...Rhetorical Analysis of Glass Menagerie The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams is a play about the narrator turned hero named Tom. Tom works at a shoe warehouse and writes poetry in his free time; while also taking on the responsibilities of his family after his father left. The mother Amanda lives in her memories of gentleman callers and parties, while avoiding the reality of her crippled daughter Laura who is in a dream world of little glass animals. Her mother seeing no future for her, she gets Tom to find a bachelor for Laura and invite him to dinner. Instead Tom brings home Jim his employee and also unknown secret idol of Laura’s from high school. Jim gets her from out this dream world, but when he breaks off bad news of him being engaged Laura withdraws for good. Angering the mother and eventually leading to Tom leaving as his father did. In this play Tennessee Williams uses a multitude of symbols. From these symbols, there comes deeper understanding of the relationship between the play’s four characters. The most obvious symbol in this play is Laura’s glass menagerie, representing the world she lives in. Being that this glass menagerie is a representation of Laura’s world. I understood that when Jim bumped into the table and knocked the menagerie over causing it shatter; Laura picking up the pieces then handing it to Jim, showed then that she wanted Jim to be her world/her happiness. Another recurring symbol is that of the fire escape. Each symbol is a concrete...
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...“The Glass Menagerie” by Tennessee Williams written in 1944. In many of his plays the circumstances reflect his own life, in the Glass Menagerie this is especially true. His father, a violent traveling salesman, and mother a puritanical, preacher’s daughter. He also had an older sister named Rose, whom he cherished, she suffered from psychological problems which lead to an institutionalized life. The Glass Menagerie represents a somewhat altered image of the Williams family. The play set in the 1930’s in the Wingfield’s meager apartment; which is in a lower-class tenement building in St. Louis, it’s a “memory play,” in which Tom (after his own real name Thomas) recalls scenes from his youth during the height of the Depression. Outspoken Amanda,...
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...Literary Analysis: The Glass Menagerie Many critics believe that “The Glass Menagerie” is one of Tennessee Williams finest literary pieces, and that like most of his work, it was a reflection of his own life story. Born as Thomas Lanier Williams III on March 26, 1911, in Columbus, Mississippi, he lived with his loving but possessive mother and his older sister, Rose, who later suffered a mental breakdown. His father was a hard man who tended to drink too much and who was often away from home due to his job as a traveling salesman. Through most of his childhood, Mr. Williams felt like an outcast due to both his delicate health and the ridicule he received for his southern accent after his father accepted a job in St. Louis. This ongoing theme of lack of self-worth throughout his life was in large part due to his sexual orientation and lifestyle both of which were not easily tolerated in the early part of the last century. Although Mr. Williams self-doubt is evident in much of his work, the rest of the literary world and his readers feel without a doubt that his work is award winning. His impact on the literary world can be seen by the many awards he received including his winning not one but two Pulitzer Prizes for “A Streetcar Named Desire” in 1948 and for “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” in 1955; as well as the longevity of his work which is proven by its contemporary recognition. Therefore, due to his literary genius and personal life experience, Williams was able to use the...
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...Wingfield’s abandonment provoked the family’s fragility. Laura’s fears are concealed within her illusionary world of polished glass animals which refract light and illuminate Laura's fragile and beautiful world. Her “glass menagerie” and “Victrola” symbolic of her inability to enter the real world reveal Laura's multifaceted personality and her lack of self-confidence. Not only is her leg frail, but so is her self-esteem. Laura is treated with fragility by her family members who “come to her rescue” and prohibit her from attempting to accomplish anything, provoking audiences to question Amanda’s parenting. Furthermore, the integral music, specifically "The Glass Menagerie" theme, a distant-sounding, delicate melody coupled with the glass menagerie’s shattering, highlights Laura’s fragility when she cries out “as if wounded” creating an emotional emphasis, evoking sympathy within the audience. This play delves into the moral ramifications of specific kinds of escape, provoking audiences to question the repercussions of leaving loved ones. Williams’s examines perceptions of reality through the use of delicate music, serving as a thread of connection and allusion between the...
