The Glass Menagerie By Tennessee Williams

Williams’s play is a tragedy, and one of quietude. He once expressed that “Glass Menagerie is my first quiet play, and perhaps my last.” It is a play of profound sadness, and through relationships between characters, portrays the “cries of the heart.” There is no cry more powerful that the cry and inner desperation of the heart. Williams’s has very little social context, but rather focuses on the conflicts within a domestic family. Such a focus is powerful, and the playwright expresses this power and importance implicitly through the estranged relationship between Amanda and Tom Wingfield.

   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 masterful use of symbolism is delightfully ubiquitous in Tennessee Williams’ “The Glass Menagerie.” He uses a collection of dim, dark and shadowy symbols that constantly remind the audience of the lost opportunity each of these three characters continually experience. This symbolism is not only use to enlighten the audience to their neglected opportunities to shine, but it is also repeatedly utilized to reinforce the ways in which the characters try in vain to cross over turbulent waters into a world of light and clarity. It is thematically a wrenching story of life gone by, and the barren attempts to realize another reality that is made more poignant by symbolic language, objects, setting, lighting and music. The characters are

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 Glass Menagerie” by Tennessee Williams, was written in the early forties but could be misconstrued as a present-day play, because of the family dynamic that has changed since the forties but has not been completed replaced. In this play, we are introduced to Tom Wingfield who is the breadwinner for the family, which consists of his mom and sister. Amanda Wingfield who is an overbearing mother that knows no boundaries, and Laura Wingfield who is the sweet, and embarrassingly shy daughter of Amanda. Their family dynamic is like most of ours. The mother loves her kids dearly but struggles with letting go of her old identity, the daughter who allows her disability to determine her happiness and the brother who is obligated to work but would rather drink and party his money away. I’m sure many of us can relate to this family in some form. My favorite character in “The Glass Menagerie” is Laura. I love Laura because I can relate to her in more than one way. I was a shy individual most of my life, but once people got to know me they realized I was no different from them. In the following paragraphs, I will share Laura’s character with you, the similarities between Laura and the glass unicorn and I’ll tell you how the glass unicorn represents Laura.

Four years after it was last on Broadway, the The Glass Menagerie returns and a new crowd waits with excitement at the entrance of the Belasco Theatre to see the fresh take on play. Sam Gold’s new Broadway production of Tennessee Williams’s play opened on March 9 and the audience were presented with the unexpected. No curtain, the cold concrete floor, the grim black wall with pipes all over it, and a rectangular dining table with a few apples on it. That was the extent of all decorations on stage, but at least Gold kept all the characters: Tom, Amanda, Laura, and Jim.

Since its very first production, The Glass Menagerie has remained a treasure of modern, American theater, partly through playwright Tennessee Williams's masterful utilization of symbolism. One of these symbols, the glass unicorn, seeks to represent Laura and her development throughout the play. Williams establishes the symbolic relationship between Laura and the unicorn through the use of mutually shared characteristics, the most prominent ones being their lack of reality, shyness, and frailty. Readers will come to appreciate the subtle craftsmanship of the play's symbols and how the use of symbolism further develops Laura's character. To come to this appreciation, readers must first establish the symbolic connection shown through the shared

In the story “The Glass Menagerie” by Tennessee Williams (rpt. in Greg Johnson and Thomas R. Arp, Perrine’s Literature: Structure, Sound, and Sense, 12th ed. [Boston: Wadsworth, 2015], 1136-1185), there are many symbols that relate to each of the characters in the story. The character with the most symbolism in this story is Laura Wingfield. The most important symbols in the play are the glass menagerie, the unicorn, and blue roses.

Isolation is prevalent in “The Glass Menagerie” by Tennessee Williams. This is presented in symbols such as blue roses and the glass unicorn, for they are imagined objects and only existent in another fantasy world. Williams incorporates such arcane symbols to draw out his characters, Amanda, Laura, and Tom, and how they cope with confinement. Most importantly, the symbols of the play represent how isolation debilitates them psychologically in an attempt to connect with reality. The jonquils represent how Amanda desperately clings on to her past, resulting in her inappropriate behavior during Jim’s visit. The glass menagerie reveals Laura’s inability to face reality, trapping her in perpetual isolation. The fire escape demonstrates Tom’s journey on conquering desolation because he take action to prevent the detriment that drains him of energy.

Amanda Wingfield is the over bearing mother of Tom and Laura. She is the typical mother who wants nothing but to protect her family and ensure security. Joven describes Amanda's character quit well: "She is presented as out of touch with reality; she is flighty, and a source of embarrassment to her children". Amanda is from a different generation along with a different country so this she ends up being counterproductive in her efforts to supply security. She along with all the other characters are engulfed in their own dream worlds.

The Glass Menagerie is very interesting because William 's play relates to alot of people and their situations, people can learn alot from it alot whether they connect to Amanda and her past or to Laura and her lack of confidence and being in a world of her own or to Tom and his internal conflict about abandoning his family or staying with them. Laura 's life is all about her glass menageries what happens when her glass unicorn breaks? What happens when a gentleman caller comes over? In the Glass Menagerie, Tennessee Williams uses the symbols Leg Brace, Blue Roses, and The Glass Unicorn to represent Laura 's fragile character that is stopping her from accomplishing life goals.

His mother Amanda, and his sister Laura both force Tom to make occasional compromises for their happiness. Tom is faced with the decision of living up to the expectations of his mother, and continually supporting her financially, as well as finding his sister a suitable gentleman caller, or, chasing after his own dreams of living an adventurous life sailing the world on a merchant vessel. Through the course of the play we witness what goes through Toms mind, a well as how he acts around his family. Eventually Tom chooses to pursue his own happiness.

The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams is a play with references to his own life concerning his sister and mother. During the play there are many reoccurring symbols, each symbol is crucial to the play in order to understand the idea of escape. Through the narrator's perspective, we are able to witness the mainstream family during a war depression era. We see a single mother, unable to accept change and retaining to the past; a sister, who has trouble dealing with reality and lives in a fictional world where she has become fragile and unable to function outside her house within society; and the narrator himself a young hardworking male figure within his house, whom the family depends upon. Tennessee Williams is able to create an eventful

menagerie simply refers to a glass collection owned by Laura Wingfield. Laura lives with her

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