How Does Tennessee Williams Use Deception In The Glass Menagerie

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.

   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 Glass Menagerie is very interesting because William 's play relates to alot of people and their situations, people can learn alot from it alot whether they connect to Amanda and her past or to Laura and her lack of confidence and being in a world of her own or to Tom and his internal conflict about abandoning his family or staying with them. Laura 's life is all about her glass menageries what happens when her glass unicorn breaks? What happens when a gentleman caller comes over? In the Glass Menagerie, Tennessee Williams uses the symbols Leg Brace, Blue Roses, and The Glass Unicorn to represent Laura 's fragile character that is stopping her from accomplishing life goals.

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.

The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams is a play with references to his own life concerning his sister and mother. During the play there are many reoccurring symbols, each symbol is crucial to the play in order to understand the idea of escape. Through the narrator's perspective, we are able to witness the mainstream family during a war depression era. We see a single mother, unable to accept change and retaining to the past; a sister, who has trouble dealing with reality and lives in a fictional world where she has become fragile and unable to function outside her house within society; and the narrator himself a young hardworking male figure within his house, whom the family depends upon. Tennessee Williams is able to create an eventful

Tom escapes his reality by going to the movies, drinking, and writing poetry. Tom says, “I go to the movies because – I like adventure… something I don’t have much of at work” (Williams 33). He goes to the movies during the night because the films he watches have adventures in them. He imagines himself in the movies and that is how he deals with the boredom he has at home during the day. Tom is very annoyed by the nagging of his mother, Amanda. He drinks to cope with the anger he receives when he talks to his mother. Tom is very bored of his life; he is tired of working in a shoe factory. When he is at the factory, he writes poetry to mentally and physically escape his job. Tom uses these escapism methods to make himself stay with his family. Although he did end up leaving his sister and mother, if it were not for these methods, he would have left long ago. Tom realizes that he cannot have adventures by simply watching movies. If he wants a real escape then he must leave his family. He physically leaves his family to join the merchant marines, but mentally, he is still attached to Laura and Amanda. That is why the play is Tom’s memory; he cannot forget the feelings he

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.

Tom had a double role in the play as both the narrator and a main character that lived through a recollection of what life was like living with his mother and sister before he abandoned them to seek adventure. Tom’s behavior in the play could lead to question if his memory is truly accurate. SparkNotes comments, “…But at the same time, he demonstrates real and sometimes juvenile emotions as he takes part in the play’s action. This duality can frustrate our understanding of Tom, as it is hard to decide whether he is a character whose assessments should be trusted or one who allows his emotions to affect his judgment” (SparkNotes.com). Through his behavior a person is reminded that memory can be flawed by emotions or time elapsing, this would need to be taken into account when analysis of such a character is done. Tom is full of contradictions as he reads literature, writes poetry, and dreams of an escape; however he also felt bound by duty to his sister and mother. Another contradiction was that while he professed to care about his sister as seen in his ending comments in the play, “…I tried to leave you behind me, but I am more faithful than I intended to be!...” (Williams), Tom never went back to reconnect with his sister. This could be because of the great shame he felt for abandoning his sister or because of another reason. He stated that he had been in several cities over the years but never speaks of going back to St. Louis, making it unclear if he

Each Wingfield family member attempts to find escape in different ways. For Tom, his escape is the movie theater or the fire escape just outside his family’s apartment building. He tells a story to his sister one day after going to the movies. He tells Laura about a magician in the movie that escapes from a coffin. A reader would think that Tom associates his life with that coffin, and longs to break free from it. For Tom and Laura’s mother Amanda, it’s retreating back to the time before she had a family, when she had gentleman callers arriving at her door every day and would then escape into a whimsical night. She is so consumed with these thoughts that she told Laura’s gentleman caller Jim all about them. Telling him about her callers could be viewed as tacky, and insinuates that she put her own importance above Laura’s and her visit by her own gentleman caller.

The Glass Menagerie, a short play by Tennessee Williams delves into the inner workings of a multifarious family. The Wingfield family struggles together with the past, the yet to come and how to endure each other’s company. Williams’ production utilizes an extensive range of symbolization throughout the short story in order to parallel the struggles and triumphs each character manifests. From the iconic Mr. Wingfield picture frame, to the remedying getaway of the fire escape, Tennessee exposes the audience to a selection of symbols. Ultimately, if one symbol was to represent the story from start to end, the one of a kind transcendent glass unicorn encompasses the story best. The unordinary glass horned horse symbolizes illusion versus reality, and coupled with the story’s four prominent characters, crafts a curtain-raiser with powerful implications.

When Laura starts to talk to Jim, she gets more confidence in herself and realizes that she is not that different from everyone else in the world. The horn symbolizes a difference, an obstacle to be overcome and admired." (Ross) Like Laura has to overcome her shyness and limp to become like everyone else, the unicorn loses its difference.

   In Tennessee Williams' play, The Glass Menagerie, each character attempts to escape the real world by creating their own “reality”. Laura hides from the world by magnifying her illness. Tom convinces himself that his needs supersede the needs of his family. Amanda focuses almost exclusively on the past - when she saw herself as a desirable southern belle. Even Jim focus his hopes on recapturing his good old high school days. Each character transposes their difficult situations into shadows of the truth.

A person’s path to enlightenment and understanding can be tumultuous and challenging. In the play, The Glass Menagerie, by Tennessee Williams, each character has difficulty accepting reality. This makes them withdraw into their own little world of illusion to find a sense comfort and peace. In The Glass Menagerie, the author presents the glass figurines as a metaphor for the Wingfield family along with other families during the Great Depression.

The Glass Menagerie is a play written by Tennessee Williams in the mid 1930’s about a poor family that seeks for an escape from their apathetic lives. The main characters are Amanda, the mother, and her children Tom and Laura. After being abandoned by their father, Tom was forced to work in a factory to provide for the family. Throughout the duration of the play, Amanda schemes to find Laura a gentleman caller, which ends in failure when they realize the man they find is already engaged. This piece is classified as a memory play due to its structure based upon flashbacks from Tom’s past experiences. Tennessee Williams, the author of the piece, wrote the play in

Within the play The Glass Menagerie, Amanda, Laura, and Tom Wingfield all of have their own dreams that are continuously destroyed by the harshness of reality. Amanda, stuck in the ease of her youth, tries to relive her life through her daughter Laura. Being crippled both physically and mentally, Laura struggles to escape the bubble she has created around herself that her mother Amanda so strongly tries to force her out of. Tom whom, although reads poetry and dreams of escape, lets his emotions take control of him. Each of the characters live in their own fantasy world in which they try to escape their realities. Although their means to escape differ, they all equally disconnect themselves from the world, struggling to live a healthy life free of disappointment. Each of the characters’ struggles and coping mechanisms affect, not only themselves, but the struggles of each other.