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...A Biographical Criticism of the Glass Menagerie The Glass Menagerie is an intriguing screenplay that portrays the image of a struggling family and hardships that they encounter through the eyes of the son, Thomas, who is also the narrator. Much of the symbolism employed in this drama is directly related to the authors own personal life experiences, giving main focus to his family relationships and the troubles with his father. The script is about a family a four, a mother, a father, an older sister, and a younger brother. The characters in this drama are almost identical to the author himself, in some respect as well as to his parents and older sister in real life. Written in 1945 by Tennessee Williams (Thomas Lanier Williams), The Glass Menagerie depicts a family of three who live in a small apartment in the city. They struggle emotionally and monetarily while mourning the disappearance of their father, who has abandoned the family and moved over seas. Not only does the entire script appear as though it was actual reality for the author himself, but the characters in the play are quite similar to Tennessee’s own family in many ways. In The Glass Menagerie, Tom’s father is a hard drinker, and a telephone salesman who spends most of his time away from home until one day, out of the blue he disappears with no warning. The family later receives a postcard from Mazatlan with nothing more than, “Hello & Goodbye” written on the back. Although Tennessee’s father, Cornelius...
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...The Glass Menagerie Dr. C. Hemmye University of Phoenix In the play The Glass Menagerie, many characteristics were shown in different people. There were primarily four main characters in the play: Amanda, Laura, Tom, and Jim. Each character had their own original issue in the story, which makes the play so entirely complex. What makes the play interesting are putting those characters together and creating inside moral and conflict. As a result, everybody still appears to be an outcast in his or her own world. The title The Glass Menagerie was named because of Laura’s glass animal collection. She had many different animals that symbolized your everyday people that she came not to be a part of. One of the animals was a unicorn which was a symbol of Laura by representing the idea of being different. Laura was described to have a shy personality and would never attempt to make a change on her appearance to people. One of the main appearances she was embarrassed about was her crippled leg. Since she is already shy, this adds on to the fact that she can be very sensitive as well. Near the end, when Jim accidentally broke unicorn’s horn, she was hurt from seeing the broken glass and finding out that Jim was engaged after kissing her. To show Jim her pain, she gave him the unicorn showing that she is fragile like the glass unicorn (p.1282-1283). The most emphasis was on the kiss because it was assumed from the audience that it was Laura’s first kiss. Amanda...
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...found throughout his writing. The Glass Menagerie is one of Williams’ greatest plays and one of the most intense in terms of symbolism. The very title of the play is a symbol, and symbols occupy almost every sentence. It is said that this literary work was written as an allegory of his own life’s disappointments. The characters, lighting, glass, and even the props all prove to be somewhat symbolic in nature. In the play a southern family, trapped by poverty and codependency, struggles to survive in St. Louis. The story is narrated by Tom Wingfield who struggles with choosing between his own personal dreams versus accepting the reality of his families situation. Tom and his family live in an alley apartment and survive mainly on Tom's salary from a shoe factory. Having dreams that are bigger than St Louis he lives in a fantasy world and his mind is comsumed with thoughts of escaping their dreary lifestyle. The fire escape and goingto the movies are his only solice. He is able to live vicariously through the characters on screen, watching their adventures cause he is not able to live his own. Toms sister Laura is slightly cripple and is incredibly insecure. She had to wear a brace on her leg because of a childhood disease so she felt inferior. She said it sounded like thunder when she would walk causing her to refrain from venturing into new possibilities. She chooses instead to live in an alternate universe where her collection of glass figurines and her victrola records...
