The Glass Menagerie

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,

When Tom cannot actually bring himself to leave he uses many escape mechanisms to escape from his life. For instance, he escaped from their apartment onto the fire escape, and he sneaks away from the warehouse to write poetry. Tom also uses going to the movies every night and getting drunk to escape from his reality. In scene four Tom and Laura are having a conversation because he has been out for a very long time. Laura says “Where have you been all this time?” (1257.) Then Tom replies with “I have been at the movies.” (1257.) It also says in scene four that Amanda says “–well you had been drinking the night you were in that- terrifying condition! Laura says that you hate the apartment and that you go out nights o get away from it!” (1260.) This just shows that Tom is trying to escape from the life he is living, that he wants adventure. While his escape mechanisms do offer him a promise of freedom, it also traps him. At the end of scene III, Tom shouts at Amanda “I’m leading a double life,” (1256.) He wants to break free of the power Amanda has on him, but he cannot escape the love he has for his

Thomas Lanier Williams, born in Columbus, Mississippi to Edwina Dakin and Cornelius Coffin Williams, became one of the nations greatest playwrights. He was born on March 26, 1911 in his grandfather, Reverend Walter E. Dakin's, Episcopal Church. William's mother, Edwina, was a lively and colorful woman. She married a man whom contradicted her lifestyle. That man was Cornelius Williams, a gruff, pistol dueler with a violent temper. He was a lieutenant in the Spanish American War and a descendent from frontiersmen. Cornelius and Edwina married and continued to live in Mississippi. Cornelius had a job as a traveling salesman. Thomas became sick with diphtheria at age five which is how his love for literature bloomed. He lived in Mississippi until

The Glass Menagerie is a memory play by Tennessee Williams that highlights major memories he has of his life through Tom, the narrator of the play who dwells on a time of his life in which he endures with his mother Amanda and sister Laura.

Over the course of The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams, three major characters are introduced. Tom, the son, and provider of the family, serves as both a main character and the narrator. Tom feels trapped by his mother. He feels that, since his father left long ago that he is the only means for which the family to survive. Tom has a somewhat dysfunctional relationship with his mother, Amanda, and he feels as if she won’t just loosen her grasp on him and let him live his life.

Symbolism helps the author to show the reader the theme of a story by using objects of characters to show an in-depth idea the author has in a text. Symbols are a great way to show how characters feel in a story. In The Glass Menagerie, there are themes throughout the play, such as adventure, fragile, prison, youth, memory, and hope, Tennessee Williams, uses symbols like movies, glass unicorn, the tiny apartment, gentlemen callers, light, and husband in order to show these themes in the play.

On Sunday, March 11th, I went to see a live production of “The Glass Menagerie” at 2:30 P.M. in downtown Chattanooga. I chose to see “The Glass Menagerie” because it was in Chattanooga, which I thought it would be the easiest place to find a production to go to on the weekend so I did not have to worry about going to one later in the semester. When I was seated, the first thing I noticed was the age group that was attending. It consisted of almost completely of elderly white woman and men. There was only one couple that looked like they were in their late thirties. I felt a little out of place because Chase Pruitt and I were the youngest ones there. We were all seated in uncomfortable black plastic chairs. I was able to find a seat in the second

'I know what you did', whispered a croaky voice. A loud click cuts off my unformed response. I hold the phone to my ear, for a few minutes, waiting for the unknown caller to call me back. The first time I received this call, I thought it was a prank or a wrong number. However, lately I started receiving so many calls from this unknown caller and they all contained the same message. Shivers ran down my spine as I put the phone down. Although the situation frightened me, something intrigued me and made me curious about the identify of the caller. The curiosity of finding who the caller was, corrupted my life. I spent many days investigating who the caller was and at one point I searched my whole town, hoping that I would find clues. My best and only friend, Gabriel, became concerned for me as I would often spend my free time trying to find the caller. Before I knew it, I was corrupted. The calls had somehow impacted and changed my life and there was no turning back.

It is natural for humans to seek freedom from the power others hold over them, and Tennessee Williams explores thing in his novel, The Glass Menagerie, which explores the theme of freeing oneself from the power of others. Throughout the play Tom seeks freedom from his family. He hungers for adventure and struggles with this hunger; Tom explains his hunger saying, “Man is by instinct a lover, a hunter, a fighter…” (Williams 34). Tom has to decide between his responsibility towards his mother and sister, and his desire to see the world. Ultimately, the hunger for adventure consumes the responsibility to his family and he frees himself from the power of others.

Time and time again, Tom avoids predicted arguments by announcing that he's going to the movies, clearly proving that temporary escapes solve nothing until one takes action to solve their dilemmas. Finally, in a fit of rage over Jim’s engagement after he leaves in the final scene of the story, Amanda calls her son selfish for the last time and even encouraged him to leave, driving Tom out of the house once and for all. Even though Tom had planned to do this after he had secured Laura’s future, he became so utterly fed up with his mother’s criticisms that he gave up and decided to seek his own interest immediately.?Previously, he even recognizes his escapist tendencies himself and expresses a desire to change them to Jim in the statement “People go to the movies instead of moving… (but) I’m tired of the movies and I am about to move!” (95.) Through stating that people go to the movies to replace the excitement of traveling, Tom proves that avoidance doesn't solve problems when he tires of the movies since it doesn't fully replace the adventure his life lacks.

Throughout the story, it is evident that Amanda obsesses over her past. Immediately after either Tom or Laura worry her, she recollects her childhood memories at Mississippi Delta and uses them to console herself. She flashes back to the days when she would dance at the Governor's ball in Jackson and recalls the gentlemen's "chivalric nature" during her youth in hopes of lifting both her and Laura’s spirits before Jim arrives, but her escape mechanism fails to help either of them. Throughout the play, Amanda refuses to acknowledge that her daughter is crippled and refers to her handicap as "a little defect-hardly noticeable.” Only for brief moments does she admit that Laura is "crippled" and then she resorts back to denial, another way for

In the screenplay, The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams, characters struggle with the acceptance of reality. With the inability to handle reality, the Wingfield family barricades themselves in a fragile world of illusions and dreams. As in most cases, appearance is not what it seems.

Imagine going back 400 years and watching one of Shakespeare’s plays. Back to the days when people where just acting on stage with some props. Sure the plays were still fabulous and some of the actors are better than today’s actors, but back then they did not have the capability to use stage effects like we are able to use today. By using spectacles in the novel “The Glass Menagerie”, Tennessee Williams is able to use realism through the duration of the play.

We went to work and found her later that night at a French restaurant called Le Pressoir D’argent. She was seated in a private booth in the back with two other women. After Arthur saw who she was with, he immediately tried to sit this interrogation out, because the two people she was with were miss Emily Paulk, she had a slight boyish figure, a bobbed haircut, and was the city’s sixth most important financial advisor, and Allyson Tanner, tall, thin, long blonde hair, co owner of the restaurant, and Arthur’s former lover.

Tom means to examine life on his own terms; he means to judge his actions, not over the prism of conventional prospects, but through the lens of his own insights. In leaving, Tom demonstrates his desire to savor the chances life throws at him, no matter how indeterminate and unfaithful they originally appear. He wants to live in a thrilling world "lit by lightning" rather than in a disinfected world restricted by the fragile and deceptive light of candles. In this way, Tom is alike to Irene: both are members of the "aristocracy of passionate souls," strongminded to live life on his