Essays on The Glass Menagerie

“Oedipus Rex”, “A Midsummer Night's Dream”, “The Glass Menagerie”

Nowadays, gender issues is a highly relevant topic in modern society which is not only raised in discussions, but also greatly present in the works of art. As one of the purposes of literature is to reflect the greatest concerns and world problems and speak up for them, the works describing the current role of woman in society are of a great importance. Moreover, the way the female characters are presented in the literary works make a great influence on how they are viewed in reality – that is why the depiction of women in literature needs to be thoroughly ...

The human comprehension of reality and the world in general is truly complicated topic which is extremely individual and objective. Apart from the wholesome systems of different philosophical streams and religions, every person constructs one's own apprehension of reality and the purpose of one's lives, which are based on the whole complex of different aspects and issues, such as the human's background, one's ethnicity and culture, social status, personal traits and features of character, one's inner capacities and talents, personal life experience, etc. Apart from that, every person tends to think and rethink, makes great plans for the future, ...

“Oedipus Rex”, “The Glass Menagerie”, “The Angels in America”

The tragedies have always seemed to attract a wide range of audience because of the depth of the emotions revealed there and the turns of events which would be dreadful and inescapable, the complexity of its characters and main issues present in the plays, as well as because of a possibility for the spectators to connect to the events happening on the stage and empathize with the protagonists. When considering the tragedy as the work of art, it is essential to view it from historical perspective, too, and try to reveal its very origins and the basic ideas which ...

Woman. One of the greatest creations of God's will or what your religion says. However, it still does not matter at all what is written in your sanctuary book. You just can not argue with that. Look around. They are everywhere, in every part of the world. Even while the human being exists for more that couple of million years, a woman's role in society is still being discussed. Should she take the lead position in the family or not? Is feminism good or not? And many other questions are still left without an answer. There is no absolute ...

Part 1

In “My Last Duchess” by Robert Browning we meet the narrator who is a Duke. The duke is meeting an emissary in order to discuss marrying the daughter of a very important man. As he is giving the emissary a tour of his home he stops to admire the portrait of his dead wife. The Duke begins to speak of his dead wife with affection. This quickly turns into bitterness when he goes on a rant about the fact she engaged in behaviors that he found distasteful. As he goes on he reveals that he “gave commands; / Then ...

In A Street Car Named Desire and The Great Gatsby, Tennessee Williams and F. Scott Fitzgerald present characters who are destroyed by the worlds they live in. The settings of the stories prevent the protagonist’s dreams from being realized thus destroying their lives and later leading to their demise. In The Great Gatsby, Jay Gatsby fails to achieve the genuine love he spends his lifetime searching for because he ends up all alone. On the other hand, in A Street Car Named Desire, Blanche fails to find human compassion and kindness in the society she lived in. Therefore, ...

The theatre has provided the avenue critical assessments of the society over the years. In addition, many writers are able to express the inner critical review of the society as a whole. in the past, writers have delved into using the theatre as a social commentary to reach a wide array audiences. Most playwrights are popular for their extensive use of language as a powerful tool in transforming literature into the vehicle for progressive social engagement. The doxa or the popular beliefs in the society forms the framework for much of the works presented in the theatre as it ...

The Glass Menagerie is a play written by Tennessee Williams in 1944 which describes the family consisted of a mother, son and daughter, going through a difficult situation. The son supports his mother and sister since their father left them. Laura is the sister who has a collection of figurines, who has a crippled leg and is shy, but very kind. The figurines are in the shapes of animals and they make Laura forget about reality. There are the past, present and future intertwined within this reality and the fact that the story is set in the time of ...

After reading the play, The Glass Menagerie, we get to understand who Tom Wingfield is. He is a really creative and talented person who is captured in a cruel and materialistic world. Living with everyday contradictions, he has to curb his wings by working at the shoe warehouse. He definitely hates that job, such work is a burden to him. To escape from it, he tries to write, he spends evenings in cinemas, plunging into the world of dreams, dreams of becoming a sailor. There several moments that a worthy of our attention. To protect himself, Tom brings home ...

