The Glass Menagerie By Tennessee Williams

Amanda belittles Laura’s self-ownership which makes Laura immature and helpless as an adult. When the subject of gentleman callers comes up, Amanda addresses Laura, saying, “How many do you suppose we’re going to entertain this afternoon? [...] [reappearing, airily] What? No one — not one? You must be joking! [Laura nervously echoes her laugh]” (Williams 18). Amanda is caught up in her dreams of marriage for Laura, made clear by her enthusiastic tone and body language, but Laura’s uncomfortable laugh shows how she is not amused by her mother’s aspirations. Amanda is only focused on what she wants for Laura, but she should really be concerned with what Laura wants for herself. In addition, Amanda cannot accept the fact that her daughter is not going to have any suitors; she denies reality and tries to bring Laura into her world of illusions. This irresponsible parenting causes Laura to become the childish adult that she is. When Amanda questions where Laura was going instead of business college, Laura explains that, “I went in the art museum and the bird houses at the Zoo. I visited the penguins every day! [...] Lately I’ve been spending most of my afternoons in the Jewel Box, that big glass house where they raise the tropical flowers” (21). Laura is twenty-three years old and she is getting excited about visiting attractions meant for kids. She would rather explore the Zoo, an art museum, or a greenhouse than attend college, exhibiting her immature and irresponsible mindset. This juvenile behavior is what leads to Laura’s helplessness. While on the fire escape, Amanda tells Laura to make a

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,

Tennessee Williams, born Thomas Lanier Williams, wrote The Glass Menagerie, a play which premiered in Chicago in 1944. This award winning play, autobiographical in nature, represented a time in which Williams felt the obligation of his responsibilities in regards to the care of his family. Robert DiYanni, Adjunct Professor of Humanities at New York University, rated it as, “One of his best-loved plays...a portrayal of loneliness among characters who confuse fantasy and reality” (DiYanni 1156). Alternatively, The Glass Menagerie, a play set in the era of the Great Depression and written from the narrator’s memory, was meant to teach us the how our relationships with one another can alter our futures, for better or worse. Everything about this particular play was a direct and clear symbolization of Williams ' life growing up. Williams uses characterization to depict several people from his real life in this play; his sister, himself, his overbearing mother, absent father, and a childhood best friend. Williams does a splendid job transforming his personal life into a working piece of art. In Tennessee Williams ' play, The Glass Menagerie, his character, Laura, is central to the structure and focus of the story due to her individual ties to all of the supporting characters throughout the seven scene play.

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

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.

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

Amanda's dark humor applied to her current life makes a mockery of her future. Her

In the Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams, Tom Wingfield is living the disadvantageous life of the 1930s. At this time, the Great Depression has begun and WWII is on the way.

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

The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams had ordinary people in an ordinary life that closely resembled the influences of Williams’ personal life while having reoccurring themes and motifs throughout the story. The play has been done by many with some variations in the scripts and setting while still clinging to the basic ideas of the original play.

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

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

Set in St. Louis Missouri prior to World War II, Tennessee Williams reflects back on his deeply tragic and dysfunctional familial experiences in, “The Glass Menagerie”. Williams brilliantly incorporates real aspects of society to reveal how they contributed to the nonreal aspects and the conflicts which affected his family. The real aspects of the play which had a significant impact on the lower middle-class families such as the Wingfields included, the economic hardships surrounding the Great Depression, the fall of the American south, society’s intolerance towards homosexuality, and many threats abroad. Although Williams play was merely a series of hazy memories, the nonreal aspects combined with the major societal conflicts contribute