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Analysis of the Glass Menagerie

In: English and Literature

Submitted By sbutler12
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The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams is a vision of lonely human beings who fail to make contact, are isolated from each other and society, and ultimately feel abandoned by the universe.
Tom, a writer who has left his mother and sister in order to pursue freedom and adventure, narrates a memory of his abandoned family. The memory is of St. Louis in 1937. Tom, his mother Amanda and his sister Laura are trying to make ends meet in a small tenement apartment. Tom’s father, a telephone repairman who fell in love with long distance, has long since abandoned them leaving nothing behind but his picture. Tom supports the family by working in a shoe warehouse. Since his responsibilities curtail his desire to be a writer, Tom escapes the mundane reality of life at the warehouse through literature, movies and dreams of joining the Merchant Marine. His sister Laura lives in a world of her own and spends all her time polishing her little glass animals and listening to old records. Amanda can’t understand Tom’s resentment or Laura’s lack of interest in her own future. After Amanda discovers that Laura has dropped out of Business College without telling her, she decides that she must find a husband for her daughter. When asked if she ever liked a boy Laura tells her mother she only ever liked one boy in high school, the popular boy who sang the lead in the school operetta and called her by the nickname Blue Roses. Amanda badgers Tom to bring home a nice man from the warehouse for Laura, bribing him by telling him he can be free of his responsibility to them as soon as there’s someone else to take care of his sister. Tom invites Jim O’Connor, his only friend at the warehouse, home for dinner. Amanda goes all out with preparations, buying a new lamp and a new dress for Laura. Laura has an acute attack of shyness and becomes ill when she discovers that the man coming for dinner

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