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The Glass Menagerie By Tennessee Williams Essay

Decent Essays

Both writers clearly underline their characters as being deeply impacted by the egregious event of The Great Depression that occurred post war. In their retrospective texts, they could be seen to be opposing the great social, political, and to an extent, cultural changes during 20s America which was mainly achieved through industrialization and rapid advancements of inventions such as the first ever US radio station. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby” is a text reflective of the period in which it was written, ‘The Roaring Twenties’. It was written in America during the mid 1920s, a time of moral decadence and feelings of complacency following the conclusion of the Great War. On the surface, the text seems to be about love, wealth and power, yet this first impression does not do justice to the text’s main complexities and hidden depths. The text also explores corruption, idealism, faith, and the illusions of death through the use of a variety of images and symbols. The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams however is perhaps Williams’ most successful play, which essentially brought him from obscurity to fame. Importantly, it is unique in its insistence of unreality as Williams writes in his initial stage directions ‘the scene is memory and is therefore non-realistic.’

Throughout both texts the writers underpin the dismal effects of self-deception and what happens when one allows themself to be taken in by delusions. Williams described his childhood of one that was

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