The Glass Menagerie Essay

In The Glass Menagerie, by Tennessee Williams, and A Doll House, by Henrik Ibsen, each protagonist faces the difficulty of society’s rule. Tom, being the “man of the house”, provides for his family and is depended upon. Were as Nora is co-dependant of her puppet master of husband Torvald. Despite their differences, Tom and Nora parallel the flaws in their common daily lives.

The person someone becomes is influenced by the losses they have experienced in their life. In Catcher

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

Tom ends the argument by calling Amanda an "ugly- babbling old -witch"(Williams 1875), and struggles to put his coat on, intent on leaving.  When he cannot put the coat on properly, he becomes frustrated with his clumsiness and flings it across the room, breaking some of the glass collection. Laura "cries out as if wounded"(Williams 1875).  This shows how fragile Laura really is and how she reacts when even the small balance of her apartment is shifted.  The most prominent use of this symbol comes at the crisis of the story, when Jim is left alone with Laura. The conversation turns to Laura's glass collection, when she remarks "glass is something you have to take good care of."(Williams 1900), again showing her fragility. More parallels are drawn between Laura and the glass collection with the introduction of the unicorn. Jim says, "Poor little fellow, he must feel sort of lonesome"(Williams 1902) to which Laura replies, " He stays on a shelf with some horses that don't have horns and all of them seem to get along nicely together"(Williams 1902).  The unicorn becomes a symbol for Laura because just like the unicorn she is different.  When Jim and Laura dance, and Jim accidentally knocks the unicorn off the table and its horn is broken off, it loses its uniqueness. Similarly, when Jim kisses Laura and then shatters her hopes by telling

Similar to Christ, Jim sacrifices his freedom for others without consideration of what could come of him. Even when he has the chance to escape to freedom on his own while Huck is with the Grangerfords, he sacrifices his chance and he “struck out for [the] woods to wait” (Twain 84) in order to stay with Huck. As a repercussion, he later on becomes enslaved and then escapes, going through all that trouble just to be with Huck. During that escape, with his

In the beginning of the play, Laura sees herself as “crippled” and not “expecting any gentlemen callers,” for she is extremely shy and unconfident. Furthermore, she embodies her collection of glass menagerie, for when Tom hurls his coat across the room “It strikes against the shelf of Laura’s glass collection... [and] Laura cries out as if wounded.” Laura’s action in this scene symbolizes her frailness and how she is a piece of the glass menagerie. Being part of the glass collection, Laura is confined to the shelf which the collection is on. This metaphorical representation of Laura depicts how she prefers to stay inside rather than going out into the world and becoming truly independent. Nonetheless, when Jim, the ticket to break out of this confinement, arrives, there is a shift in Laura’s character. As Jim talks to Laura, her “shyness is dissolving in his warmth.” Moreover, the unicorn piece which is symbolic of Laura and was once addressed as “lonesome” loses its horn in an accident. When its horn is gone, Laura states, “The horn was removed to make him feel less - freakish! Now he will feel more at home with the other horses, the ones who don’t have horns.” (Scene 7:6-9) Laura has lost her metaphorical horn and therefore she fits in with the rest of the world. For once in her life, Laura feels normal and her shell is broken as she dances and engages with Jim. However, Laura’s escape is not complete liberation, for even though Laura has liking towards Jim, the so thought gentleman-caller, Jim is engaged and has a fiance. This shows that Laura and her family will not truly escape from their setbacks even if a glance of hope, such as Jim, arrives for a moment in their lives. Therefore, at the end of the play, Laura’s “silliness is gone and she has dignity and tragic beauty” for “glass breaks so easily. No matter how careful you

Tennessee Williams (1911-1983), born Thomas Lanier Williams and is considered by be one of the leading playwright of his age and post-World War II America. He took many of the elements of his plays from his own life. He was born in Columbus, MS, to a violent, aggressive traveling salesman and a high-minded, puritanical, preacher 's daughter. He had an older sister named Rose, who he adored, but suffered from mental problems that eventually caused her to be institutionalized. Rose was the model for several of Williams characters,His family moved to St. Louis at some point in his childhood. Williams attended a succession of universities before he finally received his degree in playwriting. Between stints in college, he worked for three years in a shoe factory.

Throughout this play, Laura slowly unveils her characteristics, showing us who she really is. Additionally, she is very shy, therefore, it is harder to figure out what kind of person she is compared to a person who is more outgoing. Because Laura is shy, us readers do not fully understand the symbolic blue roses. However, at the end of the play, Laura admits that she had a crush on a boy, named Jim, which symbolizes the meaning of the blue roses.

If I could change the outcome of the story, I would have allowed Laura and Jim O’Connor to get married. I would have made this change because then Amanda’s problem would have been solved, and Laura would have had financial support in the future. Another reason I would have made this change is because Jim O’Connor would have been the ideal man for Laura because he connected with her. He saw past her awkward fondness of a glass animal set. He also got Laura to take pride in herself.

Jim originally runs away from his master, Miss Watson, because she was talking about selling him to someone else. If she were to get rid of him, that would mean that he would be moved away from his family. As a slave back in those times, it was not uncommon to be separated from close relatives, and it can easily be considered a form of abuse, especially for Jim who holds high regards for his own family. "I do believe he cared just as much for his people as white folks does for their’n. It don’t seem natural, but I reckon it’s so. He was often moaning and mourning that way nights, when he judged I was asleep, and saying, “Po’ little ‘Liza-beth! po’ little Johnny! it’s mighty hard; I spec’ I ain’t ever gwyne to see you no mo’, no mo’!” He was a mighty good nigger, Jim was” (Twain, 158). The main thing that fuels Jim’s desire to be free really is his family that he misses while he is away. In fact, Jim’s character has received a lot of controversy in the past because he is defined as a ‘stereotypical black slave,’ but he does a fine job in exemplifying why freedom meant so much to Africans in the past and its true worth.

world and does not care to return to it. At this point, the reader begins to pity Jim,

One of the most significant symbols is Laura's glass unicorn, which has an obvious and direct relation to Laura. Being her favorite animal in her menagerie, they share many similar characteristics. The glass unicorn is most obviously a symbol of Laura; delicate, different, and an abnormality to the modern world. During Laura and Jim's brief romantic encounter, Laura is gaining more confidence about herself. When they started dancing together, Jim accidently knocked the glass unicorn over. This begins to indicate the way that Laura was being drawn into the world. At this stage, it looks as if Jim is interested in Laura, and we know that of all of her menagerie, it is the unicorn that Laura most identifies with. When the horn breaks and it is, in Laura's words, “just like all the other horses” (Williams 1221), it symbolizes the potential of Jim to lead Laura into the world where she can be just like everyone else. However, when it is clear that Jim is engaged and will not marry Laura, the gift of the unicorn as a “souvenir” to Jim symbolizes Laura's final retreat from the world without hope of return.

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 perfect example of how Williams incorporates symbols, tensions, and irony to help express the central theme of the play.

In the stage directions at the end of scene 3, some of Laura’s figurines shatter as a result of Tom’s rage, and she “cries out as if wounded”, thus the glass is personified and symbolises Laura’s fragile nature. Furthermore, her unicorn figurine’s horn disjointed when Jim dances with her and makes “him [the unicorn] feel less freakish” and help him feel as if he belonged. This is another example of personified symbolism, as Jim helps Laura liberate her true self and feel included, just like the unicorn.