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But it was something more than that that made me feel her pain, more than that of her crippled
daughter or her desperate-to-escape son. But since I have poet’s weakness for symbols, I am using
this character also as a symbol; he is the long delayed but always expected something that we live
for”. Amanda is a strong yet pathetic woman living in a world of sentimental illusions while
stubbornly refusing to accept life with its drabness and absence of hope. Rensselaer Wyatt said that
Ms. Taylor “has discovered the Duse method of making the most delicate. Stars such as Greta Garbo
and Mickey Mouse (Scene 4, p. 154) presented people with an escape from their dreary day-to-day
lives. In your introduction, you made a case for why your topic and position are important. She
married him on the rebound—never loved her—carried my picture on him the night he died. He set
the action in a period of history rather than in an undefined time, with specific references to historic
events such as the Spanish Civil War and the looming threat of World War II. They put the unicorn
down on a different table, for “a change of scenery.” Laura bashfully admires Jim, while Jim grows
increasingly flirtatious. Although her physical handicapped appears to be slight, she has grown
accustomed to her abnormality since childhood. Nadine Abulencia Michael Diamond Kristoffer
Domingo. Summary. Last scene of the play where Jim is sent to entertain Laura after the dinner. The
fragility of the human experiences is mirrored in the glass toy world in which Laura dwells and
consoles her loneliness. However, the yearbook says that Jim and his high school girlfriend were
engaged, and so Laura assumes that the two of them must be married. In Greek drama anagnorisis
forms an integral part of the dramaturgy, and this tragic recognition can be defined as an “existential
repositioning of an individual vis-a-vis the past” (Favorini, 2008) for the Greek plays perpetually
dramatized the notion of memory and remembrance. As the story progresses, the reader observes
how each of the characters unravel and unfold to their needs and wants. She is the most obviously
complex and multifaceted of all the characters and Williams acknowledges as much in his initial
character notes. This is a production set in a transcendental space, not a drawing room. Tom insists
that he has been at the movies all night. Before writing a character analysis paper, you need to list the
characteristics that you will analyze. 1. APPEARANCE AND NAME. In Tom’s speech from the fire
escape, the symbolic name of Paradise Dance Hall can be read in a number of ways. “Paradise” is an
allusion to the lost Garden of Eden, and here the allusion paints the American thirties as a period of
innocence before the turmoil of World War II. They had to cook, clean, iron and generally look after
the family. Amanda rushes in, only to hear Jim’s announcement that he has to leave. Tom speaks of
the carefree world of the dancers, who drank and danced to swing music while the atrocity of
Guernica unfolded in Europe. In the first scene we see the family having dinner and discussing if
Laura will have any gentlemen callers that night. Louis) and worked at it even during the Depression
while employed in a St. However, we can safely say that there are both large elements of memory
and of reality present in the play, and that while memory dominates the performance and creates a
lasting impression on its readers and viewers, reality supports and shapes this memory. Out on the
fire escape, Jim and Tom discuss their futures. Laura’s association with a candle in the final moment
stands in sharp contrast to a world “lit by lightning.” The image of lightning suggests a hostile and
overpowering world, and in the last scene a storm is brewing outside. Don't let anything interfere
with your selfish pleasure. THE GLASS MENAGERIE Tennessee Williams 1944 SCENE 1 The
Wingfield apartment is in the rear of the building one of those vast hive-like conglomerations of
cellular living-units that flower as warty growths in overcrowded urban centres of lower-middle-class
population and are symptomatic of the impulse of this largest and fundamentally enslaved section of
American.
Why is this topic important, and why is your particular position on the topic noteworthy. Tom is
trapped in the apartment, with no outlets at home for the ambitions or desires of a young man.
