... difficulty and stress that families had to go through just to earn a pitiful living. Tom Joad in The Grapes of Wrath and Tom Wingfield in The Glass Menagerie are both young adults who are forced with the pressure of leading and supporting their families during the Great Depression, ... only in the background. Another likeness is the short temper that these two characters posses. Both characters seem to lose their tempers very easily. Tom Wingfield gets in a heated argument with his mother every time the reader sees them interact. Tom Joad, on the other hand, rarely looses his temper, ......

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• Grade Level: High School

Psychiatrist report on Amanda Wingfield Amanda Wingfield has gone under psychiatric observation. Her psychiatric analysis appears to be of a pensive and worrying individual. Nonetheless, Amanda is a strong woman who has been putting up with the worst-case ... a lonesome woman who finds contentment among a world of glass figurines. Her only cure for this weakness is to motivate Laura and to help her overcome her acute bashfulness. Mentally Amanda Wingfield seems capable to hold on to and perform daily activities. However, if her weakness does not ease she could overstress herself. She should ...

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... Named Desire and The Glass Menagerie were two plays in which there was a woman who played a drastic role in life of the other characters; they were Blanche DuBois and Amanda Wingfield. Written by the same playwright, these two main female characters featured characteristics that were similar to both. Blanche and Amanda were "southern belles" who couldn't adopt a new lifestyle other than ... ...

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• Grade Level: Undergraduate

The action of The Glass Menagerie takes place in the Wingfied's apartment in St. Louis, 1937. This play is framed around the memory of its narrator, Tom Wingfield. Tom's predicament is one of the play's major themes. This theme can be best described as the conflict between responsibility for one's family and the need to live one's own ... ...

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... that it could be,It won't be him! It isn't the least bit likely.? (p 278). It is in these ways that Amanda Wingfield hides from reality. Laura Wingfield has chosen to hide from reality in the play The Glass Menagerie. She seems to live in a world of her own, and hides from ... will never belong to the real world, as she desperately tries to hide from the reality of it in the play. In the play The Glass Menagerie, Tom Wingfield has chosen to hide from reality. Tom's reality is that he works in a warehouse, has a nagging mother, a shy,crippled? sister and he lives in ... Seamen.? (p 283)...

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• Grade Level: High School

... , mainly, because every character of the play lives, in some degree, in illusion. The ones which face life in a more realistic way are Tom Wingfield and Jim O"Connor. Tom could be considered to be realistic because of his attitude towards life. Unlike him, every character has discovered a way to escape ... whole play there is a clear evidence that we are in the presence of an atypical family. This is principally generated by the absence of Mr. Wingfield, Amanda's husband. Due to the lack of a responsible male figure in the family, the Winfield family is left without any means to support ...

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... which the world exists. While Jim O'Connor exemplifies these characteristics and represents reality in the play while each of the members of the Wingfield family are living in their own manufactured illusions to escape reality. Indeed, to survive in the tawdry confines of lower-middle working class ... places on it. Thus, Jim symbolizes the only aspect reality in the play. Opposite to Jim is Laura, who represents illusion. Laura Wingfield portrays a dependent female; whose crippled leg foreshadows the crippling of her emotions and her ability to communicate with people other than Tom an...

• Word Count: 1784
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• Grade Level: High School

... which the world exists. While Jim O'Connor exemplifies these characteristics and represents reality in the play while each of the members of the Wingfield family are living in their own manufactured illusions to escape reality. Indeed, to survive in the tawdry confines of lower-middle working class ... places on it. Thus, Jim symbolizes the only aspect reality in the play. Opposite to Jim is Laura, who represents illusion. Laura Wingfield portrays a dependent female; whose crippled leg foreshadows the crippling of her emotions and her ability to communicate with people other than Tom an...

• Word Count: 1745
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• Grade Level: High School

... and these relationships is a significant theme throughout the play. These "escapes" may be related to the fire escape, the dance hall, the absent Mr. Wingfield and Tom's inevitable departure. The play opens with Tom addressing the audience from the fire escape. This entrance into the apartment provides a different purpose for each ... . Her escape seems to be hiding inside the apartment, not out. The fire escape separates reality and the unknown. Across the street from the Wingfield apartment is the Paradise Dance Hall. Just the name of the place is a total anomaly in the story. Life wit...

