The Glass Menagerie Essay, Research Paper
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The Glass Menagerie: Predicament of the Wingfields
In Tennessee Williams: A Portrait in Laughter and Lamentation, Harry Rasky uses extended interviews with Williams to research the dramatist & # 8217 ; s purpose. Through these interviews, Rasky presents a glance of the dramatist & # 8217 ; s life-world and the drive force behind his creative activities. Rasky studies Williams as stating:
& # 8220 ; I have ever been more interested in making a character that contains something crippled. I think about all of us have some sort of defect, anyhow, and I suppose I have found it easier to place with the characters who verge on crazes, who were frightened of life, who were despairing to make out to another individual & # 8221 ; ( 134 ) .
This statement supports the thought that Williams incorporates something crippled into all his major characters. In The Glass Menagerie, Tennessee Williams portrays a crippling female parent and kid relationship consisting cardinal subjects of dysfunctionalism. He affectingly illustrates that none of the characters are capable of life in the present. They believe their functionality and life & # 8217 ; s felicity prevarications in their perennial pursuits for flight from predicament. As such, they retreat into their separate universes to get away life & # 8217 ; s ferociousnesss.
Their day-to-day trials thrive in an overcrowded edifice & # 8217 ; s rise up flat where lower middle-class population is a diagnostic urge of a big and basically enslaved subdivision in American society. Set in Depression-era St. Louis, the overbearing Southern ex-charmer, Amanda Wingfield is the de facto caput of the family. A former Southern belle, Amanda is a individual female parent who behaves as though she still is the high school beauty queen. Williams & # 8217 ; still-resonant survey reveals her despairing battle with the forces of destiny against her dysfunctional relationship that looms and grows among her grownup kids. ( Gist )
Laura, Amanda, Tom, and Jim resort to assorted flight mechanisms to avoid world. Laura, fearful of being denigrated as inferior by virtuousness of her unconditioned inability to walk, is diffident and detaches herself from the hardhearted modern universe. Amanda tries every agency to incorporate her into society, but to no help. She sends her to concern school and invites a gentleman company to dinner. She is both unable to get by with the modern-day universe & # 8217 ; s mechanisation represented by the velocity trial in typing and unable to do new familiarities or friends due to her huge suppression with people. Her life is commonplace and uneventful, yet it is full of dreams and inundated with memories.
Whenever the outside universe threatens Laura, she seeks consolation and retreats to her glass carnal universe and old record player records. Amanda, her female parent intimations at the option of marriage for debacle in concern callings and Laura & # 8220 ; utters a startled, dubious laugh. She reaches rapidly for a piece of glass. & # 8221 ; ( Williams, ) . The glass menagerie becomes her haptic solace. The small glass decorations represent Laura & # 8217 ; s self and qualify her breakability and delicate beauty. In peculiar, the glass unicorn greatly symbolizes her. As the unicorn is different from all the other glass Equus caballuss, it adds a alone quality and practical & # 8220 ; freakishness & # 8221 ; to her really features ( Kapcsos ) .
Laura & # 8217 ; s physical disability differentiates her from others. She is merely as easy broken as the glass unicorn is as unique. She immediately regresses, merely as it appears that Laura eventually overcomes her shyness and hypersensitivity with Jim, the gentleman company. Jim by chance bumps into the unicorn, as it falls and interruptions. The unicorn no longer retains its alone quality. To soothe Laura, he kisses her and so shatters her hopes and dreams by stating her he is engaged. Both Laura and the glass menagerie interruption upon exposure to the outside universe. Laura offers Jim her broken unicorn, typifying her broken bosom that Jim will take with him. She is unable to get by with the truth and one time once more retreats to her fantasy universe of glass statuettes and Victrola records. Laura can merely populate a brief minute in world.
Amanda obsesses over her yesteryear. The minute Tom or Laura worry her, she uses her Mississippi Delta childhood memories like a chilling balm. She flashes back to her yearss dancing at the governor & # 8217 ; s ball in Jackson, Mississippi and recalls the gentlemen & # 8217 ; s & # 8220 ; knightly nature & # 8221 ; during her young person. ( Ghiotto ) She invariably reminds Tom and Laura about that & # 8220 ; one Sunday afternoon in Blue Mountain & # 8221 ; when she receives 17 gentlemen companies ( Williams, 148 ) . The reader is non confident that this really occurs. However, it is clear that despite its possible falseness, Amanda has come to believe it. She refuses to admit that her girl is crippled and refers to her disability as & # 8220 ; a small defect? barely noticeable & # 8221 ; ( Williams, 157 ) . Merely for brief minutes does she of all time admit that her girl is & # 8220 ; crippled & # 8221 ; and so she resorts back to denial.