Through Williams? genius use of symbols he was able to convey his ideas to the reader. His sister
Laura’s tentative relationship with her fabled gentlemen caller is a delicate, authentic spot of beauty
in a place of artifice and deception. The Glass Menagerie shines a light on being an outsider and
being restless through the perspectives of three different individuals. Louis) and worked at it even
during the Depression while employed in a St. My memories of the play are seen through a cloud of
ice cream-stuffed contentment (they were 60p each at staff rate) and through the special kind of
sentimental familiarity that only repeat viewing can bring. Amanda is not cowed, saying that she will
not allow any books by “Mr. Lawrence” in her home. The family as a whole is enveloped in mirage;
the lives of the characters do not exist outside of their apartment and they have basically isolated
themselves from the rest of the world. He gives a focus for Amanda, who uses Jim as a way of
reliving her past with the gentleman callers. A son longs to escape from his stifling home, where his
genteel mother worries about the future prospects of his lame, shy sister. But Tom has only provided
a gentleman caller and is already planning to leave. The play also examines the themes of the power
of memory, dreams, and expectations in life, as told through Tom’s guilt ridden narration. She was
very protective of her two children who she saw a sickly and in need of constant nurturing. The
Glass Menagerie scene 1 questions Flashcards Quizlet 40. Thus, Williams “ascribes to a character
within the drama, the control of the theatrical apparatus and at the same time, denies the existence of
the playwright” (Crandell, 1998). Laura’s only apparent interest seems to be her old music records
and her “glass menagerie,” a collection of animal figurines. She knew the gentleman caller from
school Jim, and had a crush on him during school but never said anything. Tom refers to this in his
opening speech, referring to the “.huge middle class of America” whose “.eyes had failed them, or
they had failed their eyes, and were having their fingers pressed forcibly down on the fiery Braille
alphabet of a failing economy.” (Scene 1, p. 234) This rather fanciful metaphor can be interpreted as
that the middle class were unwilling to confront such a bleak present and future in which there was
no hope of regaining their former wealth. She lights candles and asks Jim to check the fuse box. To
achieve this, Williams applies a variety of images and text (which are sometimes repeated) relating to
the particular scene at the time. When he hears the music of the Paradise Dance Hall, he asks her to
dance with him. Amanda is older and can still retain her memories of “Blue Mountain”. PDF
download also available through Barnes and Noble for additional fee. Tom goes to the movies to
experience the “adventures” that his life at home and the warehouse lacks. Hadley Stevenson who
was drowned in Moon Lake and left his widow one hundred and fifty thousand in Government
bonds. The conventional pedagogical method seems to have ignored the multidimensional nature of
dramatic art and has concentrated chiefly on its literary aspects. Her subsequent deception and fear
of her own mother’s disappointment shows how oppressive Amanda can be; although Amanda is not
intentionally cruel and means to be only loving, her investment in her children and her need to live
through them is a terrible burden for both Tom and Laura. They all conjure up a nostalgic feel that
that speaks to the heart, rather than the mind. Amanda has worked hard to make the apartment ready
for the gentleman caller.
The memoa ries of the past, even if they aren’t happy, are always portrayed to reveal a happier, more
relaxed time; much like the concept of American culture and the history of the country. Tom is in awe
of the magician because he does not have to choose; he can escape without causing any harm, a feat
that might be impossible for Tom. When he explains that he will not be back to visit again, Laura
bravely smiles. He dreams of leaving home, but his responsibilities for his sister and his mother have
so far kept him tied to the Wingfield apartment. She is visibly shaken; the evening has been
expensive for the Wingfields, and her dreams for her daughter have been shattered. The other
characters are also unable and, can be argued, unwilling to forget the past. He feels spiritually dead,
despising his work and stifled by the atmosphere at home. However, the yearbook says that Jim and
his high school girlfriend were engaged, and so Laura assumes that the two of them must be married.
