...Subjected to an unhappy marriage, an alcoholic father often away from home, and an unsafe, abusive environment, Tenessee Williams defied all odds with his astounding success in the drama industry. Though his home life was troubled, he grew to be an author known across the country for his wildly popular novels and plays, most notably of the latter being The Glass Menagerie. Modeled after Williams’s own family, Tom, Amanda, and Laura Wingfield are the artfully created main characters of The Glass Menagerie, each with their own distinct personalities constructed carefully through symbolism. With consideration of the motif of memory, Tennessee Williams uses recurring music, the victrola, jonquils, and Laura’s crippled leg to characterize the members...
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...Landon Grimes Grimes 1 English 102 Mr. Turner 10/4/2012 Character Analysis on Tom Wingfield The Glass Menagerie is a very character oriented poem. Tom, Amanda, and Laura are all very well developed characters. They all have significant and unique characteristics that are shown well throughout the poem. Tom is the most interesting to me though because of his qualities and even his flaws. Tom has a few different and contradicting characteristics such as he is easily persuaded, his determination and his strong sense of guilt. Tom Wingfield seems to be easily entrapped and persuaded into certain situations he may or may not want to be in, given his current predicament. He has a feeling of being trapped at home because his mother and crippled sister depend on him. Tom would like to leave but he can not because he is basically devoted to taking care of them until they can find another source of income and help. Tom also wants to escape from his job at the warehouse and become a merchant marine. Tom desires adventure which he does not have at work or any other part of of his life. To get some sort of escape from reality Tom goes to the movies to have some sort of adventure. Tom finally gets his chance to leave when his mother says that if he can find his sister a husband then he can go off and do what he wants. “I go to the movies because I like adventure. Adventure is something I don’t have much of at work, so I go to the movies.” (Sc.4, p.1170) ...
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...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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...Analysis and Plot Summary of “The Glass Menagerie” by Tennessee Williams Before beginning this summary and analysis of “Glass Menagerie” by Tennessee Williams, it is important to point out that this play is not happening in the narrator’s (Tom’s) present, but it is based on his memories. The setting of “The Glass Menagerie” is a cramped apartment in a lower-class part of St. Louis in the year 1937. The main character and narrator of “The Glass Menagerie” by Tennessee Williams, Tom, is in a merchant sailor’s uniform and he details the setting even further, telling us that America’s lower classes are still recovering from the Great Depression. In the early stages of the plot of the Glass Menagerie, we also learn that his father left the family a long time ago, even though there is a picture of him that is plain sight throughout “The Glass Menagerie”. While Tom is speaking (as well as throughout the play) pay attention to the screen which presents certain words and images important to the text and try to imagine how this might be if you were sitting in the audience. In these first few scenes of “The Glass Menagerie” by Tennessee Williams, we meet the mother, Amanda, who still seems caught up in her life as a former Southern belle. She chides both of her children about being odd (Laura wears a brace on her leg and is painfully shy while Tom writes poetry and disappears every night to go the movies and get away from the depressing house). Laura is a fragile figure and collects glass...
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...felt rather than as seen (Barnet 519). The Glass Menagerie is mostly expressionistic: the first sentence of the Production Notes declares that “it is a memory play.” The term “memory play” suggests that it is a play worked out in one’s mental process, rather than a realistic representation. Instead of external reality, the inner vision becomes the primary concern of expressionistic drama. Thus this paper focuses on the repressed state of each character in the Wingfield family, and tries to shed light on their inner psychology by means of psychoanalytical approach. As a mother figure, Amanda is quite distinctive from those in conventional drama. With the father absent for years, Amanda takes on not only maternal nuturing responsibilities but also the paternal disciplinary role. She is a breadwinner (though partly) as well as a caretaker. Yet in her attempt to fulfill this double-sided role, she actually encounters a series of frustrations and repressions, which provoke her to escape into the retreat of past. In the play, what characterizes Amanda is her poignant sentiment toward the Old South days. She believes in the myth of “gracious living, family tradition, chivalry, coquetry” (Senata 23). Obsessed with the past, she frequently retold her memory as a young girl who received at most seventeen gentleman callers within a Sunday afternoon. Once these memories are provoked, “her eyes lift, her face glows, and her voice becomes rich and elegiac” (Glass 10). The elegiac mood nevertheless...
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...Glass Menagerie: An Analysis Tyson Evans University of Phoenix The Glass Menagerie offers a beautifully developed glimpse into humanity and more specifically familial dysfunction. Tennessee Williams uses this play as a definitive embodiment of the dangers of interdependence as well as low self- esteem. Williams begins this symbolic journey from the very inception of the work. The use of the word “menagerie” meaning a collection of wild animals kept in captivity for exhibition or a strange collection. In this case, the strange collection is the Wingfields. The play and the text presents us with an overbearing mother who clings to yesterday year, a daughter that is mentally bound by her psychological insecurities that stem from her physical disability, and an irresponsible brother who want to escape his this reality he has with his mother and sister. The word “Glass” represents their fragility, individually and as a unit. Frankly the family’s external problems seem fairly miniscule on the grander scale of the issues known to plague any familial unit. They are not rich, but not destitute, they have lost a parent, but they have each other. The play is set in the midst of the great depression following a war, therefore this family portrait was one that would have been mirrored in many American homes; financial turmoil and lost family members was commonplace. However, the psychological torment and idiosyncrasies characteristic of all three of our main characters holds them captive...
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...right to read it before it was published. He put nothing offlimits. He encouraged the people he knew to speak honestly. And Jobs speaks candidly, sometimes brutally so, about the people he worked with and competed against. His friends, foes, and colleagues provide an unvarnished view of the passions, perfectionism, obsessions, artistry, devilry, and compulsion for control that shaped his approach to business and the innovative products that resulted. Driven by demons, Jobs could drive those around him to fury and despair. But his personality and products were interrelated, just as Apple’s hardware and software tended to be, as if part of an integrated system. His tale is instructive and cautionary, filled with lessons about innovation, character, leadership, and values. Walter Isaacson, the CEO...
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...THE POWER OF HABIT Duhi_9781400069286_2p_all_r1.j.indd i 10/17/11 12:01 PM Duhi_9781400069286_2p_all_r1.j.indd ii 10/17/11 12:01 PM HABIT W h y We D o W h a t We D o and How to Change It THE POWER OF CHARLES DUHIGG Random House e N e w Yo r k Duhi_9781400069286_2p_all_r1.j.indd iii 10/17/11 12:01 PM This is a work of nonfiction. Nonetheless, some names and personal characteristics of individuals or events have been changed in order to disguise identities. Any resulting resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental and unintentional. Copyright © 2012 by Charles Duhigg All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Random House, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. RANDOM HOUSE and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc. ISBN 978-1-4000-6928-6 eBook ISBN 978-0-679-60385-6 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper Illustrations by Anton Ioukhnovets www.atrandom.com 2 4 6 8 9 7 5 3 1 First Edition Book design by Liz Cosgrove Duhi_9781400069286_2p_all_r1.j.indd iv 10/17/11 12:01 PM To Oliver, John Harry, John and Doris, and, everlastingly, to Liz Duhi_9781400069286_2p_all_r1.j.indd v 10/17/11 12:01 PM Duhi_9781400069286_2p_all_r1.j.indd vi 10/17/11 12:01 PM CONTENTS PROLOGUE The Habit Cure GGG xi PA R T O N E The Habits of Individuals 1. THE HABIT LOOP How Habits Work 3 31 60 2. THE...
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