In regards to the question of rather or not Tom Wingfield is selfish for leaving in “The Glass Menagerie” and if it was wrong of him to leave his responsibilities. In my opinion the answer to both questions is no. First off I think that Amanda is the selfish one for trying to make him stay despite the fact that he is miserable. I think that Amanda has cast Tom and Laura in the roles of her and her estranged husband. She has made Tom into the husband/ father who is financially responsible for her and Laura and she ...

The Glass Menagerie is one of the most celebrated and critically acclaimed plays of the stalwart playwright, Tennessee Williams. The play really impresses the audience and the readers with the quintessential use of dramatic elements that work to portray the play’s content in the best possible way. The setting goes on to have an enormous effect on the audience. One needs to reckon that the play deals with the issues of vulnerability, escapism and claustrophobia. The male protagonist of this play escapes from the household as he goes for the movies. The setting is the household where the ...

The film produced by Tennessee Williams “The Glass Menagerie” begins with the current-day describing different scenes in the film. Conflicts develop among the actors and this causes a lot of turmoil and Tennessee Williams tries to come out with resolutions to make the protagonists and antagonists come to relate well.

The film produced by Tennessee Williams “The Glass Menagerie” begins with the current-day describing different scenes in the film. Conflicts develop among the actors and this causes a lot of commotion and Tennessee Williams tries to come out with solutions to make the protagonists and antagonists come to relate ...

Willy Loman and Amanda Wingfield are the main characters in to great American tragedies that both suffer from a tragic flaw. A tragic flaw is a misperception or a lack of insight due to one’s strengths. Both Willy and Amanda cannot see their worlds fully and understand those around them because of their own pride which blinds them. Amanda’s pride keeps her rooted in a past that she can never recreate for her daughter and results in her inability to see her children for who they really are. Willy’s pride in his work prevents him from truly seeing his sons ...

Literature gives a reflection of the society we live in, authors are able to get their ideas from the issue that face the society and organize these ideas to come up with plays, novels, poems and even songs. Once one can connect what an author presents to the contemporary society, it is very easy to understand the themes and the ideas that the author reflects. 1. Compare and contrast the depiction of female characters in Oedipus Rex, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and The Glass Menagerie. What does each author suggest about the role of women in his society ...

Theater is one of the most ancient forms of art. The beginning of Western civilization, ancient Greece, lived a very important part in the development of this form, with many plays reaching classical status, like Oedipus King and the Oresteia trilogy. Aristotle, one of the most important Greek philosophers, offered six elements of drama in his work Poetics: setting, characters, theme, plot, language and music. These have served as a reference to study these types of works of art from antiquity to this day. The first three will serve as a guide for the analysis and comparison of important works from two ...

Explaining the Theme of Escape in The Glass Menagerie

In life, humans are confronted with the course of either retaining in a kind of life that one is supposed to live with or trying to find a way to live a life that a person actually wants to be identified with. Considerably, the same thing is true with the main character Tom in the story The Glass Menagerie. Tom, being a young man as he was, could be expected to be living the best years of his life. However, unlike what is expected of him and his age, he is caught in the desire of embracing a life he actually wants and a life that ...

Thesis Statement 1: Society has a way of punishing people they envy by emphasizing the latter’s weakness and making a ridicule out of that individual only to boost their personal worth. - Claim: When the beautiful and poised Hester Prynne arrived at Boston, she came alone awaiting for the arrival of her husband Roger Chillingworth, however, to everyone’s knowledge. This made the women of Boston threatened by her.

Interpretation: That left the young, beautiful and poised Hester Prynne the interest of men. This grew the displeasure of the women of Boston. - Claim: Many believed that Hester ...

Introduction

The book, the glass menagerie, is an interesting read that encompasses and represents the lives of human beings who are torn between the world of reality and of fantasy. Therefore, it becomes imperative to discuss the storyline of the book and its connection to psychological theories. The book is filled with puzzling events that are more symbolic than real happenings. Just like the title describes it, the glass menagerie is a fanciful and fragile world in which the book’s characters live in. the book centers around three characters, namely, Tom, Jim, Amanda and Laura. Each of these characters is ...

