...The reader feels sorrow and pathos for these two women, as they both struggle between the painful concept of reality- causing them to retreat to the concept of illusion. In Tennessee Williams very famous and well-known work, The Glass Menagerie, the reader observes Williams’s theme of illusion versus reality as being a pivotal and central focus of the play: “Although he’s trying too hard, you never know if Jim will make it big. Perhaps he will. On the other hand, when you recall that illusion dominates the play, you might suspect that Jim’s plans are pure fancy, and that he’s placed too much faith in a hollow dream” (Ehrenhaft 16). The play centers around Amanda Wingfield and her son, Jim and her daughter, Laura and the struggles they face living in a small, run-down apartment in St. Louis. Out of all the characters in the play, Laura seems to be the main character who draws on this theme of reality versus illusion: “Laura is unable to hold a job and or interact socially with...
Words: 1030 - Pages: 5
...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...
Words: 1484 - Pages: 6
...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) ...
Words: 544 - Pages: 3
...Essay of the Glass Menagerie Jenni Frederick Introduction to American Literature Everest University Online Essay on the Glass Menagerie In the very beginning of this play, Tom avoids conflict with his mother by stepping out for a cigarette in the middle of dinner. Tom wants to escape his mother's nagging so to avoid it all together he leaves the dinner table before dinner is even finished. His solution was to just get up and walk away. The fire escape seems to be Tom's way to escape. All he wants is out of that little house and away from his mother. I believe that Amanda wants Laura to find herself a husband so they can leave their little cramped space. Laura, however seems fine with her surroundings and does not share her mother and brother's wants. In Scene Two we can see that Laura does not want the same things that her mother wants. She does not want to go to school. School just wasn't for her, that is why she dropped out. Her mother is upset about this because she wants more for her daughter. I think that it is more than that too. I think that Amanda is looking to Laura to save both of them from the life that they have. You can see this when Amanda says to Laura, "So what are we going to do the rest of our lives?" (Williams, 2016, p.705) Amanda is looking for an escape from their poor life as well, but she is looking to Laura to provide that escape. I believe when all of them talk about their father, there is a little jealousy...
Words: 597 - Pages: 3
...Week 3: Reaction Paper – “The Glass Menagerie” ENG/120 / Charles Zeitvogel July 11, 2011 University of Phoenix In first reading “The Glass Menagerie” by Tennessee Williams, I did not think it would be something I would be interested in. However, while I continued to read, I continued to become more and more attached to the characters and drawn into the play. The use of the narrator, Tom Wingfield, who is also a main character in the play, was wonderful. I really enjoyed the parts where he was speaking to the audience and Amanda would call him in and he would answer, look to the audience, and walk onto the scene. In my opinion, that made the connection with Tom even bigger for the audience. Tom is the working man of the family, the breadwinner so to speak. He works in a shoe warehouse and the audience finds he is very unhappy there. Tom struggles through life without adventure. He longs to have adventure like the people in the movies that he sees all the time. Tom is called “Shakespeare” by his co-worker and friend Jim O’Conner, because he writes poetry. Tom cannot handle his overbearing mother and after a big fight breaks down and does something she asks. Amanda is the mother of Laura and Tom. She is the antagonist of the play. Amanda is still hurt by her husband leaving her all those years ago. She yearns to re-live her past of popularity through her daughter, Laura. Everything Amanda tries does not work as Laura is not like Amanda was. Amanda struggles...
Words: 812 - Pages: 4
...Hermione Petioma Professor Larriviere ENC 1102 T R 6:30- 7:45 am 4/23/15 Essay #3 The Glass Menagerie pg. 1134 #1 Freedom Spread your wings and fly. There may come a time in everyone’s life where they choose to change their life and never look back but they need to have some motivation. In the play The Glass Menagerie Tom is a man who wants to change his life. He is an adult living with his mother but she nags him. He feels stuck and wants to leave his home. When he’s fed up he chooses to leave his family spontaneously and he doesn’t look back. Although he left the memory of how Tom left remains with him. He was motivated by the chance to follow his dream when his life became annoying and frustrating. Tom lives with his mother and his older sister in an apartment. He works to support his family because his father left the family when he and his sister were children. Because his sister has a disability she doesn’t work and his mother is old. I believe that Tom was aggravated with having to care for his family. He is the youngest but immediately he is responsible for both his mom and sister once he is old enough to work. It doesn’t help the fact that his mother Amanda nags him to not be his father who was a drinker. Her nagging provides a reason for Tom to not want to stay home which he shows when he claims to be at the movies every night. Tom works at a warehouse because he is the only source of income for his family. He doesn’t like the warehouse job because he is...
