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Laura is mortified by Amanda's attempt to make her seem sexual and attractive because she is so shy. She had a crush on Jim when she was in high school but is convinced that no man can love her because of her physical disability. Laura, unlike Amanda, is not focused on the future and what she will do to make a living. When Jim tells her that he is engaged to be married, Laura's brief hopes for love and normalcy are shattered and she seems to withdraw from the world. Amanda is also shocked, but the event enables her to see Laura clearly -- after Jim leaves Amanda says that Laura is crippled for the first time in the play. But she is unable to understand her own role in Laura's tragedy and instead blames Tom for the evening and the fact that he did not know that Jim was engaged.
Amanda clearly lives in her own world and has her own vision of reality. She is not particularly concerned with her children's true natures and their emotional needs. She is very driven in a materialistic way and thinks that if her children can get ahead through marriage and good jobs, they will be well. But Amanda's...
Discuss the title of the play. It has both a literal and symbolic meaning. What are they?
The literal meaning of the title The Glass Menagerie is a reference to Laura's collection of fragile glass animals, which she spends hours dusting and tending to. Like Laura, the animals are delicate, beautiful, and easily broken. Symbolically, Jim accidentally breaks the horn of the unicorn, causing the unicorn to become an ordinary horse. This demonstrates how Jim makes Laura feel normal and less freakish for a moment. But like glass itself, Laura's moment of happiness is shattered quickly. And like glass, Laura seems unable to function outside of the very carefully-tended world of the apartment.
The title could also refer to all of the characters in the play -- all of the Wingfields are fragile, glass animals that are misunderstood by the world and easily broken when they are not taken care of properly. They are all different kinds of 'animals' but all equally fragile.
Tom states that the events are based on a "working memory" thus suggesting that aspects of the story are exaggerated. Williams works to point out that the story will not follow the conventions of conventional theatre which is evident in the narrator addressing the audience directly. 3. Describe the contrast between Amanda's perception of the night Jim comes to visit, and Laura's perception of the same evening. What does this
86). Jim symbolically inspires Laura to accept her individuality and to see that beneath her outstanding traits she is no different from anyone else. His gentility and kindness, borne of Southern culture, help Laura come to terms with herself and her social awkwardness. Laura's personality transformation through Jim's kindness paralleled her symbolic transformation through the unicorn. Had the unicorn not been made of glass, its horn would not have so
Glass Menagerie: An Uncertain Reality This essay will examine the ways in which the three main characters in "The Glass Menagerie" soften with harshness of day-to-day living with an insulating blanket of self-deception. This play is one of Tennessee Williams's earliest and most biographical plays (Patterson, 27). "The Glass Menagerie" was written by Thomas Lanier "Tennessee" Williams (1911-1983) in 1944, incorporating his short story "Portrait of a Girl in Glass" with the unproduced
In The Glass Menagerie, the self-induced isolation of Laura stands in parallel to the mostly perceived isolation of Tom. These siblings suffer from symbiotic emotional illnesses that, if we are to understand Williams' works taken together, are indicative of a home itself shrouded in an unhealthy blanket of stunted relationships and the chilling void of empathy. The Glass Menagerie would be the first of his plays to achieve widespread critical
Glass Menagerie Tennessee Williams, His Mother and the Glass Menagerie Tennessee Williams is among the most celebrated playwrights of the 20th century. His family portraits, set to the backdrop of a deteriorating Southern tradition, are a window into human foibles like vanity, insecurity, detachment and personal disappointment. All of these themes are in full display with Williams' breakthrough work, 1944's The Glass Menagerie. A peering insight into the unhappy lives of the
Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams Humankind's destiny has always been driven by fate and circumstances and in dealing with these two, people have ways of changing the outcome while others simply accept what comes their way. Tennessee Williams's The Glass Menagerie is a play that portrays the manners by which the characters handle their situations in life. What they have are not the best of circumstances especially since the play was