The aim of this essay is to present you with a portrait of Blanche DuBois, the leading female figure of the play ‘A Streetcar named Desire’ written by Tennessee Williams, a widely acknowledged theatrical writer whose works have been greeted with lots of admiration and enthusiasm. Most of his works have been generating tones of enthusiasm and admiration, attracting people’s interest constantly ever since their first appearance on stage. Some of his roles like the one of Stanley or Blanche in ‘The Streetcar named Desire’ or the one of Kim Cattrall in ‘The sweet birth of youth’ have been considered ...

This essay aims at comparing and contrasting the theme of fantasy and wishful thinking as presented in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman (1949) and also in Tennessee William’s The Glass Menagerie (1945). Both playwrights have intensively used characters who resort into habits of escapism into fantasy and wishful thinking to free themselves from their miserable existence. The main sources of their predicaments are their consistent failures in achieving their dreams, little interaction and communication with family members coupled with personal insecurities. Due to these facts, they all have a common problem which is frustration and boredom. They resort ...

Tennessee Williams is one of the best-known playwrights from the mid-twentieth century, becoming famous for his work The Glass Menagerie in the year 1944. Although Williams would go on to create a variety of different pieces of literature and a number of stage classics, The Glass Menagerie remains one of his most well-known and well-loved pieces. Much of Williams’ work was later adapted for use in the cinema, and the movies made about his classic pieces became popular as well. Born to an overbearing father and a typical “southern belle” mother, Williams was a sickly child who tended towards books and studying rather ...

The play “The Glass Menagerie” presents the memories drawn from Tom Wingfeild, the narrator and protagonist of Tennessee Williams. The play is significant in literature application since it covers the fundamental aspects of life in the society. In the play, Tom and his sister Laura struggles with their mother to make things work. They are subjected to severe challenges in coping up with life mainly because the society is generally unfavorable to allow women flourish in their day to day endeavors. Based on the feminist criticism, this paper will analyze the play to find the various aspects of misogyny ...

This is an analysis of ‘The Glass Menagerie’. ‘The Glass Menagerie’ is a theatrical play which has been considered among the borders of the literary community as a play carrying lots of autobiographical elements of the author. This play which opened the path to his author Tennessee Williams for recognition and admiration won the Pulitzer Prize in 1947. This is an analysis of the play’s main thematic core which is the loneliness of people and the way it is experienced by the members of a family. The portrait presented here is the portrait of a family whose world is so fragile ...

The aim of this essay is to present you with a portrait of Tennessee Williams, a widely acknowledged theatrical writer whose works have been greeted with lots of admiration and enthusiasm. Most of his works have been generating tones of enthusiasm and admiration, attracting people’s interest constantly ever since their first appearance on stage. Some of his roles like the one of Stanley or Blanche in ‘The Streetcar named Desire’ or the one of Kim Cattrall in ‘The sweet birth of youth’ have been considered great challenges for actors and actresses respectively, hoping to be given the chance to represent a ...

The Glass Menagerie is a famous memory play written by Tennessee Williams. A narrator, Tom presents the story before audiences which is based on his memories. There are three main characters in the story and story is knitted around them. The story succeeded in wining hearts of people because of strong idea of the story. This paper discusses, ‘The Glass Menagerie’, discusses symbolism of the story, along with several related aspects of the story and further presents an analysis of the story. Glass is usually translucent but it refracts different colors when light contacts it with a particular angle. Like glass, ...

The memory play, Glass Menagerie, is based on the narrator’s memories, Tom Wingfield. The play was set in 1937 in St. Louis and Tom is the protagonist. Tom Wingfield was an aspiring poet and toiled and moiled so that he could support his Mother and Sister. Tom Wingfield is an aspiring poet and he works as a shoemaker in a warehouse. He is the one who narrates the story in the play, Glass Menagerie, and all the events are determined by the memories in his mind. Despite that he loved his Mum and sister; he feels that he cannot continue ...

When the play “A streetcar Named Desire” by Tennessee Williams was published in 1947, the gender roles in the American society were witnessing a shift. The two world wars and the resultant economic strain had forced the society to allow women to fill in many job positions which were traditionally considered to be men’s jobs. But once the war was over, the men again tried to dominate and tried to push the average woman into her domestic sphere. Written in this period, this play aptly captures the essence of the relationship between the genders, and their mutual dependence and ...

