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The Glass Menagerie
The word 'crippled' in this play can be taken to have several meanings. In the most literal sense, it refers to Laura's limp, the slight physical handicap which is one of the reasons why she has...
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The Glass Menagerie
More than anything, Laura longs for a normal life. Her shyness and self-consciousness prevent her from being social and forming friendships and relationships. Her mother's inappropriate girlishness...
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The Glass Menagerie
The characters in the Wingfield family are very closely connected, but the relationships seem co-dependent rather than healthy. In that respect, the siblings and mother are all tied through...
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The Glass Menagerie
As Williams himself writes in the play's extensive production notes, nostalgia is the first condition of the play. Throughout The Glass Menagerie, Williams contrasts the nostalgia of memory with...
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The Glass Menagerie
All of my gentlemen callers were sons of planters and so of course I assumed that I would be married to one and raise my family on a large piece of land with plenty of servants. But man...
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The Glass Menagerie
This play by Tennessee Williams presets Tom Wingfield as the protagonist, but he is not necessarily the hero. Tom uses the play in part to explain his decision to leave home, which meant leaving...
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The Glass Menagerie
At the beginning of scene five, Tom breaks the fourth wall and addresses the audience directly. As he stands on the fire-escape landing, he starts to reminisce about the area in which he grew up....
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The Glass Menagerie
In The Glass Menagerie, Tennessee Williams presents a generational difference in the characters’ attitudes, as well as personal differences between the siblings. Of the three Wingfield family...
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The Glass Menagerie
Amanda: But, why—why, Tom—are you always so restless? Where do you go to, nights? Tom: I—go to the movies. Amanda: Why do you go to the movies so much, Tom? Tom: I go to the movies because—I like...
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The Glass Menagerie
The play is set during the Depression, as is explained in the introduction with the quote, "that quaint period, the thirties." The author notes that the characters were facing "a dissolving...
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The Glass Menagerie
Laura Wingfield is the physically challenged daughter of Amanda Wingfield in The Glass Menagerie. While she suffers from a minor physical deformity that makes her walk a bit awkwardly, it is her...
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The Glass Menagerie
Laura Wingfield is an extremely introverted and sensitive young woman. She is self-conscious, likely in part because of the problem with her leg. She wears a brace and walks with a limp, and she...
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The Glass Menagerie
In The Glass Menagerie, Tom lives a relatively boring life. His job at a shoe factory is tedious and doesn't pay well, and at home, his mother constantly nags him. He is his family's only provider,...
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The Glass Menagerie
Chapter Summaries Scenes 1–2 Scene 1 The scene takes place in an apartment belonging to the Wingfield family. The apartment “faces an alley and is entered by a fire-escape.” The playwright explains...
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The Glass Menagerie
I'll start by explaining Laura's physical defect, because it is partly this that has caused her mental and psychological condition. Laura's physical defect is a slight limp. However, this limp has...
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The Glass Menagerie
Amanda is so traumatized by her past that she forces her expectations on her children rather than understanding who they really are. She believes that if she spends enough time trying to get them...
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The Glass Menagerie
In scene 4 of The Glass Menagerie, we learn right away that there are dysfunctional family dynamics that take place in this somewhat chaotic household, which ultimately will lead to Tom's...
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The Glass Menagerie
Amanda treats Tom, her son, like a mother treats a son and also, because he is the only man in the family, she places the responsibility of providing for the family squarely upon his shoulders....
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The Glass Menagerie
Major works of literature such as The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams, unlike simple fables or sermons, rarely have singular lessons; in fact, it is precisely their complexity and lack of...
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The Glass Menagerie
The concept of the American Dream is evident in both Tom, the protagonist, and Jim, the former high school hero. In Tom the American Dream is evidenced in his inability to settle down, make a...
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The Glass Menagerie
Tennessee Williams's The Glass Menagerie is a play fraught with conflict; however, Tom's internal conflict of being torn between his desire to fulfill his dreams and his sense of responsibility to...
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The Glass Menagerie
In The Glass Menagerie, Jim O’Connor is Tom Wingfield’s friend from work. To satisfy his mother’s nagging, Tom has invited Jim to dinner at their home. Jim is the antithesis of the entire Wingfield...
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The Glass Menagerie
The first bout of abandonment one knows about in the play is Amanda's husband leaving the family way back and crippling apparently her common sense, the security of the family, and the self-esteem...
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The Glass Menagerie
The three examples I have picked involve Amanda, Tom, and Jim respectively. Note: this movie adaptation follows the original play very closely and I will give the scenes from the play in which...
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The Glass Menagerie
Components of the play's setting that are important to the drama are: the claustrophobic atmosphere of the Wingfields' apartment the urban setting the fire escape The time aspect of the setting...
