Glass Menagerie Tennessee Williams Play, the Glass

Glass Menagerie

Tennessee Williams play, The Glass Menagerie, presents the drama of three family members who live in a world whose values and supporting pillars are shaking as a consequence of the disastrous economic times people went through during the Great Depression. The lack of role models in the micro universe of the Wingfield family as well as their dissolution in the macro universe of the whole American society is deeply and irreversibly affecting the three members of the family and their relationship.

Amanda, the mother, the Southern belle type who was raised with the privileges of a class that is no longer enjoying the economic privileges of a wealthy family, is forced to live in a rented apartment with her two children, Laura and Tom, in one of the lower class quarter of the city. Her husband left them when the children were very young and they are financially supported by Tom, who although aspiring to a writer's carrier, works in a shoe factory.

Amanda is a woman who refuses to acknowledge reality and she is more harmful to her children then a real support. The family life is completely unbalanced because the only parent figure, Amanda, is living in her glorious past and hoping that her daughter, Laura will have the future she has always hoped she would have herself.

Although the father is present only through his huge photo, over the mantel piece, his absence is affecting every one of the members of the Wingfield family in every way possible. Amanda is lacking the strong hand of a man who could bring her with her feet down form time to time and guide her in a world that is seeking new meanings, values and leading figures. She is completely absorbed by a world that no longer exists and is undisturbed in her semi-foolishness. There is no one there with the authority and will to point to her faults and her lack of sense of reality is affecting her children and their development.

Tom is stuck in a factory job that is making him feel miserable and bringing hi on the verge of loosing his sanity. The only way he can cope with the cruel reality is to run away from it, taking refuge in drinking and films. The absence of a strong father figure, of a role model, leads him to try to find answers to simple or more complicated questions in literature, movies or in his drinking companions. Furthermore, he is disoriented and there is no father to take the burden of supporting a family form his shoulders. He does not resent his mother and sister for that, but he will have to leave them in order for him not to loose his sanity and find his own vocation into this world.