Authored by Tennessee Williams, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is a fascinating play revolving round the story of a neurotic, dysfunctional family steeped in hidden deceptions and hypocrisy. The play was adapted into a film in 1958 under the direction of Richard Brooks. Released by MGM studio with starlets like Elizabeth Taylor and Paul Newman in central roles of Brick and Maggie, the film won a superb commercial success. Though Richard Brooks retained much of Tennessee Williams' original prose and conversation intact, he made few alterations in the story. He added some new dialogues, curtailed the parts of Gooper and Mae and made ...

The National Endowment for Arts distributes money to agencies and artists nationwide. In this paper, I will provide an overview of some of the grants of the National Endowment for arts for arts in Tennessee as well as provide the reasons that make these grants interesting to me. This institution was awarded $15,000 in support of an analysis of an in-school art education programs in the Southern U.S. through the review of documents, interviews, observations and focus group discussions that were based on several case studies (NEA, 2013). This grant has become interesting to me since it ...

Introduction

The three main characters of the play “Cat on a hot tin roof” Maggie, Brick, and Big Daddy. Maggie is a lonely, dissatisfied, and hysterical woman. This is evident from Maggie’s reaction when she realized that Brick was staring at her in the mirror. She herself knew that she had gone through “hideous transformation but Brick does not respond as she desired”. She was so desperate that Brick did not give her the attention that she required. Brick does not express the same desire and love that she gives and this makes her very bitter, nervous, and hard. Maggie’s ...

The play by Tennessee Williams portrays the time of 1930s in America through the recollection of Tom, the protagonist. He goes on to say that had secluded the family long ago and they were all left to fend for themselves. Tom declares in the beginning of the play, “I give you truth in the pleasant disguise of illusion.” (Williams, 1.1) In the play, the audience first finds Tom having dinner with the other members of his family, Amanda and his sister Laura. Their mother opines that she wishes her daughter to have “gentlemen callers” like she used to have ...

In Tennessee Williams’ classic play The Glass Menagerie, the work ends with Tom saying, “Blow out your candles, Laura,” followed by Laura following suit. This line and accompanying action are highly symbolic gestures, following along with the play’s themes of abandonment, the American Dream, family and more. The blowing out of the candles represents, for both of them, the chance to escape the suffocating nature of their life in their apartment with their family and to grow as people. This act being the final action of the play is significant, as it not only represents just how badly ...

In the opening lines of Tennessee Williams’ play The Glass Menagerie, the narrator Tom Wingfield addresses the audience and says, “The play is memory. Being a memory play, it is dimly lighted, it is sentimental, it is not realistic” (Williams 1.1.12-13). When he makes that statement, he establishes that he is not a reliable narrator; he is not omniscient. From the audience’s perspective, this statement means that they can regard both what he says directly to them as narrator and the statements he and other characters make to each other as not necessarily accurate. The play consists of his memories ...

In Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie, there are a number of symbols inserted into the play that represent a theme or a character trait that help to portray something deeper about these people than can be normally conveyed through the typical methods of dialogue and direction. In this paper, we will examine five of these symbols and how they are developed throughout the course of the play. It is then made clear just how effectively symbols are used as a visual representations of the character’s inner motivations, as well as the messages about society and the human experience that the playwright attempts ...

One of the best plays which have been written in America is” A Streetcar Named Desire”, written by Tennessee Williams in 1947.the play is set in New Orleans which creates a nice mood of sensuality. The summary of the plot of the play is all a bout a man who lives with his sister in law. (Kernan, A, & Harold, B. 78). The man lived with his wife but unfortunately they develop conflicts among themselves which is port6rayed in the better part of the play. The two characters in the ply called Stanley and Blanche were much willed in the play and Williams ...

