The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams

In Tennessee William's play, The Glass Menagerie (1945), he presents these characters-Tom, Laura, Amanda, Jim, and Mr. Wingfield- to illustrate their need to escape from reality and to go on an "adventure." Williams starts the story by showing the problems in the Wingfield family; Mr. Wingfield moved away, Amanda lives her life through her children, Laura is crippled, and Tom is never home. Williams reveals the purpose of his play when Tom, the narrator and the son of Amanda, is arguing with his mother in scene three. When reality is no longer intriguing, when it becomes too much to handle, when it doesn't go as planned, this is the time when humans "escape" in any possible way from reality so that they can obtain a sense of adventure. Amanda escape through trying to control her children's lives, by telling them about her past in hopes that they will lead a similar, but better, lifestyle. Laura escapes through her glass menagerie which are in the shape of animals; the glass pieces comfort her, since it is hard for her to make friends due to her shyness she found happiness in the glass animals. Tom escapes by going to the movies, watching other people's adventures, but he leaves at the end of the play to have his own adventure like his father who left and never returned, Jim escapes through his vision of gaining an executive division through completing speech classes. Williams concludes the play with a valuable lesson that Jim taught Laura; no one is perfect, "everyone has problems" (76), and there is no need to escape reality to hide the problems, but instead pix them, become "superior". Williams purpose is to give confidence to those with the "inferior complex" by showing them that they can escape, or they can become superior. he seems to target people with low self esteem, especially those who are physically challenged, because they are one of a kind and they should know that so they wont be inferior.

vocabulary

• Conglomerations- collection
• Mastication- chew up
• bombardments- attack as with artillery or bombs

tone

suspenseful,inspiring

rhetoric devices

• concrete sensory detail- "at the rise of the curtain, the audience is faced with the dark, grim rear wall of the Winfield tenement"(3).
• complex sentence- "late that winter and in the early spring realizing that extra money would be needed to properly feather the nest and plume the bird- she conducted a vigorous campaign on the telephone roping in subscribers to one of those magazines for matrons called the Homemaker's companion...." (19).
• telegraphic sentences- "yep. tomorrow." (42).
• description- "most of them are little animals made out of glass the tiniest little animals in the world" (82).
• monologue - "i didn't go to the moon, i went much further- for time is the longest distance between two places... and so goodbye..." (96-97).

discussion questions

1) Why does Amanda call Laura "sister" in the play when Laura is her daughter? is it just what they said on the 1940s?

2) Wouldn't this play be considered an allegory with superiority being one of its main themes carried throughout the play?

3) everyone is unique, so shouldn't everyone become superior, even the not so beautiful people that Jim mentions?

quote

"you are the only young man that I know of who ignores the fact that the future becomes the present, the present the past, and the past turns into everlasting regret if you don't plan for it" (45).