That they make it their whole life usually dominant. He is fully a creature of the world and worldly
pursuits. Wide string: wide character array terminated by first null character. Like Blanche Dubois in
A Streetcar Named Desire she is the aging southern belle, lamenting the loss of the old pre civil war
days of debutante balls and gentlemen callers. Being a memory play, The Glass Menagerie can be
presented with an unusual freedom of convention. Laura symbolizes fear and instability through the
first five acts. Throughout the novel, Laura’s shy, awkward and antisocial character quickly becomes
evident and this is reflected in her glass menagerie which she takes much pride in. Tom, the narrator
looks back with fond nostalgia and also with haunted guilt. On the contrary, the impression he left
was merely ordinary. In essence, The Glass Menagerie depicts the character Tom and his desire to
achieve adventure in life; however he is trapped providing for his mother and sister. Laura, however,
has never had a good life to be able to remember. It is from Tom’s (or rather, Tennessee William’s )
memories that the story is told, and his comments shape our opinions about his family and situation.
His description of “A little woman of great but confused vitality” immediately indicates some of her
obvious contradictions as does he notes that “there is much to admire in Amanda as much there is to
love and pity as to laugh at”. This text is free, available online and used for guidance and inspiration.
He escaped the Wingfield household, but his dear sister Laura was always on his mind. Literary
essays make unexpected connections and reveal less-than-obvious truths. The fire escape, where Tom
spends much of his time on in the play, is very symbolic of his desire to escape the informal
boundaries he is trapped in. “ In Spain there was Guernica. In this classic work, four anguished
characters — successfully depicted by Redtwist Theatre’s excellent cast — are not only unrelievedly
human but also amazingly archetypal. She became schizophrenic, and her condition worsened until
their mother decided to allow doctors to perform a full frontal lobotomy on her. Amanda is prone to
nostalgic reminiscing, and Laura is lost in the dream world of her imagination as she contemplates
the light reflecting through her glass figurines. While traditional theatre makes the spectators aware
about the difference between showing and seeing, the desired viewpoint in The Glass Menagerie
differs in this aspect for the viewer has to identify his viewpoint as the seeing eye of Tom, the
narrator. He now rejects his previous escape of the cinema and its vicarious adventuring, in favor of a
more literal escape to the Merchant Seamen.
Tom explains that the play is a memory play and that he is one of the characters in the play. Laura
says that you hate the apartment and that you go out nights to get away from it. Tom tries to tell her
that he doesn’t hate her and that he understands her feelings. The Glass Menagerie is a compelling,
straight forward story with an air of misfortune surrounding engulfing it. Critics who favor the
sexual interpretation of Tom’s nightly disappearances often cite Tennessee Williams’ youth and his
grappling with his own sexuality. Laura reacts doubtfully and with great sadness, responding that she
is crippled and therefore cannot find a husband. Learn vocabulary terms and more with flashcards
games and other study tools. In his stage directions, Williams characteristically imbues the fire
escape with symbolic weight, saying that the buildings are burning with the “implacable fires of
human desperation.” Tom addresses the audience from the fire escape, and his positioning there,
standing alone between the outside world and the space of the apartment, points to the painful
choice he makes later in the play. What does Tom reveal in his final speech in The Glass Menagerie.
The projections use filmlike effects and the power of photography (art forms that are much younger
than drama) in a theatrical setting. The magician is able to escape the coffin without the messiness of
having to remove nails, which would damage the coffin. Becoming fed up with the way his life is,
Tom eventually deserts his family as his father did in search of a life of his own. Ends with a silent
pantomime of Amanda comforting Laura while Tom narrates that despite leaving his family he
cannot escape his memories of Laura. Social Stereotypes and expectations were still a large part of
life in the thirties. When Laura is enrolled at the Business School she becomes very shy and
embarrassed, hence causing her to become ill in the classroom. On several other occasions throughout
the play Tom narrates further, however, the most important being in the dying stages of the play.
Before Jim visits, Amanda dresses in a beautiful gown, reminding herself of her once-glorious youth.