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...The Glass Menagerie explores the unique and interesting issues through intriguing characters and events. These Texts are valued due to the quality of their construction and how efficiently the audience can relate to it. The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams written in 1941 is a timeless and universal place that defers the boundaries of time and space to explore a range of interesting ideas. Through a range of interesting techniques, this semi-biographical explores themes of escape, abandonment and responsibility to the family through the memory of the narrator Tom Wingfield. Tom States ‘ The Play is a memory’. This is shown through the dim lighting and the settings of the scenes. We can see this by noting the lack of realism; it's overblown and there is too-perfect symbolism, as well as its frequent use of music. The narrator, Tom, is not the only character haunted by his memories. Amanda also lives in constant pursuit of her disappeared youth, and old records from her childhood are almost as important to Laura as her glass animals. For these characters, memory is a hindering force that stops them from finding happiness in the present or potential of the future. But it is also the driving force for Tom, who eventually uses the memory of his father to get away from the trap of his family, to create a life of his own. The plot of this play is based around abandonment, which we see each member of the Wingfield family has experienced abandonment. Mr. Wingfield abandoned...
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...play, then he would quit the business and find "another line of work." In the meantime, Tennessee Williams had met great success with The Glass Menagerie in 1945, a very personal and psychological play with poetic overtones. Miller's plays, on the other hand, are public works, with straightforward (though not unpoetic) language, and which address issues of the individual's public persona and how people act. But he learned from Williams's success and set out to write a more commercial play, a drama that would "land" with audiences, in the language of the Broadway business. He also chose to write a play in a realistic style, a problem play in the manner of Henrik Ibsen, evoking a style he had not used in many years. The work of Ibsen influenced All My Sons structurally as well, for Ibsen had liberally applied the principle of Greek theater that stresses the influence of the past on the present. When the play was finished after five years of work, Miller asked his agent to send it to the director Elia Kazan. A former member of the Communist Party, Kazan had directed Williams's The Glass Menagerie, and he would later direct the genre-redefining A Streetcar Named Desire and Death of a Salesman (and would win Academy Awards for Gentleman's Agreement and On the Waterfront). Kazan's career was tarnished in memory, however, and his relationship with Miller was permanently severed when he chose to name names for the House Un-American...
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...Analysis While reading two good stories, you can find many comparisons and difference between the two. Mama in Alice Walker’s “Everyday Use” and Amanda in Tennessee Williams “The Glass Menagerie” have some comparisons and difference. Mama and Amanda both live in modest homes. Mama’s house, “It is three rooms, just like the one that burned, except the rood is tin; they don’t make shingle roofs any more. There are no real windows, just some holes cut in the sides, like the portholes in a ship, but not round and not square, with rawhide holding the shutters up on the outside” (Walker 71). Amanda’s house, her front porch is a fire escape, so her house isn’t really that nice either (Williams 991). Also both Mama and Amanda are single mothers with two children. Both of their husbands left them with no say. Mama’s husband really doesn’t say why he left. But Amanda’s husband left with a phone call: TOM. This is our father who left us a long time ago. He was a telephone man who fell in love with a long distances; he gave up his job with the telephone company and skipped the light fantastic out of town… The last we heard of him containing a message of two words-“Hello-Good-bye!” and an address. (Williams 972) Another thing that Mama and Amanda have in common is that they have a different relationship with one of their children. Mama will probably pick Maggie over Dee, just like Amanda would probably pick Laura over Tom. For example, Mama said to Dee, “Take one or two of the others...
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...Escapism in Society: The Glass Menagerie Readers everywhere will love the book The Glass Menagerie as readers steps back in time to the hey day of grand staircases, and formal attire. Competition is rampant and the quest to become successful is what turns this story into a bit of an adventure. At first glance it would seem as if their lives are normal, but Amanda’s “impulse to preserve her single-parent family seems as familiar as the morning newspaper” (Presley 53) changes that dynamic to a little strange. As their friends the Wingfields go, they are just the typical family struggling to get by. The biggest problem that stems from this family, however, is their inability to communicate effectively with each other. Instead of communicating...
