Symbolism In The Glass Menagerie By Tennessee Williams

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,

Tennessee Williams is regarded as a pioneering playwright of American theatre. Through his plays, Williams addresses important issues that no other writers of his time were willing to discuss, including addiction, substance abuse, and mental illness. Recurring themes in William’s works include the dysfunctional family, obsessive and absent mothers and fathers, and emotionally damaged women. These characters were inspired by his experiences with his own family. These characters appear repeatedly in his works with their own recurring themes. Through The Glass Menagerie and A Streetcar Named Desire, Tennessee Williams presents the similar thematic elements of illusion, escape, and fragility between the two plays, proving that although similar, the themes within these plays are not simply recycled, as the differences in their respective texts highlight the differences of the human condition.

Amanda and Tom share a familial relationship of mother and son. Williams depicts Amanda at first interpretation as overbearing, hypercritical and controlling. However, on further assessment, the audience is able to acknowledge a more admirable facet to her character: her evident persistence in trying to love her children. Through her attempts in perpetuating her youth and past glory, she distorts reality to fit her

   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.

In the play, The Glass Menagerie, by Tennessee Williams, Williams uses many symbols which represent many different things.?Many of the symbols used in the play try to symbolize some form of escape or difference between reality and illusion.?The first symbol, presented in the first scene, is the fire escape.?This represents the "bridge" between the illusory world of the Wingfields and the world of reality.?This "bridge" seems to be a one way excursion.?But the direction varies for each character.?For Tom, the fire escape is the way out of the world of Amanda and Laura and an entrance into a world of new dimensions.?For Laura, the fire escape is a way into her own world. A way to escape from reality.?Amanda perceives the fire escape as a way

The masterful use of symbolism is delightfully ubiquitous in Tennessee Williams’ “The Glass Menagerie.” He uses a collection of dim, dark and shadowy symbols that constantly remind the audience of the lost opportunity each of these three characters continually experience. This symbolism is not only use to enlighten the audience to their neglected opportunities to shine, but it is also repeatedly utilized to reinforce the ways in which the characters try in vain to cross over turbulent waters into a world of light and clarity. It is thematically a wrenching story of life gone by, and the barren attempts to realize another reality that is made more poignant by symbolic language, objects, setting, lighting and music. The characters are

In the play, Tom is not happy working in the warehouse of the shoe factory doing a job he absolutely hates. Williams also hates his job as a shoe factory worker in his fathers factory. Both Tom and Williams spent a lot of their time writing poetry to escape the depressing reality of their lives. Tom, the character, feels guilty about wanting to leave his sister and mother to pursue his dreams, Williams endured a lifetime of sadness and guilt over his sister's mental state and his choice to leave her. (Parallels of

Williams follows in Shakespeare’s footsteps when using the idea of wishing upon the moon. Williams intentionally relates “The Glass Menagerie” to “Romeo and Juliet” by making his play a tragicomedy, using the rose metaphor and the concept of wishing on the moon. “The Glass Menagerie” is in part an autobiographical work, using Williams’s

Tennessee Williams’ play, “The Glass Menagerie,” is a play about the Wingfield family. It describes the longing of the mother, Amanda, to find Laura, her daughter, a gentleman caller and the struggles of the Tom, the son. “The Glass Menagerie,” uses symbolism to describe aspects of the characters in the play and to signify themes throughout the play. “The Glass Menagerie” begins with a narration from Tom. In the narration, Tom mentions a gentleman caller and says, “He is the most realistic character in the play, being an emissary from a world that we were somehow set apart from.”

Symbolism plays an integral part in Williams’s play, The Glass Menagerie. Examples of the use of symbolism include the fire escape, as an escape from the family, the phonograph, as an escape from reality, the unicorn, as a symbol for Laura's uniqueness and the father’s photograph, representing something different to each character. Through regonition of these symbols, a greater understanding of the play’s theme is achieved.

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

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

Symbolism is a major aspect in Tennessee William's famous play, "The Glass Menagerie." On the surface, the short slice of life story seems to be simple. However, if the reader digs deeper they will find that there are several symbols that give the play a deeper meaning. Each character defines each symbol in a different way. There are some very noticeable symbols that can be analyzed when studying "The Glass Menagerie." The first is the actual glass menagerie that represents the fragility of the Wingfield's dreamlike existence. The second is the fire escape, which reflects each character's tendency to escape from reality in their own ways. The third is the yellow dress, which represents youth and the past.

    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.

    Aside from the internal and external conflicts which impact Amanda, Williams's strongly expresses his indictment through his very own character, Tom. Tom is merely a victim of both societal conflicts and his own guilt caused by his decision to seek fulfillment within his own life, rather than surrender to the unsatisfying life which his mother had created for him. One of the greatest factors in Tom’s lifestyle that creates his desire to escape this sense of imprisonment, is society's overall attitude toward homosexuality, specifically within his mother. Amanda stated, “I took that horrible novel back to the library- yes! That hideous book by that insane Mr. Lawrence. I cannot control the output of diseased minds or people who cater to them- but I won’t let such filth brought into my house” (Williams 759). Because 1930’s society does not allow homosexuality to be expressed openly, literature is the closest way which allows him to express himself. The simple fact that his novels are the one way which allows him to gain any sense of satisfaction is taken away by his