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The Glass Menagerie
The Glass Menagerie is a memory play. The narrator, Tom, begins by saying that "the play is memory." He refers to the play as "sentimental" and suggests that it is not entirely based on realism....
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The Glass Menagerie
Interestingly, the characters of Tennessee Williams's play, The Glass Menagerie, are themselves somewhat symbolic. For, Williams's play is not realistic; instead, it is expressionistic, and so the...
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The Glass Menagerie
When Jim and Laura were in school together, Laura was weak and sickly. One day, Jim asked Laura what was wrong with her, and her reply, Pleurosis, was taken by Jim, who didn't know that word, to...
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The Glass Menagerie
The play has been made into two major films: the 1950 version, directed by Irving Rapper and starring Kirk Douglas, and the 1987 version, directed by Paul Newman and starring John Malkovich and...
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The Glass Menagerie
There are at least four prevalent themes in Tennesse Williams's The Glass Menagerie. Reality vs. Self-Deception Each of the three main characters have great difficulty in dealing with reality. In...
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The Glass Menagerie
In Tennessee Williams's play The Glass Menagerie, the character of Laura Wingfield is characterized as a young woman whose foot malformation makes her limp. This is considered a flaw to her...
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The Glass Menagerie
Laura's conflict is that she wants to be loved, but she also fears interaction with the world. She is emotionally fragile, as fragile as the glass collection she is always washing and polishing....
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The Glass Menagerie
Let's first establish that The Glass Menagerie is what is known as a "memory play." This term was actually coined by Tennessee Williams himself to explain the nature of this particular play, one...
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The Glass Menagerie
I think that you might be better set to provide a bit more background into your question, but I think I can attempt to articulate a vision of Tennessee Williams' characterizations. I think a good...
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The Glass Menagerie
In The Glass Menagerie, the glass collection symbolizes aspects of Laura. On the one hand, she appears to be as fragile as the little animals. On the other hand, as an effect of light shining...
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The Glass Menagerie
Ethos is defined in different ways, but it is basically the credibility in terms of style, tone and characterization that is used by the writer to convey his work upon the audience. Tennessee...
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The Glass Menagerie
The conflict between Amanda and Tom in this masterful play centres on the way in which Tom feels drawn to, as his father did, seek his fortune and discover himself through venturing away from his...
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The Glass Menagerie
Tom as narrator closes the play with a monologue explaining what his life became after he stormed out of the apartment in St. Louis, leaving his mother and sister behind. The theme of his speech is...
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The Glass Menagerie
In Scene 7, the power goes off because Tom has not paid the bill, having used the money to join the Union of Merchant Seamen. With the electricity gone, candles are used to light the room, lending...
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The Glass Menagerie
After learning that Laura has not been going to Rubicam's Business College, in Scene 3 of The Glass Menagerie, Amanda is convinced that Laura needs to be married. So, getting a gentleman caller...
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The Glass Menagerie
The Glass Menagerie has three main characters: there is a mother and her two children. The mother is Amanda; she has a daughter named Laura and a son named Tom. Tom introduces and narrates the...
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The Glass Menagerie
The Glass Menagerie is full of illusions. Each main character in the play is living an illusion of some sort. Amanda, for example, tries to live through Laura. Amanda wants and longs to...
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The Glass Menagerie
Laura is an important character, as is Amanda, but I don't believe she is the protagonist. Tom Wingfield is the protagonist; the story belongs to him. The drama focuses on Tom's internal and...
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The Glass Menagerie
The ending scene in the drama helps to bring out many of the central ideas that had been present throughout it. One such idea is the construction of what is "normal." Laura's disclosure that the...
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The Glass Menagerie
In the play, the glass unicorn is symbolic of Laura's belief that she is different from everyone else because of her disability. Like the unicorn, who is different from the other horses, because...
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The Glass Menagerie
There are many symbols used in the play. In fact, the play is so rich that it overflows with them. The core symbol is, of course, the glass menagerie that gives the play its title—Laura's precious...
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The Glass Menagerie
At a first glace, it is tempting to jump to a quick conclusion and declare that Jim is a foil of Tom in that they are contemporaries but Jim is more stable and mature than Tom. However, when you...
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The Glass Menagerie
In the play's moving--and ironic--conclusion, Tom (as narrator) recounts what his life had become after leaving home. He had achieved freedom without ever being free: I traveled around a great...
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The Glass Menagerie
Amanda is convinced that unless Laura marries, she will have no one to support her after Amanda dies. She put Laura in business school but Laura so sick to her stomach during a typing test, that...
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The Glass Menagerie
The Glass Menagerie, a famous play by Tennessee Williams, has four characters within the play. However, Tom Wingfield is arguably the main character of The Glass Menagerie. There is some argument...