Furthermore, Amanda does non comprehend anything realistically. While she has non met him yet, she believes that Jim is the adult male that will deliver Laura. As Laura nervously awaits Jim & # 8217 ; s reaching, Amanda tells her, & # 8220 ; You couldn & # 8217 ; t be satisfied with merely sitting place & # 8221 ; ( Williams, 192 ) . Yet, Laura prefers that. Amanda can non separate world from semblance. Amanda dresses in the same girlish frock she wore on the twenty-four hours she met their male parent. Upon Jim & # 8217 ; s reaching, she reverts to her infantile, dizzy yearss of entertaining gentlemen companies. Amanda chooses to populate in the yesteryear.
Tom escapes to his poesy authorship and film universe. He is a victim of his female parent & # 8217 ; s relentless smothering and captures all the angst of his poetic psyche traveling to blow in a mill warehouse. His effusions with Amanda exhibit a powerful manifestation of his turning defeat. He can non manage his humble occupation and his unsatisfying place life. He believes that the ambiance is smothering and damaging to his originative capacities. He regards the warehouse as a prison that shackles all the basic urges with which, he believes, work forces are endowed? & # 8221 ; Man is by instinct a lover, a huntsman, a combatant & # 8221 ; ( Williams ) . In the warehouse, Tom does non happen any satisfaction at all? & # 8220 ; I & # 8217 ; d instead person picked up a wrecking bar and battered out my encephalons? than travel back forenoons! & # 8221 ; ( Williams ) ? allow entirely good-humored, intimate friendly relationship or company.
Even more smothering to his poetic creativeness is his place where Amanda, prompted by her motherly solicitousness and her fright for the household & # 8217 ; s sole
beginning of income, is the major obstruction to his originative concentration. Home is more like a coop every bit oppressive as the warehouse by Amanda’s severe parental control and over-protectiveness ( Ng ) . During repasts, she insists that he listen to long discourses such as “Honey, don’t push with your fingers. If you have to force with something. . .” ( Williams ) . As Tom reaches for a coffin nail, she complains, “You smoke excessively much! ” ( Williams ) . Unable to digest Amanda’s failure to understand his demands and her smothering fondness, Tom ends up turning to films, where he feels respite. The films satisfy his vicarious satisfaction of escapade. In the film, he becomes a hero, which he can ne’er be at place. On the other manus, the thaumaturgy shows provide him an illusional universe he yearns for in his day-to-day life. Sometimes his female parent and his family’s fiscal adversities shatter his universe. The films serve as an anaesthetic, along with turns of heavy imbibing. Hence, it is possible for him to temporarily bury the oppressive flat.
However, his poetic aspirations end up in defeat and day of reckoning, which partially contributes to his nocturnal film-going behaviour. Finally, when he does go forth the Wingfield flat, he entraps himself with memories of Laura. He escapes one prison merely to fall into another, that of his guilty scruples, his nostalgia of place, the glass menagerie and old fashioned tunes. He is unable to work in the present and wanders aimlessly believing of his sister.
Jim, though non every bit badly as the Wingfields, besides reverts to his yesteryear as he looks through high school yearbooks with Laura and recalls the yearss of his gallantry. The present does non fulfill him? working at the same warehouse as Tom, despite Tom & # 8217 ; s anticipation that he would & # 8220 ; arrive at nil short of the White House by the clip he was 30 & # 8221 ; ( Williams, 190 ) . Tom realizes that he & # 8220 ; was valuable to him [ Jim ] as person who could retrieve his former glorification & # 8221 ; ( Williams, 190 ) . Jim reminisces about his lead in the light opera and Laura asks him to subscribe her plan. He marks it & # 8220 ; with a flourish & # 8221 ; ( Williams 218 ) . Merely as Jim enters the Wingfield & # 8217 ; s illusive universe, can he go this high school hero once more. Subsequently, Jim regresses to his high school yearss of courting adult females as he woos guiltless Laura by dancing with her and snoging her. While this might every bit good be an semblance, the state of affairs & # 8217 ; s world is that Jim is engaged. Unlike the Wingfields, Jim can merely populate temporarily in the past. Therefore, he leaves the dream universe of the Wingfields.