Words: 560 - Pages: 3
...Self The three literary pieces The Glass Menagerie, Barn Burning, and Ulysses all have something in common. A significant character from each work abandoned his family to seek out his own needs. As I read the three different literary works recently I reflected on what a one-of-a-kind thing a family is to each of us. Is it wrong to put our own needs above that of our parents, our brothers and sisters, or even our spouses or children? Even when raised by the by the same parents, in the same community we all grow into unique individuals with directions of our own, independent from the aspirations of our parents and siblings. As I read the three pieces of literature The Glass Menagerie, Barn Burning, and Ulysses it got me thinking about some of the ways in which I feel about my own family situation. I know I could never leave them, but I do know so many people who have set off away from their families. I sometimes desperately envy those with that freedom. In all three works, there is a balance to be found towards responsibility and commitment to family, and freedom and choice to self. For the purpose of this essay I will compare the roles of Tom from The Glass Menagerie, Sarty in Barn Burning, and Ulysses in the poem Ulysses. Although they each served a different role in the family as a brother, father, and a son, they in the end all made a decision to leave their families in each literary piece. | In the play The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams, the main character...
Words: 1451 - Pages: 6
...soldiers or noblemen of pre-Shakespearean works. Therefore the audiences might have had a difficult time forming an association with them. Those plays did portray important themes but they lacked an anti-hero,’ a character who embodied all the flaws of an ordinary man’ in this regard the classical plays were not the ‘plays for the common man’ rather they were the ‘plays for the elite’ (Barranger, 2013). However William Shakespeare began a change with his tragic heroes which in time lead to the increasingly common anti-heroes of Tennessee Williams. This can be identified easily when comparing two theatrical pieces and their protagonist; William Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Tennessee Williams’ Glass Menagerie. Through comparing the personal qualities and journeys of these two protagonists, this essay will identify the distinct differences between their qualities and the increase in relatability of the antihero and will analyse how the characters of Hamlet and Tom Wingfield portray this. Tom Wingfield lives with his mother, Amanda and his sister, Laura in St. Louis during the Great Depression. Tom dreams of becoming a writer but in the meantime he supports the family by working in a warehouse. Uneducated and unskilled, Amanda depends wholly on Tom. She fears he will abandon her and Laura, just as her husband had before. Tom mentions co-worker Jim O’Connor to Amanda who insists he invite Jim to dinner. She thinks of Jim as Laura’s “gentleman caller” and saviour, a safe future for Laura...
Words: 1530 - Pages: 7
...Representing Repression: A Psychological Reading of Menagerie Shih Ching-liang The Glass As the tradition of realism dominated in the late 19th century, expressionism emerged along with the rise of psychology at the very end of the century Expressionistic plays sought to give not the external reality or surface appearance of life but the inner reality, life as 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...
Words: 2012 - Pages: 9
...Final Exam - Essay Part Allow yourself a half hour each or two total at the most to write these essays. Submit in the dropbox. Do not send them as an attachment in an e-mail. Put them in one document with proper citations, and add the words "final essays" in the subject heading. Check your content, grammar, and spelling. It is most important that you cite specific examples from the video that show you watched it. You should refer to the lessons learned from lectures and reading assignments. This is the final writing assignment of the course and makes up half of the twenty percent on the final. The other half is from the online multiple choice comprehensive exam. I hope you enjoyed the class and learned a great deal. Due no later than the deadline listed in the schedule of assignments and in the syllabus under course information. Glenda In four brief, but well-written, essays, discuss each one of the following topics from watching the video of Tennessee Williams' "The Glass Menagerie." 1. Protagonist and Antagonist Whom would you describe as the protagonist and antagonist of this play? Why? What conflict is resolved between them? Remember the resolution always helps identify the protagonist and antagonist. 2. Technical Elements Discuss the setting of the video. How did it differ from what you might have seen on stage instead of on film? What, if any, significance did costume choices play in the production? 3. Idea What was the idea that Williams wanted us to see...
Words: 319 - Pages: 2
...5 Point Essay In “The Glass Menagerie” Toms monologue in the start of the play talks about how he can apparently turn back time and talks about the the economy in the thirties and informing us on where the play will take place. “The play is memory. Being a memory play, it is dimly lighted, it is sentimental, it is not realistic”(1166). Knowing the lighting of the play really helps set the tone of the play. The mood that he sets at the start of the play is cheery, and sort of leaving us guessing what is going to happen. “I think the rest of the play will explain itself”(1166). He is hooking us to start reading. He then says he is the narrator of the play and also a character in the play along with a few others that are closely related to him. He sounded very sure of himself and what he would be doing throughout the play. He is rather informative about his position in the play and informing us of the characters that take place as well. At the end of the play Tom says “I didn’t go to the moon, I went much further--for time is the longest distance between two places”(1210). He then explains that he was fired from his job and leaves Saint Louis and travels around for a while. At the end of his monologue he runs into his sister after seeing all of the transparent glass in the windows of the shops along the street, reminding him of his sister. The mood that he sets for the audience at the end is a happy closure. Wrapping up his life story with seeing his sister and saying goodbye...
