The Glass Menagerie By Tennessee Williams

While in an argument with his mother about books she confiscated because they were written by D.H. Lawrence, Tom is also confronted about his nightly disappearances to the movies. Amanda does not believe the claim that her son spends his nights out at the movies. Furthermore, she is angered by the drunken state in which he often returns home and believes it will place his job that the family depends on, in jeopardy. Although never admitted, Williams play is in many respects an autobiography detailing the hardships of his own life. Anyone who has ever studied Tennessee Williams knows that a significant part of his identity was that he was gay. As a young man, Tom had the burden of many responsibilities; being the

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.

   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.

Tennessee Williams is regarded as a pioneering playwright of American theatre. Through his plays, Williams addresses important issues that no other writers of his time were willing to discuss, including addiction, substance abuse, and mental illness. Recurring themes in William’s works include the dysfunctional family, obsessive and absent mothers and fathers, and emotionally damaged women. These characters were inspired by his experiences with his own family. These characters appear repeatedly in his works with their own recurring themes. Through The Glass Menagerie and A Streetcar Named Desire, Tennessee Williams presents the similar thematic elements of illusion, escape, and fragility between the two plays, proving that although similar, the themes within these plays are not simply recycled, as the differences in their respective texts highlight the differences of the human condition.

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

Love, greed, hate, and deception; Tennessee Williams’s plays are widely known for their description of emotion and avarice in the 20th century, especially in his childhood household. “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof”, one of his most popular plays, thoroughly represent Tennessee Williams’s style of writing. Wealth and power plays an important factor in “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof”; it’s power infected people with hate, greed and deception, bringing destruction and hate upon the family.

Tom and his father are adding realism to the play from the beginning, but the other main characters also can be used to provide some realistic characteristics. Amanda is a stay at home mom who tries to give the best life possible for her children. She is extremely protective of them, and this can be relatable to many people. Laura is used as the disabled or lazy one of the

Tom had a double role in the play as both the narrator and a main character that lived through a recollection of what life was like living with his mother and sister before he abandoned them to seek adventure. Tom’s behavior in the play could lead to question if his memory is truly accurate. SparkNotes comments, “…But at the same time, he demonstrates real and sometimes juvenile emotions as he takes part in the play’s action. This duality can frustrate our understanding of Tom, as it is hard to decide whether he is a character whose assessments should be trusted or one who allows his emotions to affect his judgment” (SparkNotes.com). Through his behavior a person is reminded that memory can be flawed by emotions or time elapsing, this would need to be taken into account when analysis of such a character is done. Tom is full of contradictions as he reads literature, writes poetry, and dreams of an escape; however he also felt bound by duty to his sister and mother. Another contradiction was that while he professed to care about his sister as seen in his ending comments in the play, “…I tried to leave you behind me, but I am more faithful than I intended to be!...” (Williams), Tom never went back to reconnect with his sister. This could be because of the great shame he felt for abandoning his sister or because of another reason. He stated that he had been in several cities over the years but never speaks of going back to St. Louis, making it unclear if he

In the play Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Tennessee Williams explores the depth of human feeling and the melancholy and drama of a family that has to live a life as the world dictates it. He explores the mendacity and deception in human behavior and questions institutions that are taken for granted, especially the institution of marriage and family. Through different character types, a drunkard, a greedy lawyer, hypocritical reverend, woman that serve always in the interest of their own family, emphasizing their domestic roles, he depicts situations from everyday life. In one of his interviews he clearly defined his purpose of writing this play by saying: “I’m trying to catch the true quality of experience in a group of people, that cloudy, flickering,

Memory and Reality in Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie 'Being a memory play, it is dimly lighted, it is sentimental, it is not realistic'. To what degree is the play memory and to what degree is it realistic? "When a play employs unconventional techniques, it is not trying to escape its responsibility of dealing with reality, or interpreting experience, but is actually attempting to find a closer approach, a more penetrating and vivid expression of things as they are" (Tennessee Williams). The Glass Menagerie is one of Tennessee Williams' most eminent works and no doubt qualifies as a classic of the modern theater. Often referred to as a 'memory play', both the style and content of

In the play “The Glass Menagerie” of Tennessee William, he wrote a drama play to emphasize readers about the life is at a standstill the Wingfield family. Through of the Wingfield family, he uses many symbols which represent many things, but the important main symbolization is fire escape that shows three main characters; Tom Wingfield, his fire escape is the way out of Amanda and Laura. Amanda Wingfield, hope gentlemen callers to enter their lives, and Laura Wingfield, who wants in her own world by collecting unicorn animals. They express successfully in the play by using the fire escape portrays each of characters as literal exist from their own reality.

“The Glass Menagerie” by Tennessee Williams written in 1944. In many of his plays the circumstances reflect his own life, in the Glass Menagerie this is especially true. His father, a violent traveling salesman, and mother a puritanical, preacher’s daughter. He also had an older sister named Rose, whom he cherished, she suffered from psychological problems which lead to an institutionalized life. The Glass Menagerie represents a somewhat altered image of the Williams family, set in the 1930’s in the Wingfield’s meager apartment; which is in a lower-class tenement building in St. Louis, it’s a “memory play,” in which Tom (after his own real name Thomas) recalls scenes from his youth during the height of the Depression. Outspoken Amanda, Tom’s

Past, present, and future play an important role in any memory play, and an especially important role in Tennessee Williams's, The Glass Menagerie. However, in this particular play the characters themselves are used to represent different points along a timeline. The playwright makes this symbolism known to the audience through the dialogue and mannerisms of the three main characters. One character thinks of only her former self, another character seems to simply live day to day, and the final character thinks of nothing but his future. There are many symbols in this play, but these are arguably the most interesting and unique.

In The Glass Menagerie, by Tennessee Williams, the Wingfield family tries to escape from their humdrum reality. The Wingfield family consists of Amanda, Tom, Laura, and a nonexistent father. Tom and Laura’s father is a traveling business man that is never there to support their family. They feel that their life in their St. Louis apartment is undesirable. None of the characters are capable of living in the real world. What the characters do not realize is that they cannot run away from their problems. Through a struggled attempt to preoccupy their minds from their reality, the characters feel trapped in their accommodations. The Glass Menagerie is a memory play, meaning that the narrator, Tennessee Williams, is portraying the events of the play via thoughts that are drawn from his memory. Williams develops his theme of the impossibility of true escape by comparing it to his life through the setting, plot, and characters.

“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.