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The Glass Menagerie

            
             If we take a good look at our lives or the people around us or the one who have lived in past we can clearly see that there is always an object or something around the character that symbolizes something and those symbols are the best way of who that person is or how we can describe them. At the same time there are always some ways that all human use to escape from their problems. In the story The Glass Menagerie which was written by Tennessee William we can truly see the sign of all the above. He has used symbolizing to the best of his ability in this story on order to describe the characters of his story. The story is about a family of three who live in a small town during the Great Depression and each one have totally different personality. William shows symbolism throughout the whole story in order to describe the characteristic of the players and he also describes the way each one choose to escape from their problems and he have tries his best to proves that this is a perfect example of a dysfunctional family.
             One of the main characters in the story is Amanda, the mother of the family. William has used a lot of different symbols to describe her to his audience. According to Signi Falk "Amanda believes that Christian adults should be concerned with things of the mind and spirit" Even the name that he have chosen for this character is part of symbolism Amanda which if we take the first letter apart looks like it saying A Man which describe her characteristic a lot. First of all it can mean that she is being the man of the house since the father is gone or it can also prove the fantasy she have about guys because that's all she talks about. I believe throughout the whole story Man is the best word used to symbolize her as a person and can be use to describe her characteristic in two different ways. One is that she feels guilty about the father being gone so she feels like in addition of being the mom in the family she also have to play the man of the house since the father is gone.


Essays Related to The Glass Menagerie

1. Glass Menagerie

... world of human desperation, just doing what it takes to make it through the day. In Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie these same struggles are portrayed. The lifestyle of the Wingfield family has decreased due to the economy and other hardships. The Wingfield family was deserted by the father and left to fend for themselves. The father's desertion can be blamed on society. What was a happy home ... reality "represent herself in the midst of her imaginary world. She hides from the real world, forever trying to escape the spotlight. The glass menagerie is a reflection of Laura's wor...

  • Word Count: 1784
  • Approx Pages: 7
  • Grade Level: High School

2. Glass Menagerie

... world of human desperation, just doing what it takes to make it through the day. In Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie these same struggles are portrayed. The lifestyle of the Wingfield family has decreased due to the economy and other hardships. The Wingfield family was deserted by the father and left to fend for themselves. The father's desertion can be blamed on society. What was a happy home ... reality "represent herself in the midst of her imaginary world. She hides from the real world, forever trying to escape the spotlight. The glass menagerie is a reflection of Laura's wor...

  • Word Count: 1745
  • Approx Pages: 7
  • Grade Level: High School

3. The Glass Menagerie

... of any confidence what so ever marks Laura's descent into the emptiness of her own soul. It seems Laura really only wants to be left alone to collect her trinkets of glass. In his play, "The Glass Menagerie", Tennessee Williams uses the imagery of a glass unicorn to help convey the emotional anguish of the character, Laura. The unicorn symbolizes Laura's feelings of being "freakish" (1487), ... which has made her a hermit. Laura's obsession with her glass collection is displayed throughout the story. It is obvious that her mother, Amanda, ... tirade about Laura dropping out of business ...

  • Word Count: 1214
  • Approx Pages: 5
  • Grade Level: High School

4. The Glass Menagerie

... is a twenty-something woman that is too fragile to function in society. Tom is a struggling young poet working at a shoe warehouse to pay the family's bills. Williams uses symbols to effectively express the theme of The Glass Menagerie. The theme seems to be that of hopeful aspirations followed by inevitable disappointment and having dreams, which are destroyed by harsh realities of ... It shows her reluctance to let an emissary from the world of reality, symbolized by Jim, invade the comfortable non-existence of the apartment and her insecurity in dealing with the outside world. Anothe...

  • Word Count: 991
  • Approx Pages: 4
  • Grade Level: High School

5. Glass Menagerie

... fragile, shy, and emotionally crippled girl. The dominant symbols that describe Laura include the fire escape, the glass menagerie, the unicorn, and rainbows. All these symbols serve to reveal deeper aspects of Laura and her relationship with the outside world. One recurrent symbol presented in the story is the fire escape. ""For Laura, the fire escape is where the gentleman caller enters and where the outside world is brought inside to her ... .""- (Kohn, 2) It is also, however, a path to the safe world ... ...

  • Word Count: 974
  • Approx Pages: 4
  • Grade Level: High School

6. Glass Menagerie

... .? (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 everything and everyone outside of the apartment. Laura is terrified of anything new or different. Her mother sent her to business college, but Laura was so afraid ... was removed to make him feel less freakish Now he will feel more at home with the other horses.? (p 303). Laura will never belong to the real world, as she desperately tries to hide from the reality of it in the pla...

  • Word Count: 1190
  • Approx Pages: 5
  • Grade Level: High School

7. Glass Menagerie

... that their mother is afraid that she (Laura) will end up an old maid. The lights dim as the "Glass Menagerie" theme music plays. An image of blue roses appears on the screen as the scene begins. Laura is polishing her collection of glass as Amanda mounts the steps outside. Amanda's face shows the evidence that something has happened. When Laura hears Amanda, she hides her ornaments and ... had run its course; it offered, like the magician, "illusion that has the appearance of truth." Williams sought the opposite in The Glass Menagerie: truth disguised as illusion. To this end, the play e...

  • Word Count: 5517
  • Approx Pages: 22
  • Grade Level: High School

8. An Analysis of the characters and their illusionary world

... , is also a dramatic portrait of Williams' own mother, Edwina. The Glass Menagerie deals mainly with the mental life of the characters rather than their physical life and in this regard Williams uses the memory structure. At the beginning of the play, Tom introduces the play as being told from his memories. Tom claims that the play's lack of realism, its high drama, its overblown and too ... all life's painful embarrassments by occupying her mind with her collection of glass menagerie. Laura's collection of glass menagerie, in fact, parallels her physical and mental condition. As Judith J...

  • Word Count: 3081
  • Approx Pages: 12
  • Has Bibliography
  • Grade Level: High School

9. Escaping Reality in The Glass Menagerie

... continuing to deal with his mother Amanda, Tom decides to get up and leave. Another example of symbolism used in The Glass Menagerie is the movies. When Tom decides to leave the apartment, he often goes to the movies. This can be seen when tom says "I go to the movies because–I like adventure. Adventure is something I don't have much of at work, so I go to ... of his life. Thus, by using these examples of symbolism, Williams is able to prove how one will create an escape to avoid facing reality. Another character in The Glass Menagerie that creates escapes to avoid reality is Tom's mo...

  • Word Count: 1274
  • Approx Pages: 5
  • Grade Level: High School

10. The Glass Menagerie

... made much more vivid and meaningful through Tennessee Williams' use of symbolism. The two different symbols that can be found in the Glass Menagerie are escape, which provides hope and diversion from the outside world and the glass menagerie, which is a metaphor for Laura's fragility and uniqueness. The first symbol, presented in the first scene, is the fire escape. "The apartment faces an alley and is entered by a fire escape, a structure whose ... to leave his sister and even his mother behind, he is being driven to it. Williams uses the theme of escape throughout The Glass Menagerie ...

  • Word Count: 702
  • Approx Pages: 3
  • Grade Level: High School

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