Because most modern plays do not have narrators, when the character Tom Wingfield is speaking as the narrator of The Glass Menagerie, the audience will pay more attention to his words. In part this is because he directly addresses the audience, and in part because of his comments about the other characters and himself. In some ways, the occasional use of a narrator makes the play seem slightly more modern in style, at least to audiences familiar with the television narrative device of “breaking the fourth wall,” in which a character on a television show speaks directly to the television audience instead ...

William Shakespeare’s play Hamlet Prince of Denmark and Tennessee Williams’s play The Glass Menagerie are both products of their time though both plays continue to be appreciated and receive critical acclaim. Differences between the lives of the playwrights, the support they received in writing and producing their plays, the type of audiences viewing the plays, the venues in which they plays were performed, and the cultural events of their times are reflected in their resulting works of literature. Shakespeare’s Hamlet was written around the year 1600 (Farnham 931). Its contemporary audience was Elizabethan, and Shakespeare’ ...

This essay deals with the notion of naturalism in Tennessee Williams’ play A Streetcar Named Desire. Through a realistic portrayal of characters and their suffering due to social issues which are out of their control, Williams managed to create deeply believable characters the audience can very easily connect to. Since the idea of naturalism in drama is exemplified in the notion of realness and truthful portrayal of a situation, this drama offers plenty of examples of naturalism, such as Blanche being a relic of the old South which is dying, and Stanley being the new, emerging, animalistic working class antagonist, prone to ...

This paper discusses a common concept between Shakespeare’s play ‘Hamlet’ and Tennessee William’s ‘The Glass Menagerie’. Hamlet is one of the most luminous literary works of this earth. It is so precious that we can gift it to somebody who is visiting us from mars. The play was written by William Shakespeare about almost four hundred years ago but it is still so significant and fascinating that people still find themselves mesmerized with the play. On the other hand, ‘The glass menagerie’ is a super hit play written by Tennessee William in the year, 1944. This paper intends to ...

The Great Gatsby is an American classical Novel authored by Scot F. Fitzgerald in 1925, immediately after the Second World War. The story was set up in New York and the North Shore Island. In this novel, set at a time when America was striving to achieve economic empowerment, explores the theme of unfulfilled life that is corrupted by greed. Greed for wealth, recognition and love. The story is about a young Nick Carraway who after graduating from Yale University relocates to New York. Here, he rents a house next to Jay Greatsby. Greatsby owns a very big mansion in which he lives ...

English Literature

Throughout literature, authors use symbolic imagery in order to assist the reader in conjuring up mental images from the words on the page. Symbolism is a common literary device which is used to help make the story come to life and to make it more three-dimensional (Bloom 1339). This is seen in every work of literature ever written and for the purposes of this essay, the symbolic language used in Shakespeare’s The Tempest, Sophocle’s Oedipus Rex and Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie will be discussed. In each of these texts, the author has used symbolism to help build ...

The passage below will be an analysis of two main characters in two plays. The first character to be analyzed is George Tasman, who is a character in the play Hedda Gabler. The character is going to be analyzed in the three main perspectives; honor, integrity, and reputation.

The second character to be looked at in this paper is Laura Wingfield who is a character in the play The Glass Managerie. The analysis of this character is going to be based on ethics, and especially, on responsibility versus independence.

George Tesman in the play Hedda Gabbler

Hedda Gabler is a play that was published in the 1890s and was ...

In Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie, there are a number of symbols inserted into the play that represent a theme or a character trait that help to portray something deeper about these people than can be normally conveyed through the typical methods of dialogue and direction. In this paper, we will examine five of these symbols and how they are developed throughout the course of the play. It is then made clear just how effectively symbols are used as a visual representations of the character’s inner motivations, as well as the messages about society and the human experience that the playwright attempts ...

Family loyalty, true love, and rollercoaster emotions are basic ingredients of a great movie but in The Glass Menagerie, reality seems different from appearance. The question that begs to be answered then is, has the themes in the movie been advanced in a manner that is entertaining?

The title “The Glass Menagerie” is a four actor memory play that was originally released in 1944 and written by Tennesse Williams and directed by Antony Harvey. The remake of the movie was released in 1973 with the actors being Katherine Hepburn as Amanda Wingfield, Sam Waterson as Tom Wingfield, Joanna Miles as Laura Wingfield, ...