Essay about Symbolism in "The Glass Menagerie"

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 symbolizes Laura. Tom really cares about his sister Laura. He is motivated by anger. Tom goes out to drink and watch movies just to get

Symbolism is the use of symbols that help represent ideas or qualities. In literature, authors use symbolism to illustrate a specific mood or emotion through the use of objects or characters. Symbolism helps engage the readers to predict and analyze certain meanings presented in the story instead of just reading it. The two short stories, “A and P” written by John Updike and “Young Goodman Brown” written by Nathaniel Hawthorne both showcase and convey symbolism throughout their writing.

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

Laura Wingfield has chosen to hide from reality in the play The Glass Menagerie. She seems to live in a world of her own, and hides from everything and everyone outside of the apartment. Laura is terrified of anything new or different. Her mother sent her to business college, but Laura was so afraid that ‘The first time [they] gave a speed-test, she broke down completely – was sick at the stomach and almost had to be carried into the wash –room.’ (p 243). Laura uses her limp as an excuse to hide from the world. She believes that her slight limp makes her crippled and that she cannot be a part of the real world because of it. Laura’s glass menagerie and the victrola act as things which protect her from the real world in the play. Whenever she is

The Glass Menagerie is a memory play narrated by the main character and son, Tom Wingfield. It takes place in their apartment in St Louis, 1937. The father left them years ago leaving Tom to support the family. He works in a shoe warehouse, a job in which he hates and wants to leave, but can't because he has a duty to support the family. His mother, Amanda is loving and caring but nags too much, annoying Tom. She expresses the desire for her daughter, Laura, who is crippling shy, to have "gentlemen callers". Amanda finds out that Laura dropped out of college because of her shyness and she demanded Tom to choose a gentleman caller for her. He chooses Jim O'Connor, a boy who she liked in high school, but was too shy to talk to him before. Tom invites him for dinner and Jim talks to her and gets her to open up a little. He leads her on by kissing her then after tells her he is engaged. He then leaves and Laura gets sad. Amanda yells at Tom, blaming him for it. Tom reveals to the audience that he abandons his family later that night and has been haunted by Laura ever since.

Broken Glass and Breaking from the Past In Tennessee William’s 1944 play entitled The Glass Menagerie, Williams employed prevailing symbolism to illustrate Laura’s odd habit and ultimate fate. Laura escaped from reality when she was in the presence of her glass animals, and suffered emotionally due to her physical deformity of one leg being shorter than the other. The figurine in her collection that she admired the most was her glass unicorn, which also served as a powerful representation of her oddness and physical defect. Throughout this essay I will further discuss the significance of the glass unicorn, by giving further detail on the connections made between Laura and the glass unicorn.

Laura accepts the fact that she will not have any gentleman callers because she is insecure of herself. Anxiety crushes laura in finding that her high school crush will be attending them for dinner. Laura shares similar characteristics to her glass unicorn because they are both unique and fragile. To start off, in The Glass Menagerie, Laura has to face many standards in her love life.

In The Glass Menagerie, Tennessee Williams uses the phrase or nickname Blue Roses to symbolize Laura’s difference from the social mean, which reveals how her hopes and dream impact her. Blue Roses are different from normal roses, something you would never see in nature. Jim astutely identifies this when he says:

Unfortunately, she has internally magnified this limp until it has affected her entire personality. Laura being so insecure believes that everyone notices nothing but her limp; it becomes for her it represents deformity which makes it near impossible for her to live a normal life. The reader understands that Laura’s lack of ability to overcome her physical flaw causes her to withdraw into her world of fantasy. The title of the play The Glass Menagerie refers to Laura’s prized collection of glass figurines that she delicately polishes and cares for. Laura herself is as unique and lovely as her tiny glass animals; she retreats from her fear of social interactions and the pressures of daily life by drifting into a fantasy world made up of nothing but beautiful inanimate objects.

Constantly on the run, always hiding in fear. There was no escaping him and his dreaded army. December 8, 1937, is when they finally uncovered Charlotte’s family. The last thing Charlotte recalls from that night is her mother being dragged away to her most certain death by the horrid and repulsive crimson swastika. Symbols have been around since the beginning of the existence of mankind from the ancient egyptians to Christ. Symbols is humanity’s way of expressing feelings, stories, and events through objects or pictures. Symbols can also have different meaning for different groups of people. For the Jews, the swastika represents hate and death, but for Hitler and the Nazi army is represented power and victory. In both plays, The Glass Menagerie

In The Glass Menagerie, Tom feels confinement from being stuck in an unpleasing or uninspiring job. Even being cramped into a small apartment with his family and being unable to see the outside world or having adventures of his own. Amanda is similarly confined to the thoughts of her past, and Laura traps herself in a world of glass animals and phonographs.

Life is just one big lesson that you learn off of, it’s a learning experience that make people who they are and also makes them become a better individual. The book “The Glass Menagerie” by Tennessee Williams has an amazing character named Laura, you get to experience Laura shape into a more confident woman than what she starts out as in the beginning of the book. You will be introduced to her Glass Menagerie, which is a collection of slightly exotic animals, also her pride and joy.

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 and his sister Laura is symbolically the actual glass menagerie, the play belongs to neither of them. The play belongs to their mother, Amanda, as substantiated by