The Glass Menagerie Symbolism Essay

   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.

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.

The actual glass menagerie is a glass ointment collection pieced together by Laura herself. Ironically, it is also the title of the play.

The Glass Menagerie is arguably the most symbolic and deep plays ever written. The Glass Menagerie isn’t just a story of Laura’s disability, it has a deeper meaning behind it, and it can be easily overlooked by mediocre minds. Although the story revolves around the Wingfield family, Tennessee Williams throws in symbolism that corresponds with his childhood. In a way, he found closure for the loss of his sister Rose through writing The Glass Menagerie. One of the symbols is the play that holds a different meaning for each of the characters is the fire escape. As the play evolves the fire escape brings out Laura’s, Tom’s, and Amanda’s true desires.

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.

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.

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.

In The Glass Menagerie, Tennessee Williams uses the phrase or nickname Blue Roses to symbolize Laura’s difference from the social mean, which reveals how her hopes and dream impact her. Blue Roses are different from normal roses, something you would never see in nature. Jim astutely identifies this when he says:

In Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie, there is a collection of glass animal figurines that belong to Laura. Laura uses those figurines to escape her reality. The “glass menagerie” is also a metaphor because all of the characters have a metaphorical glass menagerie that they use to escape their reality.

The Glass Menagerie is arguably the most symbolic and deep plays ever written. The Glass Menagerie isn’t just a story of Laura’s disability, it has a deeper meaning behind it, and it can be easily overlooked by mediocre minds. Although the story revolves around the Wingfield family, Tennessee Williams throws in symbolism that corresponds with his childhood. In a way, he found closure for the loss of his sister Rose through writing The Glass Menagerie. One of the symbols is the play that holds a different meaning for each of the characters is the fire escape. As the play evolves the fire escape brings out Laura’s, Tom’s, and Amanda’s true desires.

  Tom Wingfield is the narrator and a major character in Tennessee William’s timeless play, The Glass Menagerie. Through the eyes of Tom, the viewer gets a glance into the life of his family in the pre-war depression era; his mother, a Southern belle desperately clinging to the past; his sister, a woman too fragile to function in society; and himself, a struggling, young poet working at a warehouse to pay the bills. Williams has managed to create a momentous play using a combination of different elements, including symbolism. Three noteworthy examples of symbolism are the fire escape, a sense of hope and an escape both to the outside world and from it; the glass menagerie itself,

Symbolism plays an integral part in Williams’s play, The Glass Menagerie. Examples of the use of symbolism include the fire escape, as an escape from the family, the phonograph, as an escape from reality, the unicorn, as a symbol for Laura's uniqueness and the father’s photograph, representing something different to each character. Through regonition of these symbols, a greater understanding of the play’s theme is achieved.

Symbolism is an integral part of every play. The author uses symbolism in order to add more depth to the play. In Tennessee Williams’ play, The Glass Menagerie, he 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. Everyone in the play seeks refuge from their lives, attempting to escape into an imaginary world. Williams uses the fire escape as a way for the Wingfields, the protagonists of the play, to escape their real life and live an illusionary life. The fire escape portrays each of the character's need to use the fire escape as a literal exit from their own reality.

The Glass Menagerie first opened on March 31, 1945. It was the first big success of Tennessee Williams’ career. It is in many ways about the life of Tennessee Williams himself, as well as a play of fiction that he wrote. He says in the beginning, “I give you truth in the pleasant disguise of illusion'; (1147). The characters Tom, Laura, and Amanda are very much like Williams, his sister Rose, and his mother Edwina. We can see this very clearly when we look at the dialogue, and the relations between the action in the play and the actions in Tennessee Williams’ life.

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