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,

In the play “The Glass Menagerie” each of the characters uses different escape mechanisms to avoid real life. Amanda, the mother, consistently tries to live in the past. Laura, the daughter, avoids the real world by using her own escape mechanisms; her glass figures, and her music and taking walks. Tom, the son, is always avoiding the real world by either going to the movies every night, or going to get drunk. Throughout this paper the reader will gain knowledge of how each character escapes from their everyday lives that they are living.

In The Glass Menagerie, Tennessee Williams uses the theme of escape to help drive the play forward. None of the characters are capable of living in the real world. Laura, Amanda, Tom and Jim use various methods to escape the brutalities of life. Laura retreats into a world of glass animals and old records. Amanda is obsessed with living in her past. Tom escapes into his world of poetry writing and movies. Jim also reverts to his past and remembers the days when he was a high school hero. Mr. Wingfield is referred to often throughout the play. He is the ultimate symbol of escape. This is because he has managed to remove himself from the desperate situation that the rest of the family is still

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.

The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams is a play that focuses on people’s imperfections and how being overwhelmed can effect a person’s daily life. Tom, Laura, and their father were constantly overwhelmed and acted the way they did because of it. When Williams says:

In The Glass Menagerie, Tennessee Williams beautifully encapsulates man’s desire to escape from uncomfortable emotional and physical situations. Whether he’s showing a young man trapped in a factory job he hates, an aging single mother who mourns for her life as Southern belle, or a young lady who fears that she’ll spend her life alone, he clearly demonstrates these desires and fears for his audience. Williams shows us through the actions of his characters how humans handle a wide variety of uncomfortable situations, and how these situations dramatically influence one’s ability to thrive. The playwright doesn’t seem to believe in the idea of “bloom where you’re planted”, and the desire to escape becomes a major theme of the play, demonstrated across multiple characters in a wide variety of ways. Creative individuals often do not thrive in noncreative, industrial environments. Williams demonstrates this clearly in this “memory play”, which carries many autobiographical element. Tom Wingfield represents his own character, Williams himself, and also serves as a narrator, making him quite the complex character. Williams’s uses Tom to show how an emotionally complex, creative individual can quickly feel trapped and tied down in a factory job, longing to get out, see the world, and pursue a job with more creative elements. Tom’s escapism, drinking, and evening theatrical adventures all reflect the life of the playwright himself, as Williams was known to struggle with alcoholism

The theme of Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie is conflict. The play contains both internal and external conflict. The absence of Tom's father forces external turmoil and conflict between Tom the protagonist, and his mother the antagonist. The internal conflict is seen within Tom through his constant references to leaving home and his selfishness. The play is about a young aspiring poet named Tom, who works at a shoe warehouse. Tom is unhappy with is life at home mainly because of his overbearing, over protective mother named Amanda. Tom also has a sister within the play named Laura who chooses to isolate herself from the rest of society. During the play Tom's relationship with his mother is filled with very harsh and abrasive

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.

The audience learns early on that the father of the family has left. In Tom's opening statement, he refers to his dad as, "a fifth character in the play who doesn't appear except in this larger-than-life photograph" (scene 1). As times worsened during the depression, a father leaving a family would not be too uncommon. Pressures of supporting for a family could be difficult, and it could lead fathers to leaving their families which adds more of a real feeling to the play. Tom is seen to be an alcoholic throughout the play. Afraid her son is an alcoholic, Amanda tends to question Tom and ask where he is going and what he's doing but Tom simply responds with, "I'm going to the movies" (scene 3). This of course is a cover for what he is actually doing. Again, this is common during a stressful time like the characters are in. His drinking problem is realistic and the audience can feel what he's going through. The play is meant to seem as if the situations and conversations they have are real, and the play Williams writes does that well.

The Glass Menagerie, the characters are all facing some sort of problems. One of the main character in the play is Laura Wingfield. The rest of her family consist of Amanda Wingfield , her mother and her brother Tom Wingfield. Laura lives in a fictional world with her glass figurines. Laura is terribly shy, and has no gentlemen callers. The important thing in the play The Glass Menagerie is the glass figurines. Laura struggles to be social in society . The play takes place during the Great Depression where families struggle to survive.

The Glass Menagerie is a dramatic play which was written by Tennessee Williams that depicts a picture of a dysfunctional family. These characters are Amanda Wingfield, the mother of Tom and Laura, and Jim O’Connor, the gentleman caller and a friend of Tom. In this play, Amanda Wingfield was abandoned by her husband, who happens to leave her and the family. At this point, Amanda’s responsibility was to take care of the family and also see to it that her high expectations for her children was fulfilled. This play brings out some issues of life especially marriage, which affected the life of Laura and her mother. For this reason, Amanda had to find someone with certain qualities to marry her daughter. Some of these qualities were a man who does not drink, a man with a better job or pursuing a good career, and a man with good character.

After she says this, Tom walks into the kitchen to have his morning coffee, eventually talks to his mother, and apologizes for the things he’s done, no doubt because Laura was so convincing (4.3. 5-20). The family has their differences and it is a perfect representation of the sort of family Williams had at this age; they sometimes fight, but they cannot function without one another. Without Tom, the family has no financial income and Laura does not have a brother in which she can confide in. Without Laura, Amanda and Tom would fight all the time and neither of them would apologize because there is a huge lack of motivation due to Laura’s absence. Without Amanda, there is no one to take care of the two of them, and neither of them would have a motherly figure around the house. All of the members of the family are critical instruments in conveying the story of Williams’

Have you ever felt like a caged bird? I have! When I lived at home I had a very strict father. Every scenario went through my mind on how I could get out of my dad’s house. Just like me, the characters in this play felt the same way. Amanda, a nagging mother, who wants the best for her children, Laura is in her own world, Tom wants to be free, and Jim O’Connor who was trying to better himself. These are the characters in the play try to escape their reality in many different ways.

The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams is a drama that involves four main characters; Amanda, Tom, Laura, and Jim. Amanda is the mother and Tom and Laura are her two children. Their father left them years ago, leaving them responsible for the things he once took care of. When the father was still living there, he was the breadwinner of the family and provided for their needs. It seems that ever since he has been gone, they have not transitioned into their life without him, emotionally as well as financially. Their interactions with one another clearly display the scars left due to their father 's departure. Amanda and Laura have a constant communication about Laura not having any “gentleman callers” throughout her life. The main concern about this situation stems from Amanda and less from Laura. Amanda often talks to Laura about her personal memories when she herself had many men pursuing her. Amanda talks to Laura in a belittling manner and often makes Laura feel insecure about her shy and introverted personality, which is vastly different from her boisterous mother. Amanda and her other child, Tom, clearly have a dysfunctional relationship as well, but in a different way. Multiple times within the drama, they argue with one another intensely. These arguments often leave Tom so frustrated with his mother that he storms out of the house. The ending of the drama actually involves this exact situation, Tom leaving the house and eventually not coming back. The theme that