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• Grade Level: High School

... feels trapped and is looking for a way out. Williams" characters are all lost in a dreamy state of illusion or escape wishing for something that they don't have. The mother, Amanda Wingfield, was at one time the pick of the crop during her grandeur days of the Old South, but now she is weak and struggling to survive. In the beginning of ... a state of illusion but convinced that she is not, and this makes her flawed and responsible for the tragedy that came upon them even though she didn't realize it. Laura Wingfield is a romantic, who has a physical defect which causes her to limp slig...

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... certainly were better days. The past was a wonderful experience for her compare to the reality which she a now an abandoned wife with two children. Mr. Wingfield was cruel to leave the family but Amanda still loves him. She wears his bathrobe and often looks at the portrait of her husband. She can not put ... and Laura of that one Sunday afternoon in Blue Mountain. She chooses to live in the past. She hopes that the gentleman caller is not handsome because Mr. Wingfield is handsome and he wins her heart in a second. She does not want Tom to be a drunk, have manner in eating, and stop smok...

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... Even though both novels have similar and different points, each work tells the reader about dreams being unfulfilled. B-1 (Similarity) Ethan Frome and Tom Wingfield were both on a route to escape their obligations. In the beginning of scene four in The Glass Menagerie, Tom states how the coffin in ... desire of ever being with Mattie, causing him to be "trapped" under all of the snowfall in Starkfield. B-3 (Similarity) Amanda Wingfield and Zeena Frome are both presented as the controlling figures in both novels. Tom can't live his life without Amanda being in the way. Working ... Frome ...

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... of the last areas of Ireland to surrender to the English.) The estate of Powerscourt was then received by the Wingfield family who were also given ownership of Glencree and the Dargle valley. The castle was redesigned in the 1740's for Richard Wingfield (1697-1751) by Richard Cassels who made a mansion out of the once small castle. Its style was of the ... were created. Questionably one of the most spectacular gardens in the United Kingdom and Ireland. Its most impressive feature in the gardens is the area around Triton Lake. When Folliot Wingfield was Lord of the estate, he felled the ...

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... imagination. In Tennessee Williams the "Glass Menagerie" the members of the Wingfield family are all trapped in menial existences. Enveloped in their delusions or leading impoverished lives of symbolic displacements, they are almost a family of outcasts. Laura Wingfield is the main focus, who is living in a world of glass ornaments. Amanda Wingfield, Laura's mother, suffocating in her own affections, places her desires indirectly ... towards Laura. Additionally, there is Tom Wingfield, Laura's brother, who is immersed within a world of movies. Laura resembles a wounded animal, mirroring...

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Scenes 1+2 The Wingfield apartment faces an alley in a lower middle class St. Louis tenement. There is a fire escape with a landing that serves as a porch. "The scene is memory," indicate the stage directions, and, ... family's poverty, general boredom. On a larger level, that coffin can be seen as membership in the "fundamentally enslaved section of American society" that Williams describes in the stage directions. The Wingfield's apartment does not have a balcony or porch; it has a fire escape landing. This is no accident. Turning once more to the stage directions of Scene I, we read that ...

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• Grade Level: High School

... kept me interested. To me all the family wanted was happiness and the tragic part was they never got it. The first character in the play is Tom Wingfield, he seems to be in his late 20's, and he works in a factory but aspires to be a poet/writer. He supports his "crippled" sister and ... it but, what she doesn't realize is that he is staying for her benefit not his. The next character in the play is the mother, Amanda Wingfield she is extremely overwhelming and pushy, as you know, to her son. She is also constantly protecting her daughter from reality at the same time without ... realizi...

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... Depression of the 1930's. As a lower class family, the characters are placed in the slums of St. Louis in 1935. The protagonist, Tom Wingfield, is the narrator and Williams" surrogate. Living with his mother and sister, Tom supports them by working in a shoe manufacturing warehouse. He should ... . Unhappy with what life has dealt him, Tom strives for adventure and longs to turn his back on his responsibilities. His mother, Amanda Wingfield, abandoned by her husband almost sixteen years ago, tries to keep her family together through tough times. Although her love and hopes for her ... th...