They shot it out on the floor critical Moon Lake Casino. Secondly, he attempts to create a space for
his sister to be her old self again; paradoxically enabling memories to “keep alive in the present what
is dead and gone forever” (Jacobs, 2012) And finally, he tries to create a story of his memories that
makes them bearable and allows him to journey forward. It won't be easy; but it's definitely
entertaining. Amanda is thrilled, but Tom also tells her that the gentleman caller is arriving tomorrow
evening. Sickening - spoils my appetite - all this discussion of - animals' secretion - salivary glands -
mastication” View All Quotes. ORDERLINESS. Arranging myself and my surroundings to achieve
greater efficiency. The time is “now and the past” where memory and the act of its reconection is not
only a theme but the very basis of the entire play:.where the unreliability of the rememberer
influences the construction of the plot. Jim leaves the apartment and, apparently marries Betty and
goes on with his life. Rise and Shine!' I say to myself, 'How lucky dead people are!' But I get up.
The audience is therefore twice removed from the world of the image, contributing to the dream-like
and ghostly atmosphere of the play. By: M alik Weldon victrola. definition. a brand of gramophone.
The play is based around a fragile family and their difficulties coping with life. He escaped the
Wingfield household, but his dear sister Laura was always on his mind.
Amanda also asks Tom to promise that he will never be a drunkard. He wrote and directed seven
productions for Yorba Linda Civic Light Opera's youth theater. Also, it can also be seen that the
events that are occurring in the play are of Tom’s past and he is looking back on them. Jim kisses
Laura; Laura’s first kiss Jim is actually engaged to be married, breaking the hopes of Amanda that
Laura will be married off. Components of Glass History of Glass (Origins) Properties Recycling
Functions of Glass (uses of Glass) Glass in construction Types of Glass. Williams was obviously
someone who believed in the communist cause and worker’s rights, as Tom mentions the labour
uprisings in cities across the US, but seems disappointed by their failure. On the way to her D.A.R.
meeting (Daughters of the American Revolution), Amanda stopped at Rubicam’s Business College,
where Laura has supposedly been taking lessons, to tell the teachers that Laura has a cold and to ask
about Laura’s progress. The new floor lamp, the rug, the clothes for Laura. His ultimate unwitting
cruelty undercuts his original kindness. Tom’s escapes from the family can be related to the fire
escape, the movies, and last but not least Tom’s expected departure. Too plagued by her own
humility, Laura contemplates only one future for herself; seclusion from the outside world where bad
encounters prevail the desire for good experiences. Even though Tom’s sister is painfully shy,
Amanda expects Laura to be more outgoing. Her reaction to Laura shows that she is strangely in
denial about the nature of her own daughter. Though he tried to leave his family behind, his memory
of his mother and sister continues to haunt him. It is a complex characterization where the pain of
the mother continually interrupts her vivacious, unrealistic attempts to shape her little world. The
whole play is of his memories, but he isn’t the only one with haunting memories in the play. The
Glass Menagerie endeavours to trap into that feeling, and although it may not be the answer to all of
life’s plentiful questions, it is Williams’s truth, and therefore legitimate. That is certainly what
Williams has done here — capturing and distilling his own pain to create a memorable play with
vivid characters. For example, while Amanda is speaking, the script says that a projected image of
Amanda as a young girl appears. But two critics loved the show, and returned almost nightly to
monitor the production. Selected others: ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE NEW YORK STAGE, 1920-
1930, 1930-1940, 1940-1950; SHAKESPEARE AROUND THE GLOBE; FROM BELASCO TO
BROOK; FROM STANISLAVSKY TO BARRAULT; THE GREAT STAGE DIRECTORS;
FROZEN MOMENTS; ENCYCLOPEDIA OF ASIAN THEATRE; HISTORICAL DICTIONARY
OF JAPANESE TRADITIONAL THEATRE; THE ART OF KABUKI; KABUKI PLAYS ON
STAGE (4 vols.), etc. “Back-translations”: THE LION KING, AIDA, and WICKED for Tokyo
productions. The Wingfield apartment is in the rear of the building one of those vast hive-like
conglomerations of cellular living-units that flower as warty growths in overcrowded urban centres
of lower-middle-class population and are symptomatic of the impulse of this largest and
fundamentally enslaved section of American society to avoid fluidity and differentiation. I read this
play in my high school English class, and I love it. She lights candles and asks Jim to check the fuse
box. It could perhaps the ironic “Aha!” afterthought that one gets so often when looking back on a
situation. Tom tries to tell her that he doesn’t hate her and that he understands her feelings. She
accuses him of selfishness, and says that he never thinks of them, “a mother deserted, an unmarried
sister who’s crippled and has no job.” Infuriated, Tom leaves. She begins to grill Tom on the
gentleman caller’s character, she is particularly concerned that he might be a drunkard. This fall
symbolizes her inability to fend for herself in the outside world, and the ultimate hopelessness of her
situation. Read Online The Gl Menagerie Answers Glass Menagerie - Summary of Scene 1 BA
Objective Questions from Tennessee Williams and The Glass Menagerie The Glass Menagerie Mcq
The Gl Menagerie Answers Send us yours by Page 1315.
