The Glass Menagerie Criticism Essay - 910 Words

â€Å"The Glass Menagerie,† is a woeful play, plagued by a missing father, a young man walking in the very father’s footsteps, and a mother whose only life is lived in the past. There is one other unfortunate member of this dysfunctional family—Amanda’s daughter, Laura. Laura lives in a fantasy world, afraid to face the reality of her crippled destiny. She exists in a world of glass, pretty and flawless. Laura represents the glass menagerie; this is reinforced by the disjunction of the horn from the misfit unicorn which in turn represents her handicap. The fragile Laura is treated throughout the story as though she is breakable. When she attempts to do something, her family members, â€Å"come to her rescue† and prohibit her from†¦show more content†¦As previously mentioned, the families tend to protect the affected person. Though the families have changed, the person with the disability is affected the most. Their families attribute to thi s—if at first they try to succeed in a goal and those who are meant to support them impede them, then they begin to believe that this is the way it is and that they are unable to succeed whether that statement is true or untrue. This is close in relation to a concept in psychology known as Learned Helplessness. If one encounters many failures in a situation, they begin to believe that this is the way it is and theres nothing they can do to change it. Lauras Learned Helplessness is depicted in the conversation between Jim and Laura. While speaking to Laura, Jim realizes that she has very low self esteem and responds by saying, â€Å"You know what I judge to be the trouble with you? Inferiority complex!† Jim supports his hypothesis by informing her that she is too self conscious and things she worries about really aren’t that bad, but amplified by her imagination. Laura’s vulnerability is exhibited by both her physical disability and her skewed psychologica l perspective of herself. Like Laura, glass is vulnerable. Talk of Laura’s glass menagerie enters in the midst of the conversation between her and Jim. Since Laura’s world centers around her glass collection, she attempts to interject the subject of the glass menagerie between the subjects currently beingShow MoreRelated Comparing the Life of Tennessee Williams and Glass Menagerie707 Words   |  3 PagesParallels in the Life of Tennessee Williams and The Glass Menagerie   Ã‚  Ã‚   Tennessee Williams is one the major writers of the mid-twentieth century. His work includes the plays, The Glass Menagerie and A Streetcar Named Desire. One theme of The Glass Menagerie is that hopeful aspirations are followed by inevitable disappointments. This theme is common throughout all of Williams work and throughout his own life as well. It is shown through the use of symbols and characters.    I haveRead More Essay on Stagnant Lives in Streetcar Named Desire and Glass Menagerie1196 Words   |  5 PagesStagnant Lives in Streetcar Named Desire and Glass Menagerie   Ã‚  Ã‚   The Stagnant Lives of Blanche DuBois and Amanda Wingfield  Ã‚  Ã‚   All of Williams significant characters are pathetic victims--of time, of their own passions, of immutable circumstance (Gantz 110). This assessment of Tennessee Williams plays proves true when one looks closely at the characters of Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire and Amanda Wingfield in The Glass Menagerie. Their lives run closely parallel to one anotherRead MoreThe Glass Menagerie By Tennessee Williams1534 Words   |  7 PagesThe Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams Tennessee Williams, born Thomas Lanier Williams, wrote The Glass Menagerie, a play which premiered in Chicago in 1944. 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Donald Spoto described the new apartment building that Williams and his family relocated to in St. Louis, MissouriRead MoreSimilarities Between The Glass Menagerie And A Dolls House1334 Words   |  6 Pageslife, especially that of ordinary people in everyday situations† (Kennedy 2081). Realism is shown throughout the two following plays. The Glass Menagerie is a play written by Tennessee Williams, and it was published in the year of 1945. The play being compared is A Doll’s House, written by Henrik Ibsen it was published in the year of 1879. In A Glass Menagerie realism is shown through the fact that Tom’s family is struggling with money. Tom can be seen as the protagonist of the story. Similarly,Read MoreEphemeral Repertoire Of Embodied Knowledge943 Words   |  4 Pagesconcurrent with canonization. In each production counter-history—Eddie Dowling’s Menagerie and Elia Kazan’s Streetcar and Cat— Connerton’s theory of incorpora ting practices presents a means of intervening in normative models of production analysis, an especially important task for productions of Tennessee Williams, not all of which adhere to the normative constraints imposed by the limitations of inscribed criticism which emerged in the 1940s, but continue to the present day. Adapting Paul Connerton’sRead More Essay on the Use of Symbols, Tensions, and Irony in The Glass Menagerie891 Words   |  4 PagesUse of Symbols, Tensions, and Irony in The Glass Menagerie      Ã‚  Ã‚   The Glass Menagerie, by Tennessee Williams, is a perfect example of how Williams incorporates symbols, tensions, and irony to help express the central theme of the play.      Ã‚  Ã‚   One of the most dominant symbols in the play is the fire escape.   It represents something different for each of the characters.   Tom uses the fire escape to escape from his cramped apartment and nagging mother.   Therefore, the fire escape symbolizesRead MoreEssay about Characters in The Glass Menagerie612 Words   |  3 PagesCharacters in The Glass Menagerie Of the three main characters in Tennessee Williams’s ‘The Glass Menagerie’ Amanda is set to appear as the most dominant and in control. As the mother of the family unit the audience expects her to hold some kind of responsibility over her children as well as providing for them. The idea of the sense of duty she has for Tom and Laura’s future still remains even when the audience discover that the person financially supporting the Wingfields is actually TomRead MoreCritical Analysis Of The Glass Menagerie By Tennessee Williams1455 Words   |  6 Pagessubmissions for this assignment are posts in the assignment s discussion. Below are the discussion posts for Samantha Stepzinski, or you can view the full discussion. from Discussion #1 - The Glass Menagerie Sep 8, 2017 10:31pm Click to change profile picture for Samantha Stepzinski In The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams, the main topic of discussion is trying to find Laura a suitable gentleman caller that Amanda, her mother, would approve; however the overall theme is much deeper than thatRead MoreThe Truth in Perception:an Exploration of The Glass Menagerie2276 Words   |  10 Pagesdifferentiated by each individual experience. Within The Glass Menagerie, by Tennessee Williams, the ideas of overwhelming truth, individual perceptions, and the flaws of humanity are all explored. Through the various characters, with a specific focus on Tom’s narration, Williams argues that the truth is only a subjective idea that is created through the perceptions of humankind, molded through humanity’s flaws. One of the greatest arguments in The Glass Menagerie is the concept that all human beings are imperfect;