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...Analysis While reading two good stories, you can find many comparisons and difference between the two. Mama in Alice Walker’s “Everyday Use” and Amanda in Tennessee Williams “The Glass Menagerie” have some comparisons and difference. Mama and Amanda both live in modest homes. Mama’s house, “It is three rooms, just like the one that burned, except the rood is tin; they don’t make shingle roofs any more. There are no real windows, just some holes cut in the sides, like the portholes in a ship, but not round and not square, with rawhide holding the shutters up on the outside” (Walker 71). Amanda’s house, her front porch is a fire escape, so her house isn’t really that nice either (Williams 991). Also both Mama and Amanda are single mothers with two children. Both of their husbands left them with no say. Mama’s husband really doesn’t say why he left. But Amanda’s husband left with a phone call: TOM. This is our father who left us a long time ago. He was a telephone man who fell in love with a long distances; he gave up his job with the telephone company and skipped the light fantastic out of town… The last we heard of him containing a message of two words-“Hello-Good-bye!” and an address. (Williams 972) Another thing that Mama and Amanda have in common is that they have a different relationship with one of their children. Mama will probably pick Maggie over Dee, just like Amanda would probably pick Laura over Tom. For example, Mama said to Dee, “Take one or two of the others...
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...The Dreamer Page 1970 question # 2- Analyze the complexities and contradictions to be found in a well-rounded character from a play of your choice. Tom Wingfield introduces himself as an ambitious man who wishes to escape his own reality in Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie (1945). He is the breadwinner of his family, providing for his mother, Amanda, and his sister, Laura, by working at a “shoe factory where his father worked” (1612). Tom narrates the play from his dreamer perspective. He constantly goes to see movies in an attempt to provide adventure to his lackluster life. At first Tom struck me as sympathetic, but as the play progresses he reveals himself to be a very selfish individual. Tom narrates each scene from “memory and [they are] therefore unrealistic” (1614). He remembers his life as an imprisonment, where he is stuck doing undesirable work to provide for his family. His father’s abandonment left him as the sole provider for his family. His family displays “a blown up photograph of the father [that] hangs on the wall of [their] living room” (1614) in their disheveled apartment “flanked on both sides by dark, narrow alleys” (1614). We are continuously exposed to Tom’s viewpoint and the difficulty he has with separating his life from his vision. Amanda’s son emphasizes the smothering nature of his mother throughout the play. Amanda habitually badgers Tom telling him, “Honey, don’t push with your fingers. If you have to push with something, the thing...
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...In Tennessee Williams’ ,“The Glass Menagerie,” there are relationships between the three main characters. The relationship between Tom and Laura is a typical brother sister relationship. They both get along and are nice to each other, but at the same time have their fighting moments. When Tom and Laura are bickering back and forth about their mother when she is talking about he seventeen gentlemen callers it really shows their true relationship as brother and sister. Laura says, “Yes. But let her tell it again”(7). When she says this Tom wants to make her mother stop talking but Laura is just telling him to let her go with it and just have her moment. This shows they are close and get along very well even when they are arguing. The next relationship is between Tom and Amanda, his mother. Tom and Amanda’s relationship is very difficult. They do not get along very well. Tom gets annoyed with his mother and the way she acts sometimes. Tom and Amanda get in an argument about his role in the family. Tom finally says, “I don’t want to hear anymore”(22). This shows his frustration from his mother getting to him. He eventually leaves the house and goes to the movies to calm himself and be alone. Tom and his mother’s relationship truly is a struggle that needs to get worked out between the two of them. The relationship between Amanda and her daughter, Laura, is very different. Amanda tries to live through her daughter’s youth. The one thing the mother...
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...In the story of The Glass Menagerie, Mr. Wingfield was one of the main characters. Although he was not physically present, nothing more than a picture in a frame, he still had a deep impact on the family he left behind. Mr. Wingfield had played a key role in the play, that had been displayed through the characters of Tom, Laura, and Amanda throughout the story. The impact Mr. Wingfield had on Tom was one of the most noticeable in all of the characters. Tom had a very hard time providing for Amanda and Laura in the story. He was only a young adult and he was forced to get a job to support his mother and sister. After putting the weight of taking care of them on his shoulders, he became overwhelmed and decided to run off. Although, Tom also did not have a good father figure to grow up with. It made it very hard for him to become the father figure. With no role model for him, it was a difficult challenge for Tom to learn the basics of being at the head of the family. Since no one was there to teach him these aspects in this important role, he made the decision to do exactly what his father had done, because to him it was the only path he knew to take....
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