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... Glass Menagerie has many different interpretations and one of the plays" main themes is that it is about a family trying to succeed. The Wingfield family, aren't quite living on the streets but they are poor enough. Amanda Wingfield is portrayed as a very pushy mother who always tries to urge on and persuade her two children to do exactly what she says. However ... same roof as her so has to escape, and her daughter has been forced into isolation from the world because she is too scared to face it. Even though the Wingfield family were all so desperate in finding succession they all wen...

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• Grade Level: High School

This play takes place in the mid forties. It is about a mother, Amanda Wingfield, a daughter, Laura Wingfield, and a son, Tom Wingfield. There are five characters in this play. The other character is a friend of Tom's, Jim O"Connor. Amanda was always successful with men when she was younger. She was always getting ... to high school with Tom and Laura. He now works at the factory with Tom. He is dating a girl named Betty and they are engaged. He is brought to the Wingfield home as a gentlemen caller, and when Top brings him home, he is unaware that he is going to be married. Amanda always co...

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In The Glass Menagerie Tennessee Williams writes of a 1940s household which consists of Laura, Amanda, and Tom Wingfield who display gender roles that underlie suspicions of dependence, manipulation, and subservience. The playwright demonstrates Tom as a subservient ... as a manipulative well-spoken Southern woman who cannot let go of her past. The writer expresses Laura as a dependant female with fragile emotions. Laura Wingfield portrays a dependent female; whose crippled leg foreshadows the crippling of her emotions and her ability to communicate with people other than Tom and Amanda. .....

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... play – which explores the themes of abandonment and the impossibility of true escape - is set in St Louis in the late 1930s. After his father abandoned his family, Tom Wingfield is left to support his overbearing mother, Amanda, and his painfully shy sister, Laura. Tom is a dreamer who is desperate to change his circumstances: he struggles to live with his ... Tom's love for his 'crippled' sister means that he cannot follow his dreams guilt free. The fantasy Amanda lives in gives us a greater insight into how delusion revolves around the Wingfield family and how it is a central concer...

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The Glass Menagerie, by Tennessee Williams, was written and first performed in 1944. In the play, Williams describes the three members on the Wingfield family, their dreams, and the harsh realities they face in the society of the 1930s. The mother, Amanda, clings to her past life as a Southern debutant and hopes desperately that ... her daughter, Laura, will follow in her footsteps. Tom Wingfield, the narrator and Amanda's son, dreams of breaking free from the mundane, simple life he is forced to lead once his father has abandoned the family. Williams is able to ... incorporate elements such...

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Symbolism: The Glass Menagerie Tennessee Williams uses symbolism throughout his classic play The Glass Menagerie. Through the eyes of Tom Wingfield, a character in the play, the reader gets a glance into the life of his family. Tom's mother, Amanda, is a southern belle desperately clinging to her past. Tom has a sister named Laura ... fire escape, Laura's "glass menagerie," and rainbows. One major symbol presented in the story is that of the fire escape, which has a different meaning and function for each of the Wingfield characters. For Tom, the fire escape is a means of escape from fire, n...

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... who ran off without a trace years before the story begins. We are led to believe that Amanda's anxiety, paranoia and neediness compelled his actions. Due to the disappearance of Mr. Wingfield, Tom, who is a poet by nature, is left to spend his day working in a shoe factory in order to support his mother and sister. We also start to see early ... speaking lessons her disappointment fades away, because she believes this will lead to him becoming an executive. Jim is the same age as Tom, and attended high school with both Wingfield children. Jim is fairly intelligent, a good speaker and ge...

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• Grade Level: High School

... Menagerie "The Glass Menagerie" by Tennessee Williams is a stage play set in St. Louis in 1937. " The Glass Menagerie" is a memory play drawn from the narrator, Tom Wingfield played by Michael A. Newcomer. Tom Wingfield who is also a character in this play is an aspiring poet who works in a shoe warehouse to support his mother Amanda played by Darrie Lawrence, and his sister ... by Derek Phillips is the guy from high school who Laura had a devastating crush on and who now works with Tom at the warehouse. There is also a fifth character Mr. Wingfield, Tom and Laura's father who ran off y...

• Word Count: 746
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• Grade Level: High School