The Glass Menagerie By Tennessee Williams

Set in the 1930’s, in a time where hope was scarce and the depression was dominant, Tennessee William’s play, The Glass Menagerie, tells the tale of a disappointed family whose life is dull and bland. However, Tennessee Williams gives his play substance through the use of alternative techniques, and as a result the audience and reader’s of the text are left captivated and intrigued. Williams’s play is a memory play, based on his life and family, and this in effect gives it its realistic feel. In scene one of the play Williams writes, ‘The scene is memory and it is therefore non-realistic. Memory takes a lot of poetic licence. It omits some details: others are exaggerated, according to the emotional value of the articles it touches, for

In The Glass Menagerie, Tennessee Williams presents us with four characters whose lives seem to consist in avoiding reality more than facing it. Amanda lives her life through her children and clings to her lost youthfulness. Tom retreats into movie theaters and into his dream of joining the merchant seamen and some day becoming a published poet. Laura resorts to her Victrola and collection of glass ornaments to help sustain her world of fantasy. Finally, Jim is only able to find some relief in his glorified old memories. This essay will examine how Amanda, Tom, Laura and Jim attempt to escape from the real world through their dreams.

TThis essay will discuss the metaphors associated with the characters in The Glass Menagerie and how each of these metaphors represents a fragment of the American Dream. She is like a piece of her glass collection, too fragile to be brought into the real world without being devastated. Because of her sensibility, she has avoided dealing with people for so long that when she finally tries to socialise with Jim, she fails to see that she is being manipulated. Amanda is a faded Southern belle who is trying to relive her past by using her daughter to mirror her former self. She represents nostalgia for the Old South in the play. Tom is a struggling poet who dreams of real adventures but has to provide support for his family. Jim, despite

In the Glass Menagerie by Tennessee William’s, Tom narrates the story through his memories. Tom resided in a small tenement with his older, slightly crippled sister, Laura and his overbearing, audacious mother, Amanda. Tom is a young man in his mid-twenties who has had to assume the role as provider for the household. His and Laura’s father left them and their mother years ago. Their father was an alcoholic with adulterous tendencies. That left Tom no choice, but to be the man of the house. His mother though filled with good intentions, created strife among the family. Amanda nagged and harped on her children about everything, to no bitter end. Amanda entwined every aspect of her children’s life into her own, she relied on them for

Tennessee Williams', The Glass Menagerie, is a play that evokes great sympathy and in some cases, empathy for a protagonist who struggles to overcome two opposing forces; his responsibilities and his desires. There are many symbols and non-liner references that contribute to the development of characterization, dramatic tensions and the narrative. This essay will examine in detail, the aspects of the play that contribute to the development of the above mentioned elements.

It is easy to read through “The Glass Menagerie” by Tennessee Williams and quickly dismiss it has a play of a nagging mother, disheartened son, and socially incapable, whimsical sister. The three seem completely caught up in their own narrow mindedness they are blind to the reality around them. While these may all be true, the characters exhibit far more complications than the surface analysis proves. In Tennessee Williams play, the characters are full of complexities and contradictions. One of the protagonists, Tom Wingfield, wars with himself for a life unlike the one he has now. Eventually, he sets forth to plot a way to abandon his family and obligations to retrieve his own ambitions. In doing this, Tom repeats history and his mother

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.

The Glass Menagerie is a five-character memory play written by Tennessee Williams in 1945. The play is introduced to the audience by Tom, the narrator and protagonist, as a memory play based on his recollection of his mother Amanda, his sister Laura, and his friend Jim O’Connor as a gentleman caller. There is a fifth character in the play, Tom’s father who doesn’t appear except in the photograph frame. Among them one of the most interesting characters in the play is Laura Winfield who is lovely and dreamy but fragile girl. In this play, Williams represents Laura as physically and emotionally crippled and different from other girls. He tries to give us the picture of the psychological problems

“The Glass Menagerie” is a riveting play by Tennessee Williams that takes place in 1930’s St. Lois. This play is unique in the manner that it is a memory play. The narrator, Tom Wingfield, is also one of the main characters. Tom is the son to Amanda Wingfield, and the brother to Laura Wingfield. Toms father, whom is referred to as Mr. Wingfield, left his family and has only sent one postcard from Mexico since his desertion. Although Mr. Wingfield deserted his family his picture still remains on the living room wall of the families lower middle class apartment.

