The Glass Menagerie Analysis Paper

Drama The Glass Menagerie is an essential part of modern writing. The author, Tennessee Williams, explains four characters, their goals, and the difficult life they led in the modern era. The author decides to place his story during the Great Depression in St. Louis. The drama is about a devoted family that is constantly at odds. Tennessee Williams conveys his primary theme through symbols. He further develops his subject by highlighting the present-day characters’ limitations. The apartment that Tom Wingfield, Laura, and Amanda share is located in the center of the city, among many dim lanes with fireplaces. In The Glass Menagerie, symbols play a vital role as they are used to express a certain character, idea, or theme. The fire escape is a symbol that has been used repeatedly in the story. This symbols carries different meanings to the characters. In Tom’s situation, the fire escape is place where he can escape to. Tom escapes his nagging mother to hide in the fire escape. When Tom is in the fire escape he is open to the outside world. For Laura, the fire escape is where the outside world is brought to her and it is where the gentleman caller enters. Conversely, to Amanda is not merely where the gentleman caller enters, but where he rescues her daughter from being a spinster. Amanda feels that the gentleman will come to rescue Laura. The surprising part is that the caller has not even met with the two women. Amanda faces a difficult time to differentiate between illusion and reality and also refuses to accept Laura’s handicap. She refers to it as a little defect and not a handicap (Shaland 121).

A part from the fire escape, Williams utilizes Laura’s glass menagerie as a crucial symbol in entire play. The glass menagerie represents the sensitive nature and fragility of Laura. Laura is very innocent just like the glass she polishes. Despite of being fragile, the glass shines when placed in the light and produces several colors. Similarly, after enrolling at the Business School, Laura becomes embarrassed and shy, making her to become unwell in the classroom. She cannot imagine seeing the same faces again and decides to quit attending to her classes (Williams, and Kushner 67).

The portion of Laura’ innocence lost is symbolized during the breaking of the unicorn. For instance, when Jim tells her that he is engaged to someone else she gets heartbroken. She stops feeling the uniqueness she was sharing with the unicorn. Thus, when she hands the unicorn to Jim, she gives him her broken heart. Jim only leaves her with shattered hopes. Therefore, both Laura and the glass menagerie break after being exposed to the outside world (Furnham 202).

Similarly, the use of cigarette smoking and rainbows are minor symbols in the story. The rainbows has been used to signify hope in the future. When Tom pulls out a scarf with the colors of the rainbow he exhilarates Laura and tells her how a bowl of gold fish was changed to canaries by the magician. In the scene, Tom is thinking on the day he will be able to escape. Moreover, Tom speaks on looking through shop windows and encountering pieces of perfume bottles that remind him of Laura. Tom sees a rainbow-colored glass which reminds him how his sister was protecting her glass animals. However, in the end of the play, the rainbows which were initially viewed to positive ended up in disappointments to every person. Moreover, the use of cigarette smoking by Tom symbolizes his unending strive for individualism. Even after being warned by his mother to stop smoking, he still continues. Since both Amanda and Laura do not smoke, the pleasure is left to Tom. Tom can sit near the fire escape and smoke knowing that no one will question his decision.

In The Glass Menagerie all characters retreat to their separate worlds to escape the cruelty of life. All the characters are incapable of living in the present. They all avoided reality in various ways. For instance, Laura only manage to live in the present for a very short time. She retreats back to listening to her phonograph records and to her tiny world of glass animals. Even when she tries to overcome her shyness with Jim, Laura goes back to Victoria and starts records after finding out that Jim is engaged. Laura seems less vulnerable and more comfortable in her own world. On the other hand, Amanda seems obsessed with the past as she always tell Tom and Laura about the time when she was younger and received numerous gentlemen callers. Amanda considers the past to be better than the present or the reality. She experiences difficulty in in accepting that she is a single mother. Besides, Tom seems to be stuck in the past after leaving home and goes to the streets thinking about Laura. To escape the reality of living home, Tom wrote poetry at work and goes to the movies. The work he had at the warehouse made him responsible to support himself and his mother (Crawford 309).

From the beginning of the story the narrators figure illustrates that the play will fail to follow the rules of realistic theater. The fourth wall of naturalistic drama is broken by the narrator by addressing the audience directly. In addition, Tom informs us that he will give the audience truth disguised as illusion. The author is free to use projected images, monologues, and music to haunting effects. As a narrator, Tom tells the audience that the gentleman caller is a real man in several ways. He also tells his audience that the gentleman is a symbol for a certain expectation in life that people always hope for and want. The naming of a character as a symbol and a real entity is an attribute of William’s work, which is vital to the overall impact of the drama (Williams, and Kushner 56).

Conclusion

In The Glass Menagerie, Williams wrote on the struggles of the American family in the Depression-Era. The author portrayed the problems of being subjected to a monotonous work and how people’s dream do not always come true. Williams also emphasized that most people are not comfortable with living in the present. The past days were better than the present days. He noted that are not comfortable living in the outside world. Through the use of symbols, the author was able to convey his ideas and thoughts to the reader. Tennessee Williams made the relationships with the actions of the character and the symbols. Apart from using symbols he used the incapability of characters in the present to illustrate the harsh realities they experience in the current world.

Works Cited

Crawford, Brett Ashley. “The Glass Menagerie.” Theatre Journal 57.2 (2005): 308-311.

Furnham, Adrian. “The glass menagerie.” Head & Heart Management. Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2008. 202-203.

Gordon, Richard, et al. “The glass menagerie: diatoms for novel applications in nanotechnology.” Trends in biotechnology 27.2 (2009): 116-127.

Shaland, Irene. “The Glass Menagerie.” (1990): 121-123.

Williams, Tennessee, and Tony Kushner. The glass menagerie. New Directions Publishing, (2011): 44-97