The Glass Menagerie

In Tennessee Williams' play "The Glass Menagerie", we are introduced to the Wingfield family. The Wingfields live in a tenement apartment in Depression era St. Louis. The household consists of mother, daughter, and son whom all live their lives with some type of disappointment and seem somehow set apart from reality. Disappointment is a large part of the Wingfield's lives. They are all living with broken hopes and dreams of one variety or another. Each family member, in "The Glass Menagerie" is trying to escape from reality in his or her own way. Except for the gentleman caller, he is the only person from the outside world, in which the Wingfields in all their various ways seem to be hiding from, which we are introduced to; he is their link to reality.

Amanda, the matriarch of the family, is a faded Southern belle. She endlessly repeats exaggerated tales of the south, and her numerous "gentlemen callers". She is disappointed that a life she dreamed of in her days at Blue Mountain has crumbled - abandoned by her husband, left with a disgruntled son and a crippled daughter who is painfully shy and doesn't have a job. She wants her children to be successful. She assumes that what worked for her (even though the man she chose walked out on her) will also work for her daughter Laura, even though times have changed. Tom tries to force her to face the facts that Laura is different from other girls, but Amanda refuses to accept this. All she can do is wish on the moon that things will turn out the way she wants them to. Amanda is determined to see the world as she imagines it.

Laura, Amanda's daughter, is extremely introverted. She has a slight disability- one leg being shorter than the other, which makes her limp. This causes her to be painfully shy and self-conscious. Thus because of her disability, and because she is so timid, she withdraws from society and into her own world of glass figurines and old phonograph records. This escape becomes her world. Laura finds comfort, safety, and companionship among the glass animal figurines she collects. Most of the prominent symbols - "blue roses", the glass unicorn, and entire glass menagerie - all in some sense represent her. Laura is as rare and peculiar as a unicorn or blue rose and also as delicate and fragile as a glass figurine. She is also the axis on which the plot turns.

Tom is Amanda's son and Laura's younger brother. Tom has much conflict in his life. He likes to write poetry and read, dreams of escape, adventure and higher things. Yet he seems hopelessly bound to the dull and boring Wingfield household. Tom is stuck in a seemingly inescapable rut, there are things he longs to do in life, but continues to live his life unfulfilled because he must work at a shoe warehouse to support his mother and sister. Tom is unhappy because of this and consequently he frequents the movies as his form of escape from the reality in which he lives. The movies eventually stop offering him the excitement and escape that he desires. Realizing that he was watching adventure and not living it, he joins the merchant

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