Albert Einstein, a man of great wit and intellect is quoted as saying, “Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one”. Could he mean that the concept of reality is nothing more than an imagined arena with society and our place in it being figments of our own design? Regardless of reality’s genesis or authenticity it is indeed persistent and inescapable. In his play, The Glass Menagerie, Tennessee Williams explores this notion of reality as a painful encroachment that all humans counteract with concocted fantasies and a willingness to exist in an illusionary state. While all of William’s characters exist in their individual realms of illusion, one stands out as the most harmful and pitiful of all. Amanda, the literal mother of the dysfunctional family in the play, is also the figurative “mother” of illusionary living. Through Amanda, Williams explores the tragic character flaws and damage to the familiar unit that abound when a parent’s illusions replace their reality.

Tennessee Williams was born in 1911 and attended University of Missouri. At a young age he was inspired to become a playwright by watching Henrik Ibsen’s Ghosts. As he grew older he battled with depression and addiction. He had a constant fear of going insane like his sister. That fear fueled his writing and eventually produced the play The Glass Menagerie. In this play Williams creates characters with depth and variety. All four characters have separate and distinct personalities.

The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams is a play that represents the revelation of truth, the struggle of accepting reality, and the realization of possession. We focus in on the Wingfield family consisting of the mother, Amanda, her daughter, Laura, her son, Tom, and her absent husband that ran off years ago, but still holds a presence in the household despite his absence. Considering that this play was set in the 40’s and deals with issues that the present society does not face, it seems that this play has become “irrelevant” to us. Although, it is more relevant than ever before due to today’s society’s suppression of inner struggles just as the Wingfield family does. In 2014 modern day, the world is suffocating with laptops, games, phones, and other little distractions that cripple us from properly communicating with other people and with ourselves. This is a direct parallel to Laura’s life and her precious glass menagerie’s that she holds dear to heart, which forms as the true crippling crutch in her life, not her brace. I began my dramaturgical approach to this conclusion by first, reading the play, researching the core themes about the play and characters lives, and thus correlating it to our modern day lives.

“ The Glass Menagerie ”, a memory play by Tennessee Williams, not only depicts the depressing and unhappy lives of the Winfield family at St. Louis around 1930’s, but also highlights the obstacle for Tom to pursuing his dreams under the family obligations; the obstacle for Laura to overcoming shyness and inferiorities to interact with the

The Glass Menagerie is set in 1937 in St Louis, Missouri where America was in a time of peril when the American economy collapsed and caused a shortage of jobs and money known as the Great Depression (Roberts and Zweig 1379; 3). The play is about a family who lived in an apartment complex in Missouri. The story is about a son named Tom Wingfield, who tells “memories” about a problem about his sister (Williams 1380; 1). Tom works in a shoe warehouse and is miserable of the job and dreams of a career away from his family, his mother and his sister stay in an apartment. Laura the sister who believes that she can’t do anything because of her physical appearance and quits school entirely because of her self-esteem. Her mother requests her son to find a gentleman caller for Laura because the mother believes that she would be taken care of if she finds a suitor to marry the daughter, but it does not go well because the man that tom finds is already engaged and ready to marry another girl. Because Laura Wingfield is exceptionally timid and self-conscious, she is afraid of taking judgmental calls which can alter her limited lifestyle in Tennessee Williams’ classic American drama The Glass Menagerie.

Within their day to day lives, individuals often face judgement from the public or their family due to their choices and actions. As individuals face judgement, they may feel the need to succumb to those judgements, in order to avoid embarrassment. Many ways individuals can pursue their happiness includes going for goals that they set for themselves, having a sense of adventure and striving to explore, or getting an education and a good job, as many individuals have a different perception of what make them content and what they want to pursue. In the play The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams, all of the characters have a different amount of goals they wanted to pursue, for many different reasons from the others. Specifically, Jim O’Connor, who pursued his happiness by living the American dream and strives to succeed in his work ethic. Tom Wingfield pursued his goals by eventually leaving his family in order to feel satisfaction, Laura Wingfield was similar to her brother, who did not want to be included within her mother’s dreams for her, and instead decided to avoid her responsibilities and pursue what her mother found distasteful. When an individual pursues goals and passions in their life, then they will receive fulfillment and pleasure because they are no longer held down by others expectations, but when they continue through with what satisfies them and have no mind towards what others think, then they shall truly experience