Her physically and emotionally state makes her as fragile as her glass menagerie, and together with
her glass menagerie Laura lives in an imaginary world, not even close to reality. It seems to suggest
that the size of the image has grown artificially large in his memory thereby reflecting the length of
the shadow which the father’s memory still casts over the characters in the play. Working backwards,
it is easy to associate Tom’s wistfulness towards the colored lights of Paradise Dance Hall with his
sublimated homosexuality. Her concern for her children is often asphyxiating because of her fear of
an uncertain future. In it, Williams portrayed a declassed Southern family living in a tenement. Tom
can escape his circumstances by joining the Merchant Marines. She believes that if Tom applies
himself he will succeed; the idea of her children’s success is an exhilarating one for her, and she
becomes breathless just speaking about it. Tom would feel even more isolated and restless, unable to
tell the truth to his mother and sister. Regular contributor: THEATER PIZZAZZ, THEATER LIFE.
The audience can see Laura in the living room, where she is stretched out on the sofa, trying not to
cry. He writes that man has very little reason to live because of a fragmented universe (Parker). The
screen projections seem heavy-handed, but at the time their use would have seemed to be a cutting-
edge innovation. She had a very delicate nature and tendency towards mental illness, and the new
traumatic life in the city made her withdraw more and more into herself. Williams compares the title
song “The Glass Menagerie” to a person’s thoughts which resembles pieces of gracefully spun glass,
of its beauty and its complementary fragility. Eventually, there were some changes in her economic
and social fortunes since marrying her husband, who has abandoned the family. Her insistence that
Laura stay put while Amanda plays “the darky” reveals her extremely provincial Southern
upbringing. What does the narrator compare the apartment to in the opening sentence. She compares
Williams to Proust and compares how Williams pieces the images of the past together from the
fragments of a “shattered consciousness”. CliffsNotes (often referred to as Cliff Notes) originally
were only available in print but is available in free, browsable format (or paid PDF version) online.
He introduces the scenes and gives an insightful commentary into the background of the play. But
who in hell ever got himself out of one without removing one nail?”. It made Tom into a showman,
whisking his mother and sister from under red velvet drapes. Her introvert self is in sharp contrast
voluble, forceful and even brutal nature as she dwells in a world of candlelight and fantasy. The
desired perspective of the play remains the same for it does not present reality, but a subjective
experience of it, focalised through the narrator Tom: “(Tom) addresses the audience. From the very
job Tennessee held early in his life to the apartment he and his family lived in. To achieve this,
Williams applies a variety of images and text (which are sometimes repeated) relating to the particular
scene at the time. Basis notion Standards Acoustical performances of glazing. But since I have poet’s
weakness for symbols, I am using this character also as a symbol; he is the long delayed but always
expected something that we live for”. The music is meant to be the “lightest, most delicate music in
the world,” and even the saddest. Laura is crippled, able to walk only slowly and with great effort,
and emotionally she is terribly fragile.