Essay on Glass Menagerie

In The Glass Menagerie, by Tennessee Williams, and A Doll House, by Henrik Ibsen, each protagonist faces the difficulty of society’s rule. Tom, being the “man of the house”, provides for his family and is depended upon. Were as Nora is co-dependant of her puppet master of husband Torvald. Despite their differences, Tom and Nora parallel the flaws in their common daily lives.

The Glass Menagerie and A Raisin in the sun are similar in ways of how they live and differences in generation. The Glass Menagerie is a non-working class family, the father worked to support the family. In A Raisin in the Sun almost everyone worked to keep up with the household. Amanda is the character who revolves around

Williams wrote about his life. The Glass Menagerie is a very autobiographical play. A Streetcar Named Desire, although meant to a play that anyone can relate to, also contained characters and situations from his life. In both plays, the characters are drawn from his life. The other relationship

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,

The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams and Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller are two of the twentieth century’s best-known plays. The differences and similarities between both of the plays are hidden in their historical and social contexts. The characters of The Glass Menagerie and the Death of a Salesman are trapped by the constraints of their everyday lives, unable to communicate with their loved ones and being fearful for their future. There are a lot of comparisons that exist, especially between the settings, symbolism and characterization drawn between the two plays. The contrast comes form the ways that the characters choose to deal or not with the harsh circumstances of life.

Sometimes in literature, two different forms of writing tell two different stories with lots of similarities through characters. The book The Catcher and The Rye by J.D Salinger and the movie The Dead Poets Society directed by Peter Weir is a perfect example of two different literary works that share similarities through characters. The Dead Poet Society follows half a school year of 5 main characters at Welton Academy each with a different connection to Holden Caulfield the main character from The Catcher in the Rye. These 6 main characters are Neil Perry, the smart one, Richard Cameron, the sycophant, Todd Anderson, who is exceeding shy, Knox Overstreet, the romantic, and Charlie Dalton,

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.

   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.

While the stories are somewhat similar, the actual characters and scenery are very different. On one hand, you have an older, hard working man and his small rural family that are the main focus of the actual original story. On the other hand, you have a smug, crafty women that pairs up with a young lawyer and his mother and younger sister in a bay town in America. While we still see the story take on the same basis and almost the same plot ending, you can't help but notice how different the styles are between the two.

Imagine being in a completely different situation from another person in which you both have different actions and motivations, but similar consequences. Two female characters from different works of literature are in that exact situation. Nora Helmer from Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House and Psyche from Edith Hamilton's Mythology depict different actions with similar consequences and different motivations. Because of her actions, Nora Helmer was forced to live a lie. In the story, Nora got a loan from Krogstad (a bank teller) years prior.

There are many unsuspecting events in The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams. There is a young lady who has a complex personality and life, and that would be Laura Wingfield. Laura’s society always persuades her and her actions. Her actions become her reality and they affect it. Laura gratifies herself with her own glass menagerie.

Nora, in A Doll’s House, and Tom, in The Glass Menagerie, are similar protagonists yet have very different characteristics. Both of them left their family that destroyed the family in some way in turn acting very selfishly, yet Tom has done worse in his circumstances because Amanda and Laura were dependant on him.

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.

Both writers clearly underline their characters as being deeply impacted by the egregious event of The Great Depression that occurred post war. In their retrospective texts, they could be seen to be opposing the great social, political, and to an extent, cultural changes during 20s America which was mainly achieved through industrialization and rapid advancements of inventions such as the first ever US radio station. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby” is a text reflective of the period in which it was written, ‘The Roaring Twenties’. It was written in America during the mid 1920s, a time of moral decadence and feelings of complacency following the conclusion of the Great War. On the surface, the text seems to be about love, wealth and power, yet this first impression does not do justice to the text’s main complexities and hidden depths. The text also explores corruption, idealism, faith, and the illusions of death through the use of a variety of images and symbols. The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams however is perhaps Williams’ most successful play, which essentially brought him from obscurity to fame. Importantly, it is unique in its insistence of unreality as Williams writes in his initial stage directions ‘the scene is memory and is therefore non-realistic.’

    The Glass Menagerie, by Tennessee Williams, contains multiple themes.  While there are many themes, the theme that holds the piece together is illusion versus reality.