The Glass Menagerie Analysis

The play The Glass Menagerie, written by Tennessee Williams, is told as a flashback from the point of view of the character Tom Wingfield. He narrates the play as well. It is set in St. Louis in the year 1937. Tom works to support his mother, Amanda, as well as his sister Laura. Laura is extremely shy, and her mother is not happy with her because she does not attract any “gentlemen callers.” Laura gets enrolled in a business school by her mother, in hopes that she will go into a business career and earn money for herself and her family. A few weeks after, Laura drops out of business school due to her shyness, and wanders the streets of St. Louis during the day. When she is caught by her mother after she visits the business school, Laura tells her “I’ve just been going walking” (Williams 1166). It is then decided that the only hope left in Laura is in marriage. Laura then begins to sell magazine subscriptions in hopes that this job will not only earn her money, but attract a gentleman caller as well. Tom, who works in a shoe warehouse, is a slight alcoholic. He tries to get away from the job that he doesn’t like by drinking, watching movies, and reading literature. Tom often argues with his mother Amanda, and in one of these frequent arguments, Tom accidently breaks a few of Laura’s glass animals. These glass animals are her most prized possessions, so Laura is upset but forgiving.

“The Glass Menagerie” is an autobiographical play, written by Tennessee William in 1945. Each character is a prototype of a real person, who played a significant role in the author’s life. It is a memory play, which based on author’s own life story and a point of view at the family problems and ways to solve them. The main problem in the play is the conflict between parents and children, which leads to adverse consequences for all members of the family.

   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

In the study of Tennessee Willliams' plays: "Suddenly Last Summer" and "The Glass Menagerie", we can find a great deal of autobiographical connections. "The Glass Menagerie" is particularly considered the author's most biographical work. It is described by the playwright as "a memory play"; indeed, it is a memory of the author's own youth, an expression of his own life and experiences. Similarly, "Suddenly Last Summer" includes many of Tennesse Williams' real life details.

In both plays it is seen that the characters experience difficulty with recognizing what is a fantasy and what is reality. Amanda and Willy both deny their childrens’ underachievement and blames and accept that the destiny of their kids exists in their grasp. Consequently, they envision their kids as being something they are not, trying to shroud their childrens’ disappointments. Such illusions permit Amanda and Willy to feel fruitful in framing Laura and Biff's lives. Amanda denies Laura as a challenged person and adjusts any individual who trusts her to be along these lines, all throughout the play. Willy impacted Biff's conviction that he had been a sales representative for Bill Oliver. Biff starts to scrutinize this after the meeting that

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

A Glass Menagerie is a collection of small, wild animals which can be put out for display for public view. Tennessee Williams's play “The Glass Menagerie”, is about a family with personalities so different that they do not get along. The family could be considered wild animals all in their own way. In the story, Laura’s menagerie breaks multiple times at the slightest touch. The title of the play “The Glass Menagerie is represented by the entire family because, like the menagerie, each family member displays fragile characteristics.

In the play The Glass Menagerie, written by Tennessee Williams, a realism style drama is still being performed 50 years after its debut in New York. The plotline and title both center on Laura Wingfield’s glass menagerie collection. William’s used glass as a tool to represent fragility, both of individuals and of the Wingfield family. The evidence regarding importance of the glass menagerie is found in the fact that Tennessee Williams names the play after it. Through the title, individual characterization, and family dynamic, Williams intertwines the theme of fragility to tell the tale of the Wingfield family equating them to glass, which is both beautiful and fragile like all people.

The Glass Menagerie is a drama in which Tom, the narrator, shares his memories around the time World War II broke out. The memories Tom shares throughout the course of the drama resemble a life that is very close to the lifestyle Williams had before he became famous for his plays. To begin, the mood is set

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

¨Life is all memory, except for the one present moment that goes by you so quickly you hardly catch it going.¨ This quote by the author of The Glass Menagerie, Tennessee Williams, describes both The Glass Menagerie, a memory play, and the life of Tennessee Williams himself, for whom memories played a large role in his life. Within the play, many parallels can be drawn between the life of Williams and the life of Tom, the main character, such as a disdain for factory work. In addition, several characters in The Glass Menagerie have a difficult time fitting into the roles that their family and their society places upon them. This same struggle existed for Tennessee Williams his whole life, as he was never able to adapt to the stereotypical role his father had envisioned for him. Furthermore, in writing The Glass Menagerie as a memory play, Tennessee Williams reflects his own fond memories of growing up in rural Mississippi, which, despite the flaws of that portion of his life, is still a portion of his life that he wishes to be able to relive. Overall, The Glass Menagerie is reflective of the life of Tennessee Williams in numerous ways, and personal qualities of Williams are exemplified in the characters and the plot of the play.

Tennessee Williams, born Thomas Lanier Williams, wrote The Glass Menagerie, a play which premiered in Chicago in 1944. This award winning play, autobiographical in nature, represented a time in which Williams felt the obligation of his responsibilities in regards to the care of his family. Robert DiYanni, Adjunct Professor of Humanities at New York University, rated it as, “One of his best-loved plays...a portrayal of loneliness among characters who confuse fantasy and reality” (DiYanni 1156). Alternatively, The Glass Menagerie, a play set in the era of the Great Depression was written from the narrator’s memory, was meant to teach us the how our relationships with one another can alter our futures, for better or worse. Everything about this particular play was a direct and clear symbolization of Williams ' life growing up. Williams uses characterization to depict several people from his real life in this play; his sister, himself, his overbearing mother, absent father, and a childhood best friend. Williams does a splendid job transforming his personal life into a working piece of art. In Tennessee Williams ' play, The Glass Menagerie, his character, Laura, is the central to the structure and focus of the story due to her individual ties to all of the supporting characters throughout the seven scene play.

The Glass Menagerie is one of Tennessee Williams most famous play. A sort of autobiographical play that closely resembles Williams’s life before stardom.

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