laura having social anxiety. “The Glass Menagerie” reflects the social norms, roles, and values of the 1940’s when it was written. It depicts woman as helpless and unable to provide for themselves, while men should be focused on furthering their careers and providing for the family. Amanda believes that a young woman of Laura’s age should be attending social events and getting schooling till she can attract a gentlemen caller who will provide for her. Finally, she believes that Tom should be concerned with furthering his career to provide a better life for Laura and herself since he became the man of the house once his father left. Amanda’s attitude displays the social norms during the 1940’s and sets the framework for Laura’s disappointing meeting with a gentleman caller as well as Tom Leaving.

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,

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.

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

The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams is a play that focuses on people’s imperfections and how being overwhelmed can effect a person’s daily life. Tom, Laura, and their father were constantly overwhelmed and acted the way they did because of it. When Williams says:

In the beginning of the play, Laura sees herself as “crippled” and not “expecting any gentlemen callers,” for she is extremely shy and unconfident. Furthermore, she embodies her collection of glass menagerie, for when Tom hurls his coat across the room “It strikes against the shelf of Laura’s glass collection... [and] Laura cries out as if wounded.” Laura’s action in this scene symbolizes her frailness and how she is a piece of the glass menagerie. Being part of the glass collection, Laura is confined to the shelf which the collection is on. This metaphorical representation of Laura depicts how she prefers to stay inside rather than going out into the world and becoming truly independent. Nonetheless, when Jim, the ticket to break out of this confinement, arrives, there is a shift in Laura’s character. As Jim talks to Laura, her “shyness is dissolving in his warmth.” Moreover, the unicorn piece which is symbolic of Laura and was once addressed as “lonesome” loses its horn in an accident. When its horn is gone, Laura states, “The horn was removed to make him feel less - freakish! Now he will feel more at home with the other horses, the ones who don’t have horns.” (Scene 7:6-9) Laura has lost her metaphorical horn and therefore she fits in with the rest of the world. For once in her life, Laura feels normal and her shell is broken as she dances and engages with Jim. However, Laura’s escape is not complete liberation, for even though Laura has liking towards Jim, the so thought gentleman-caller, Jim is engaged and has a fiance. This shows that Laura and her family will not truly escape from their setbacks even if a glance of hope, such as Jim, arrives for a moment in their lives. Therefore, at the end of the play, Laura’s “silliness is gone and she has dignity and tragic beauty” for “glass breaks so easily. No matter how careful you

If I could change the outcome of the story, I would have allowed Laura and Jim O’Connor to get married. I would have made this change because then Amanda’s problem would have been solved, and Laura would have had financial support in the future. Another reason I would have made this change is because Jim O’Connor would have been the ideal man for Laura because he connected with her. He saw past her awkward fondness of a glass animal set. He also got Laura to take pride in herself.

Laura's glass menagerie seems to be the play's central symbol. "Laura's collection of glass animal figurines represents a number of facets of her personality. Like the figurines, Laura is

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.

Tennessee Williams', The Glass Menagerie, is a play that evokes great sympathy and in some cases, empathy for a protagonist who struggles to overcome two opposing forces; his responsibilities and his desires. There are many symbols and non-liner references that contribute to the development of characterization, dramatic tensions and the narrative. This essay will examine in detail, the aspects of the play that contribute to the development of the above mentioned elements.

One of the most significant symbols is Laura's glass unicorn, which has an obvious and direct relation to Laura. Being her favorite animal in her menagerie, they share many similar characteristics. The glass unicorn is most obviously a symbol of Laura; delicate, different, and an abnormality to the modern world. During Laura and Jim's brief romantic encounter, Laura is gaining more confidence about herself. When they started dancing together, Jim accidently knocked the glass unicorn over. This begins to indicate the way that Laura was being drawn into the world. At this stage, it looks as if Jim is interested in Laura, and we know that of all of her menagerie, it is the unicorn that Laura most identifies with. When the horn breaks and it is, in Laura's words, “just like all the other horses” (Williams 1221), it symbolizes the potential of Jim to lead Laura into the world where she can be just like everyone else. However, when it is clear that Jim is engaged and will not marry Laura, the gift of the unicorn as a “souvenir” to Jim symbolizes Laura's final retreat from the world without hope of return.

The Glass Menagerie, the characters are all facing some sort of problems. One of the main character in the play is Laura Wingfield. The rest of her family consist of Amanda Wingfield , her mother and her brother Tom Wingfield. Laura lives in a fictional world with her glass figurines. Laura is terribly shy, and has no gentlemen callers. The important thing in the play The Glass Menagerie is the glass figurines. Laura struggles to be social in society . The play takes place during the Great Depression where families struggle to survive.

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

Set in St. Louis Missouri prior to World War II, Tennessee Williams reflects back on his deeply tragic and dysfunctional familial experiences in, “The Glass Menagerie”. Williams brilliantly incorporates real aspects of society to reveal how they contributed to the nonreal aspects and the conflicts which affected his family. The real aspects of the play which had a significant impact on the lower middle-class families such as the Wingfields included, the economic hardships surrounding the Great Depression, the fall of the American south, society’s intolerance towards homosexuality, and many threats abroad. Although Williams play was merely a series of hazy memories, the nonreal aspects combined with the major societal conflicts contribute