William Shakespeare 's 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,

The play The Glass Menagerie, written by Tennessee Williams, is told as a flashback from the point of view of the character Tom Wingfield. He narrates the play as well. It is set in St. Louis in the year 1937. Tom works to support his mother, Amanda, as well as his sister Laura. Laura is extremely shy, and her mother is not happy with her because she does not attract any “gentlemen callers.” Laura gets enrolled in a business school by her mother, in hopes that she will go into a business career and earn money for herself and her family. A few weeks after, Laura drops out of business school due to her shyness, and wanders the streets of St. Louis during the day. When she is caught by her mother after she visits the business school, Laura tells her “I’ve just been going walking” (Williams 1166). It is then decided that the only hope left in Laura is in marriage. Laura then begins to sell magazine subscriptions in hopes that this job will not only earn her money, but attract a gentleman caller as well. Tom, who works in a shoe warehouse, is a slight alcoholic. He tries to get away from the job that he doesn’t like by drinking, watching movies, and reading literature. Tom often argues with his mother Amanda, and in one of these frequent arguments, Tom accidently breaks a few of Laura’s glass animals. These glass animals are her most prized possessions, so Laura is upset but forgiving.

Have you all heard of taylor swift? The countless boyfriends she has had. The way that every single one of her songs symbolizes one of her relationships. Is it weird that she cannot keep a man? Likewise, Tennessee WIlliams uses his play The Glass Menagerie to symbolize his personal life. The play is about the Wingfield family. A fatherless family that includes a mother, a sister, and Tom Wingfield as the narrator of the play and a character in it. Tennessee Williams uses his memory play The Glass Menagerie to symbolically reflect his life through the character of Tom Wingfield.

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.

Glass Menagerie” is a tragic story of the Wingfield family, a dysfunctional family of dreamers

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 Glass Menagerie” by Tennessee Williams, was written in the early forties but could be misconstrued as a present-day play, because of the family dynamic that has changed since the forties but has not been completed replaced. In this play, we are introduced to Tom Wingfield who is the breadwinner for the family, which consists of his mom and sister. Amanda Wingfield who is an overbearing mother that knows no boundaries, and Laura Wingfield who is the sweet, and embarrassingly shy daughter of Amanda. Their family dynamic is like most of ours. The mother loves her kids dearly but struggles with letting go of her old identity, the daughter who allows her disability to determine her happiness and the brother who is obligated to work but would rather drink and party his money away. I’m sure many of us can relate to this family in some form. My favorite character in “The Glass Menagerie” is Laura. I love Laura because I can relate to her in more than one way. I was a shy individual most of my life, but once people got to know me they realized I was no different from them. In the following paragraphs, I will share Laura’s character with you, the similarities between Laura and the glass unicorn and I’ll tell you how the glass unicorn represents Laura.

“The Glass Menagerie” by Tennessee Williams is a play about desire to escape and this concept is conveyed through a variety of techniques and ideas shown in this play of exploration by the playwright, Tom Wingfield. First, Jim tries to escape his engagement by having a romantic night with Laura. Then, Tom’s father escapes for the same reasons Tom did. Thirdly, according to Roger Boxill from ‘The Glass Menagerie’ Amanda escapes by reminiscing “Blue Mountain ... And the seventeen gentleman callers.” Fourthly, Laura escapes with romance, going for walks, her “Glass Menagerie, stomach pain, and the broken horn from the unicorn. Finally, Tom escapes by traveling, going to the movies, drinking, and hanging out on the fire escape looking at the moon. Symbolism is also used in many literary works to for shadow or emphasizes an event that is about to happen or already has happened in the story. Hence the title ‘The Glass Menagerie’ in the play foreshadows/emphasizes the event happening or about to happen. The action of “The Glass Menagerie” takes place in the Wingfield family’s apartment in St. Louis, 1937. The events of the play are framed by memory Tom Wingfield is the play’s narrator, and usually smokes and stands on the fire escape as he delivers his monologues.

I used suspense for my attention getting device. The suspense wasn’t first however, I started with a connection with the audience. I talked about fake news, a phrase that everyone has heard about. I then grabbed the with suspense when I said October 31, 1938 was a historic night of fake news. I think my phrase grabbed a lot of attention from the audience. I saw two people look up after I said fake news. After I told them about how October 31, 1938 was a historic night of fake news. I know it cause some information hunger, because when I got done with my speech. Class had ended and couple classmates after class asked me about the play.

The Glass Menagerie means the glass animals collected by Laura. Laura is as beautiful, fragile and vulnerable as the animals. The slight leg disability made Laura sensitive and inferior. As she was afraid to face the teachers and students, she dropped out. Her mother sent Laura to business school to learn typing in order to find a job. But Laura vomited during the speed typing exam as she was too nervous, so she had to drop out again. Laura was afraid of reality and only willing to stay in a fantasy world. Thus, she spent her day at home

Moving on, The Glass Menagerie is a memory play narrated by the character Tom Wingfield who recounts one of his biggest regrets. The play focuses on the climatic decision between his commitment to his family versus his personal desires. Tom remembers that he longed to be free, but has stayed in the family because he

Glass Menagerie Production Concept Watching a movie compared to the reading the book has its pros and cons. USually the movie is not how you imagined some parts to be. Similarly plays act the same way.

The society in The Glass Menagerie is exceptionally intricate. Her own mother, Amanda, is very demanding of her and wishes her to have a gentleman caller. Amanda believes all young women should have dozens of gentlemen callers. She judges a woman’s worth by the amount of attention she receives from men and boasts about herself back then, "One Sunday afternoon in Blue Mountain – your mother received – seventeen! – gentlemen callers! Why, sometimes there weren’t enough chairs to accommodate them all. We had to send the nigger over to bring in folding chairs from the parish house" (Williams 8). Laura lives in a society that believes a man will support a woman. However, her own father runs out on their family and leaves Amanda

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