Essay about Williams's Use of Symbolic Reference in The Glass Menagerie

There is not one comic or movie, where Superman fails to save the day, where in the end he does not win. The Harry always defeats the Voldemort. This is because when a Christ figure is developed, there are certain expectations that go along with that. However, what happens when a Christ figure fails to fulfill their duty? In The Glass Menagerie, a play by Tennessee Williams, Laura’s mother Amanda wants Laura to have a suitor. Finally, Tom —Laura’s sister— invites Jim O’Connor, one of his friends from work over to have a meal. Amanda goes into a frenzy preparing for him, and when he arrives he appears like the perfect suitor. As the night goes on, Jim eventually seduces Laura and then leaves in a rush. In Tennessee Williams’s play, The Glass Menagerie, Williams uses a ironic Christ figure to demonstrate how illusions tear a family apart.

   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.

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.

In the study of Tennessee Willliams' plays: "Suddenly Last Summer" and "The Glass Menagerie", we can find a great deal of autobiographical connections. "The Glass Menagerie" is particularly considered the author's most biographical work. It is described by the playwright as "a memory play"; indeed, it is a memory of the author's own youth, an expression of his own life and experiences. Similarly, "Suddenly Last Summer" includes many of Tennesse Williams' real life details.

In “The Glass Menagerie,” Laura’s mother is very uptight and is always pushing Laura to find a husband. Since, Laura has been very shy, she was unable to put herself out there to attract male suitors. Her mother also puts Laura in typing school, so that if she can’t find a husband, than at least she can work. However, Laura quits because she got sick in front of the whole class and was extremely embarrassed, so she stopped going. This is what pushed her mother to find a husband even more. Her mother asked her brother, Tom, to ask around his co-workers to see if there are any young bachelors. Tom brought home a man named Jim, and before Jim’s arrival, the apartment was renovated by their mother in order to make Jim feel more comfortable in their home. Laura and her mother prepared all day for Jim’s arrival, Laura was given an extra padding to her bra, “Because, to be painfully honest, your chest is flat” (Amanda 53), as her mother said. When Jim arrives, Laura has been too shy to even be in the same room as him, so she stayed in another room for the first couple minutes. When she finally came out and talked to Jim, she started breaking out of her shell and had a full conversation with him. They talked about high school and how Jim barely knew about Laura’s disformity, she shared her most favorite glass figurine (a unicorn), and danced. However, when they were dancing, since the

The Blue Roses represent what Jim sees in Laura, even though she does not see it or understand it herself. Even as little kids, he would ask her “what was the matter when I came back. I Said pleurosis he thought that I said Blue Roses ! So that's what he always called me after that. Whenever he saw me, he'd holler, 'Hello, Blue Roses!”

Laura is a character who longs to find companionship, beyond her glass menagerie, although ironically, she is the one keeping herself from this companionship due to her anxiety against social interaction. Laura does possess the aptitude for companionship, but no sign of this comes until the end of the memory, at which point we as an audience understand the majority of why Laura behaves the way she does. By knowing the confinements of which Laura lives (in an apartment with her mother and brother) as they are mixed with her limited relationship(s), understanding her deep obsession with her glass menagerie and acknowledging the true happiness her glass animals bring her, and knowing the true need that Laura has for legitimate companionship beyond

1. What is the role of the glass menagerie in the play? What are two things it represents? What does the glass unicorn symbolize?

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.

Both writers clearly underline their characters as being deeply impacted by the egregious event of The Great Depression that occurred post war. In their retrospective texts, they could be seen to be opposing the great social, political, and to an extent, cultural changes during 20s America which was mainly achieved through industrialization and rapid advancements of inventions such as the first ever US radio station. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby” is a text reflective of the period in which it was written, ‘The Roaring Twenties’. It was written in America during the mid 1920s, a time of moral decadence and feelings of complacency following the conclusion of the Great War. On the surface, the text seems to be about love, wealth and power, yet this first impression does not do justice to the text’s main complexities and hidden depths. The text also explores corruption, idealism, faith, and the illusions of death through the use of a variety of images and symbols. The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams however is perhaps Williams’ most successful play, which essentially brought him from obscurity to fame. Importantly, it is unique in its insistence of unreality as Williams writes in his initial stage directions ‘the scene is memory and is therefore non-realistic.’

Born Thomas Lanier Williams III, Tennessee Williams produced multiple Pulitzer Prize-winning play writes throughout his career. However, his breakout play was The Glass Menagerie. After perfecting his play for many years, The Glass Menagerie was first introduced to Broadway on March 31, 1945. As a young writer, Williams lived vicariously through his plays. Throughout this play in particular, there are several allegories that pertain to Williams 's life directly. Although Williams had a relatively happy childhood, his life changed when he was relocated to St. Louis, Missouri. “The carefree nature of his boyhood was stripped in his new urban home, and as a result Williams turned inward and started to write” (bio). Writing plays was a way for Williams to express his frustration within his family. The Glass Menagerie is a representation of a majority of things. Primarily however, it is a play in which Williams tells his autobiography through Tom.

    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.

Looking at John Lahr’s recent biography, he frames the history of Williams’s life based on textual readings of his plays. The notion that Williams’s plays were heavily autobiographical is now a generally accepted interpretation used to connect the disparate nature of his texts. As many contemporary scholars do, Lahr reads Menagerie as biographical portraits of his mother and sister when they lived in St. Louis, Streetcar drawing from his experience in New Orleans and his tempestuous relationship with Pancho Rodriguez, Cat referencing Williams’s uneasy relationship with his father, and Suddenly Last Summer documenting both his experiences with therapy and his sister’s lobotomy: “Throughout his life, Williams, who was the most

Set in the 30’s, The Glass Menagerie, written by Tennessee Williams uses various forms of symbolism to signify numerous different things. The play is set in the apartment of the Wingfield family in the city of St. Louis. Of the Wingfield family, none of them admire staying in the apartment and only dwell due to their state of poverty. The play is the recollection of one of the characters, Tom Wingfield, and his struggle to accept his responsibilities of caring for his mother and sister. Throughout the play as a whole, Williams portrays the aspiration of escaping into an imaginary delusional world by symbolizing the fire escape as a literal departure from their own realities for Tom Wingfield, Amanda Wingfield, and Laura Wingfield.