Tenessee Williams` play The Glass Menagerie

The Glass Menagerie: Illusion against Reality

The Glass Menagerie by Tenessee Williams has several themes. Although this play has many different themes, the notion of illusion against reality is what ultimately ties it all together. The contrast between image and actuality creates a gaping ironic hole in the play. Contrary to the facts of their life, the play’s characters genuinely present themselves as content and cheerful. As a result, the drama is given an illusionary situation.

The Illusionary Escape

In The Glass Menagerie, illusion just serves as a front used by the characters to conceal the disgusting realities of their circumstances. This type of illusion offers a short time escape from the harsher and bitter actual life realities. It should be noted that individuals who are not able to face facts in life end up in such delusions. Although this is able to offer a short-term relief from the problems and tensions of life, a return to the reality of life is inevitable as well as shockingly enervating.

Dwelling in Fantasy

Most of the characters in the play dwell in their own world of fantasy. Deliberately, they attempt to turn their backs on life realities. In the play, Amanda reflects back to the time when gentlemen callers used to court her. She fabricates her past beautiful stories and imposes them on her children. In fact, Amanda is a widow without enough to offer to her family. Her son and daughter are failures who are not working so as to realize her expectations. Amanda is enacting, however, a drama to indicate that she has no problems in her life. This results in a conflict between reality and appearance. Amanda talks in a frivolous and jovial manner as if there are no problems in her life. She is allowing herself to be led by illusion while when the illusion world topples down, she becomes a broken woman. Reflecting on the gentlemen callers, Amanda forgets her present problems and sorrows (Williams). Here the reality is the present while the illusion is her past which involves gentlemen callers.

Laura is another character in the play who withdraws to the artificial world of glass animals. In reality, Laura is a cripple girl who has a dismal performance in school, thus failing her mother. Besides, she is very timid and is not capable of accomplishing anything. In fact, the glass menagerie is a world of dreams. Laura`s enthrallment for glass animals is in contrast to her life reality. She is paralyzed psychologically by the sense of inferiority and humiliation. To compensate this loss, Laura takes asylum in the world of fantasy of glass menagerie. In this world, the animals are very breakable and fragile.

Upon Amanda realizing that her daughter will not be married by Jim, suddenly the simulated world of dreams breaks down. Tom, on the other hand, has its own account of the tension between reality and appearance. His life`s reality pertains to his inability to assist his mother in ensuring Laura is married. Similar to his father, he does not earn much. Thus, he has not been assisting his widowed mother. Tom is taken into the world of fancy by the realization of his inability to assist his family. He is lost in the fancy world of dreams in which fantasies are represented by the cinema symbolically. He feels joy whenever he is in the fancy world. However, when he gets out of this world, cinema hall, unwillingly he has to face actual life. Likewise, Jim who is perceived to be the emissary from the real world has his own misapprehension regarding his future career prospects (Williams).

The Gap between Reality and Appearance

In this manner, the dramatization regarding the gap between reality and appearance offers the play, The Glass Menagerie, an ironic touch. The characters in this play employ false appearance in concealing the true reality relating to their lives. Escaping to the illusion world is actually trying to rebuff the bitterness that is in the real life. Nonetheless, staying in this fancy world inevitably comes to an end shortly, thereby making them face the actualities of their present lives.

Work Cited

Williams, Tennessee. The Glass Menagerie. New York: New Directions, 2011. Print.