Glass Menagerie Symbolism

Tom constantly calls Laura crippled and peculiar throughout the play, constantly making her feel worse about herself. Instead of continuing to treat her as a fragile human being, Tom should have been more positive when he referred to Laura and tried to help her build the confidence in herself that she desperately needed to face reality. Amanda doesn’t help Laura with her confidence and ends up finally pushing Laura to do something with her life after she is too far gone. Jim unintentionally gives Laura more reason to see herself as someone who doesn’t belong in reality by simply calling her “blue roses,” something that does not exist naturally in the real world. With Tom, Amanda, and Jim seeming to justify Laura’s insecurities it become more and more difficult for Laura to have any confidence in herself, let alone to face reality. To Laura, reality is a place she feels that she can never truly

   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.

One of the big motivations shown through the characters in The Glass Menagerie is the yearning of escape from the real world. One example shown through Laura’s character is she finds a way to escape reality through her glass menagerie and the old records she plays that once belonged to their father. The mother, Amanda, tries to escape her current life as a deserted wife who must constantly scramble for money by retelling stories of when she was young. Her favorite story to retell regards one day when she received the attentions of seventeen gentleman callers. For her, those gentleman callers represent what her life was and what it could have been if she had not married her husband, “the telephone man who fell in love with long

I would have stopped, but I was pursued by something.... I pass the lighted window of a shop where perfume is sold. The window is filled with pieces of colored glass, tiny transparent bottles in delicate colors, like bits of a shattered rainbow. Then all at once my sister touches my shoulder. I turn around and look into her eyes. Oh, Laura, Laura, I tried to leave you behind me, but I am more faithful than I intended to be!" (Haley) Amanda uses the fire escape as another venue to protect her children. She says, "If anyone breaks a leg on those fire escape steps, the land lord ought to be sued for every cent he possesses." The fire escape plays into Williams's impossibility of true escape.

“The Glass Menagerie” by Tennessee Williams, was written in the early forties but could be misconstrued as a present-day play, because of the family dynamic that has changed since the forties but has not been completed replaced. In this play, we are introduced to Tom Wingfield who is the breadwinner for the family, which consists of his mom and sister. Amanda Wingfield who is an overbearing mother that knows no boundaries, and Laura Wingfield who is the sweet, and embarrassingly shy daughter of Amanda. Their family dynamic is like most of ours. The mother loves her kids dearly but struggles with letting go of her old identity, the daughter who allows her disability to determine her happiness and the brother who is obligated to work but would rather drink and party his money away. I’m sure many of us can relate to this family in some form. My favorite character in “The Glass Menagerie” is Laura. I love Laura because I can relate to her in more than one way. I was a shy individual most of my life, but once people got to know me they realized I was no different from them. In the following paragraphs, I will share Laura’s character with you, the similarities between Laura and the glass unicorn and I’ll tell you how the glass unicorn represents Laura.

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

The Glass Menagerie is arguably the most symbolic and deep plays ever written. The Glass Menagerie isn’t just a story of Laura’s disability, it has a deeper meaning behind it, and it can be easily overlooked by mediocre minds. Although the story revolves around the Wingfield family, Tennessee Williams throws in symbolism that corresponds with his childhood. In a way, he found closure for the loss of his sister Rose through writing The Glass Menagerie. One of the symbols is the play that holds a different meaning for each of the characters is the fire escape. As the play evolves the fire escape brings out Laura’s, Tom’s, and Amanda’s true desires.

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

Laura Wingfield, from the classic play The Glass Menagerie, by Tennessee Williams, plays a pivotal and probably the most significant role in the story. She plays a physically and emotionally crippled young woman who unlike the rest of her immediate family, always seems to have a sense of compassion. Laura is always trying to keep peace in the Wingfield apartment, giving us a small sense of her character. The sheer fact that Laura has the least amount of lines in the play only adds to her selflessness. Many aspects of the play are symbols of Laura’s characteristics and tendencies, making Laura the most symbolic figure in the play.

In the play, The Glass Menagerie, by Tennessee Williams, the protagonist, Tom, runs away from home in an attempt to find truth and meaning in his life. He leaves behind his mother Amanda and sister Laura who is crippled. As Tom narrates the play by recalling his memories he talks about the night when Laura has her first gentleman caller over, Jim O’Connor. Over the course of the evening Jim breaks Laura's glass unicorn and shines a light through it, thereby breaking Laura free from her own caged life. Although Tom does not call home to check up on Laura and his mother, it is inferred from the narration of his story that Jim, in fact, saves Laura from a lifetime of continuous falsity. Jim O’Connor acts as a savior of Laura’s by breaking her

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.

     Laura is shown in the play as a shy and sensitive person. Laura is like this because she possesses a limp. She magnifies this limp to an extent where it affects her whole personality. Her oversensitive nature makes her think that people notice the limp and thus, she cannot live normally. Her inability to overcome the limp causes her to remove herself from the real world and live in a world of illusions. An imaginary world of glass animals provides Laura’s refuge from reality. But, her illusion is dangerous for her glass menagerie serves as a substitute for life rather than an escape. Her favorite animal in the menagerie is the unicorn, which she calls “freakish.” In one scene, she and Jim are looking at the unicorn. The scene shows freakish breaking and this presents Amanda with a revelation.

Whenever the outside world threatens Laura, she seeks solace and retreats to her glass animal world and old phonograph records. Amanda, her mother hints at the alternative of matrimony for fiasco in business careers and Laura "utters a startled, doubtful laugh. She reaches quickly for a piece of glass." (Williams SCENE 2. STAGE DIRECCIONS). The glass menagerie becomes her tactile consolation. The little glass ornaments represent Laura’s self and characterize her fragility and delicate beauty. In particular, the glass unicorn greatly symbolizes her. As the unicorn is different from all the other glass horses, it adds a unique quality and virtual "freakishness" to her very characteristics (Kapcsos).

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

Laura fears Lyons because she has discovered that he is an Impostor who had frequently lied to her, promising her a future family with three children. But as a result of Lyons breaking his promise Laura is very poor. Which is why she had to take up a job at an office. But even with the job she still needs financial support from her father. The financial support is the only reason she puts up