Amanda invariably lives in her yesteryear and generates lay waste toing effects for her kids. The destiny of Amanda & # 8217 ; s kids is her mistake, stultifying them psychologically and emotionally, earnestly suppressing their ain pursuits for adulthood and self-fulfillment. Amanda lives in a fantasy universe of moony remembrances, and her kids can non get away from this illusive universe either. She suffers from a psychological urge to retreat into a fabricated & # 8220 ; lost & # 8221 ; clip. The present exists for this household merely to the grade that it can be verified by changeless mentions to the yesteryear. This explains why none of the characters can win in their present state of affairss. They exist through their yesteryear, but the job is that the past no thirster exists. While these characters stay the same, the outside universe alterations. This explains the characters & # 8217 ; repeated failures in the present universe outside them.
Although Jim pulls himself into the Wingfield & # 8217 ; s illusive universe, he sustains his world senses. This histories for why Jim is such a & # 8220 ; stumble toilet & # 8221 ; in the Wingfield flat. He is more realistic than the others and is clumsy in such a delicate universe. Likewise, Laura & # 8217 ; s breakability and hypersensitivity prevent her from take parting in the outside universe, a universe that is rough and barbarous. Merely as Jim is clumsy in Laura & # 8217 ; s universe, Laura is clumsy in Jim & # 8217 ; s universe, as she slips and falls on the fire flight and in another case, throws up on the floor at Business School. Laura & # 8217 ; s irrational fright of the outside explains why she can non successfully come in the outside universe. The major characters in this drama are so warped and their lives so deformed and perverted by phantasies that each is left with merely broken fragments of what might hold been.
Consequently, Judith Thompson, in Tennessee Williams: Memory, Myth, and Symbol, believes that memory is the avenue Williams uses to near the corporate unconscious. Through Tom & # 8217 ; s remembrances, Williams demonstrates how powerful memories revolve around characters whose actions reflect the interior convulsion of the individual making the memory. Thompson states that Williams & # 8217 ; characters & # 8220 ; are representatives of a modern agony humanity, victimized by their ain conflicting thrusts and desires and existentially alienated from a universe become a metaphysical & # 8216 ; pile of broken images & # 8217 ; & # 8221 ; ( 11 ) . These & # 8220 ; representatives & # 8221 ; organize the constituency of Tom & # 8217 ; s consciousness ; the agony in each character reflects Tom & # 8217 ; s hurting.
Along with this, Williams reveals that one & # 8217 ; s inability to pass on functionally in meaningful ways with other human existences is one of the modern life & # 8217 ; s most tragic state of affairss. His reading of familial love, shattered hopes, defeat to the point of fury, entrapment, and ultimate guilt throughout & # 8220 ; The Glass Menagerie & # 8221 ; depicts each character & # 8217 ; s somberness and ineffectual dreams. Tom, Laura, and Amanda seem to believe that flight is possible. Inevitably, no character makes a clean interruption from the state of affairs at manus. Possibly Tennessee Williams conveys a message that running off is non a agencies to work outing life & # 8217 ; s jobs. One & # 8217 ; s merely flight in life is to work out their jobs, non to avoid them.
Gist, Richard. The Glass Menagerie 5 April 1997. *http: //saber.towson.edu/~gist/glass.html* .
Ghiotto, Chubby. & # 8220 ; The Glass Menagerie. & # 8221 ; Alligator Online 5 March 1998. 15 March 1998 *http: //hipp.gator.net/glass_alligator_review.html* .
Ng, Ben. & # 8220 ; Dreams and the Notion of Escape in the Glass Menagerie. & # 8221 ; Home page. May 1999 *http: //web.hku.hk/~h9818830/EngLit3.html* .
Kapcsos, Kristal. & # 8220 ; The Glass Menagerie. & # 8221 ; Online poster. 13 Nov. 1997. The Glass Menagerie 21 Nov. 1997 *http: //www.mccnic.mohave.az.us/wcb/schools/NMC/dl/dtimpson/1/forums/forum12/me & # 8230 ; /26.html* .
Rasky, Harry. Tennessee Williams: A Portrait in Laughter and Lamentation. New York: Dodd, Mead & A ; Co. , 1986.
Thompson, Judith J. Tennessee Williams & # 8217 ; Plaies: Memory, Myth, and Symbol. New York: Peter Lang, 1989.
Williams, Tennessee. & # 8220 ; The Glass Menagerie. & # 8221 ; The Theatre of Tennessee Williams. Vol. 1. New York: New Directions, 1990.
