The Glass Menagerie Symbolism Essay

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.

Tom’s memories also prohibited him from finding happiness and moving forward, but it also led to the creation of the play. All of the characters have ways to deal with their cruel memories, except Tom. Amanda has her happy days from her youth and Laura has her glass collection. Tom has no sufficient way of escape. He has tried escaping to the movies, but he came to realize that it was not a real way out.

She spends time with her glass menagerie. “ What is there left but dependency all our lives? I know so well what becomes of unmarried women who aren't prepared to occupy a position. I've seen such pitiful cases in the South-barely tolerated spinsters living upon the grudging patronage of sister's husband or brother’s wife! (Williams 42-43)”. Laura drops out of school because she is terribly shy and now Laura and her mother have to figure out a way to make a living when Tom gets married. Also, because of this Laura did not get the chance to meet any boys and therefore she has no gentlemen

18. Discuss the symbolism of the glass menagerie in relation to Laura. How, for example, does Laura resemble the glass animals? What does the unicorn represent at first, and what does it represent once its horn has been broken?

In “The Glass Menagerie”, by Tennessee Williams, Jim O’Connor calls Laura Wingfield a blue rose and it represents the first feelings of love between Laura and Jim, the delicacy of Laura, and a sense of caution or the impossible. Jim and Laura know each other from high school, and when they once spoke to each other, Laura tells him that she had been absent from school because she had pleurosis, but Jim hears blue roses. From this point on, he calls her blue roses. When they are “reunited”, Jim remembers what he once called her, and once again, he calls her blue roses. Throughout the book, the symbolism of blue rose is shown.

Since its very first production, The Glass Menagerie has remained a treasure of modern, American theater, partly through playwright Tennessee Williams's masterful utilization of symbolism. One of these symbols, the glass unicorn, seeks to represent Laura and her development throughout the play. Williams establishes the symbolic relationship between Laura and the unicorn through the use of mutually shared characteristics, the most prominent ones being their lack of reality, shyness, and frailty. Readers will come to appreciate the subtle craftsmanship of the play's symbols and how the use of symbolism further develops Laura's character. To come to this appreciation, readers must first establish the symbolic connection shown through the shared

In the play, Tom’s mother is very controlling. She feels as if everything must go her way. For example, Tom was reading a novel from the library and because she did not care for it, she turned it in. Amanda states that she will not permit that kind of “filth” in her house. After hearing that, Tom pointed out that he pays the rent and attempts to end the conversation by leaving the apartment.

In the story “The Glass Menagerie” by Tennessee Williams (rpt. in Greg Johnson and Thomas R. Arp, Perrine’s Literature: Structure, Sound, and Sense, 12th ed. [Boston: Wadsworth, 2015], 1136-1185), there are many symbols that relate to each of the characters in the story. The character with the most symbolism in this story is Laura Wingfield. The most important symbols in the play are the glass menagerie, the unicorn, and blue roses.

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.

The Glass Menagerie In The Glass Menagerie, Tennessee Williams places his characters in difficult situations throughout the play. Laura Wingfield is a very shy person with an illness that has left her crippled. This illness makes Laura fearful and it causes her to think less of herself. Amanda Wingfield (laura's mother) fancies laura to marry a man that will care for her, since she is young and dependent.

In the class that we had with Mr. Campbell, the class went over many things, ranging from 1851 to 1938. In this time period, Europe was not doing very well, and there were many conflicts and problems that led to disastrous events such as World War I. However, I am going to connect Mr. Campbell’s class to The Glass Menagerie through Laura, one of the main characters in the 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

There are many events in Tennessee Williams’s early life that is similar to the details in The Glass Menagerie. Williams had a bad relationship with his father, who was clinically alcoholic (Debusscher 1). Williams’s dysfunctional family plays a role towards his homosexuality (Debusscher 4). A research group discovered that children who have alcoholic parents have a problem with their sexual identity (Debusscher 4). Alcoholism not only affects the victim but the whole family as well (Debusscher 2). He uses fantasy to survive chaos and pain to escape the truth (Debusscher 3). In The Glass Menagerie Williams draws attention to Mr. Wingfield’s alcoholism when Amanda fears that Tom might become a drinker (Debusscher 3). Mr. Wingfield has abandoned the family many years ago (Holditch 2). Though Tennessee Williams's background affects his plays, the time period in America also plays a part in his writings.

Tom and his sister Laura is symbolically the actual glass menagerie, the play belongs to neither of them. The play belongs to their mother, Amanda, as substantiated by