The Glass Menagerie By Tennessee Williams

My parents love to live vicariously through me, especially my mother, and while I understand their inclination to do this, it can make them a bit controlling of my actions. Williams exhibits in The Glass Menagerie the damaging effects of overbearing parents on the mental and emotional growth of their children. In the play, the mother inhibits the development of her children because she tries to control her children’s lives, which takes away the ability to become independent and focus on personal needs. Amanda treats Laura like a child and constantly makes decisions for her, and she and keeps him from enjoying his life.

Tennessee Williams uses the character Amanda in “The Glass Menagerie” to express the attitude of how proper young men and woman should carry themselves. Amanda’s attitude towards her children sets the stage for their unhappy lives. Her refusal to accept her children for who they are has led to Tom drinking during the evenings and Laura having social anxiety. “The Glass Menagerie” reflects the social norms, roles, and values of the 1940’s when it was written. It depicts woman as helpless and unable to provide for themselves, while men should be focused on furthering their careers and providing for the family. Amanda believes that a young woman of Laura’s age should be attending social events and getting schooling till she can attract a gentlemen caller who will provide for her. Finally, she believes that Tom should be concerned with furthering his career to provide a better life for Laura and herself since he became the man of the house once his father left. Amanda’s attitude displays the social norms during the 1940’s and sets the framework for Laura’s disappointing meeting with a gentleman caller as well as Tom Leaving.

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,

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.

“The Glass Menagerie” is a play by Tennessee Williams. There are only four characters in the drama with a fifth character referenced so much that his character is a big part of the story line. The play is about a southern woman named Amanda and her two grown children. Tom is the son who has the responsibility of taking care of his sister and their mother. Laura has a disability that limits her capabilities and her confidence; consequently, her mother does not seem to understand how these limitations have made her life events extremely different from her mother’s early years. The fourth character, Jim, is an acquaintance of Tom and is a gentleman caller who ends up doing more harm than good for Laura. Amanda’s husband, who abandoned the family long ago, is not in the play, but is referenced throughout the story line; the set even has a big portrait of him hanging in the living room. Williams portrayed the personalities as he typically has in other plays with “characters who prefer dwelling in a fantasy world” (Wang). The characters have such a fascination of past events that they are not able to focus on the best choices for the present.

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 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.

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.

In the play, The Glass Menagerie, Tennessee Williams addresses the hardships of a small, lower-middle class family in St. Louis. The family's future is controlled by the Amanda but, Tom will accept that no longer as he strives for independence. With their absent father, Amanda is placing the weight of the world on her children’s shoulders as she continuously comes up with ways her and her family could potentially get ahead in life. Tom feels the pressure of being the man of the house, as he’s responsible for the family’s income and works daily to provide for his mother and sister. After analyzing the characters, one might say that Tennessee Williams has used the title The Glass Menagerie to directly relate to the children being held captive

Question five: What is the significance to Laura (and to the plays meaning overall) of her collection of glass animals? Why is the unicorn singled out? What are its symbolic implications?

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’s The Glass Menagerie, is a classic drama about a young man who is tired of his dull and boring existence. Tom, the main character, struggles to deal with his family, who is apparently holding him back in life. With the use of powerful writing techniques, Williams is able to captivate his audience and create a play that has stood the test of time.

The play “The Glass Menagerie,” written by Tennessee William in 1945, recounts around a family trying to escape the limitations of time and their difficulties coping with life. The main character Tom is the man of the house watching over his mother and sister since his dad left. He is to stay home and fulfill the duties of working at a warehouse but his dream is to leave and be adventurous. Laura, Tom’s sister viewed as crippled and stuck in the present of her disability and shyness stopping her from doing things in her life. Amanda, Tom’s mother lives in a world that is sensitively bound to the past.

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.

In The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams, the primarily characters exhibit a state of illusion that originates from their dissatisfaction and unhappiness with their lives. Tom seeks adventure in the movies. Amanda reminisces often about her days as a Southern Belle. Laura sits in a dream world with her glass collection, and Jim wallows in the praises of his high school glory. In their own unique ways, they demonstrate their anxiety. Thus, the characters are all displeased, but take no action to improve their situation in any feasible.