Words: 353 - Pages: 2
...Sites, Economics, Finance, Management, Marketing, Sell Websites Education - ADHD, Learning, Philosophy of Education, Privatization, Public Schools, School Violence, School Vouchers, Teaching, Technology and Education, Test and Testing, Writing English Composition Essays - Analitical, Autobiographical, Argument, Cause/Effect, Classification, Compare/Contrast, Comparison, Conversation, Creative+Writing, Critical, Deductive, Definition, Descriptive, Description, Dialog, Division, Exploratory, Expository, Informative, Interview, Inquiry, Journalistic, Narration, Observation. Personal Narrative, Place, Profile, Process, Proposal English Literature and Literary Analysis - Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, A & P, Antigone, Apocalypse Now, Araby, The Awakening, Barn Burning, Beowulf, Beloved, Bible, Birthmark, Blade Runner, The Bluest Eye, Candide, Canterbury Tales, Catcher in the Rye, Cathedral, Chrysanthemums, A Clockwork Orange, The Color Purple, Comparing Literary Works, Crime and Punishment, Death of a Salesman, Death in Venice, Desiree's Baby, A Doll's House, Dr. Faustus, Epic of Gilgamesh, Everyday Use, A Farewell to Arms, Frankenstein, The Grapes of Wrath, Great Gatsby, Great Expectations, Glass Menagerie, Gulliver's Travels, The Handmaid's Tale, Heart of Darkness, The Iliad, Invisible Man, Jane Eyre, The Joy Luck Club, The Lottery, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, Metamorphosis, My Antonia, My Papa's Waltz, Neuromancer, The Odyssey, Oedipus Rex, On the Road,...
Words: 503 - Pages: 3
...called Tom by the age of ten. His siblings include an older sister named Rose and a younger brother named Dakin. Williams spent a great deal of time with his sister Rose because she was not very stable, emotionally or mentally. Daryl E. Haley once said that Rose "was emotionally disturbed and destined to spend most of her life in mental institutions." His mother raised Tom because his father was a traveling shoe salesman. Edwina Dakin Williams was the daughter of a minister and very over protective of Thomas. She began to be over protective after he caught Diphtheria when he was five years old. His mother was also an aggressive woman caught up in her fantasies of genteel southern living. Amanda Wingfield, a character in his play The Glass Menagerie, was modeled after Williams' mother. Cornelius Coffin Williams, Tom's father, spent most of his time on the road. Cornelius came from a very prestigious family that included Mississippi's very first governor and senator. Mr. Haley also states that Tom's father was "at turns distant and abusive," that is, when he was actually around. Toms father also repeatedly favored his younger brother Dakin over both of his older children. Big Daddy, in Tom's play Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, is modeled after his father. Thomas once said, in reference to his parents’ relationship, "It was just a wrong marriage." From 1923 to 1926 Thomas attended Ben Blewette Junior High, and was at this time that some of his first stories were published in a local newspaper...
Words: 1541 - Pages: 7
...* 1. The passage above is notable chiefly for c. a literary conceit 2. In The Federalist, No, X, James Madison proposed that the dangers of factions be controlled by a a. republican form of government * 3. Sky Woman, Wolverine, and Turtle are all important figures in which of the following types of literature ? * d. Native American oral tales * 4. In line 1, “offspring” most probably refers to the author’s * b. book of poem * * 5. “My rambling brat” (line 11) is an example of * d. personification * * * 6. Place the name of teach of the Colonial era figures beside the British colony with which he is most closely associated. A. John Smith- The Virginia Colony B. John Winthrop- The Massachusetts Bay Colony * C. Roger Williams- The Colony Of Rhode Island * * * 7. The passage above is an example of a. Puritanism * * 8. Thomas Pain’s Common Sense had a direct influence on which of the following Revolutionary era works? * c. Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence * 9. The passage above is from * a. William Bradford’s The History of Plimouth Plantation 10. All of the following are writers of the Colonial era EXCEPT b. Margaret Fuller 11. The passage would best be described as an example of d. Sentimentalism 12. The first paragraph of the passage provides an example of which of the following figures of speech ? c. Apostrophe 13...
Words: 1633 - Pages: 7
...lives and cultures. Policies Faculty and students/learners will be held responsible for understanding and adhering to all policies contained within the following two documents: • University policies: You must be logged into the student website to view this document. • Instructor policies: This document is posted in the Course Materials forum. University policies are subject to change. Be sure to read the policies at the beginning of each class. Policies may be slightly different depending on the modality in which you attend class. If you have recently changed modalities, read the policies governing your current class modality. Course Materials Barnet, S., Cain, W.E., & Burto, W. (2011). Literature for composition: Essays, stories, poems, and plays (9th ed.). New York, NY: Longman. All electronic...
Words: 2590 - Pages: 11
