"The Glass Menagerie"

Paper Summary:

This paper examines how Tennessee Williams is a playwright who makes strong use of symbolism and how he makes good use of symbolism in "The Glass Menagerie", a play that recalls Williams' own family situation. It looks at how in the play, the brother, Tom, is a budding writer who leaves home, much as Williams himself did and how the family structure also mirrors his own, with the aristocratic mother trying to hold onto her youth and expecting more of the lame daughter than she can ever achieve. It analyzes how the play itself is presented as a memory, something that Tom as narrator emphasizes at the outset as well as the emphasizing the symbolic nature of the play itself by describing the characters to be presented and indicating that one of them is more realistic than the others. It discusses how the play uses projections to evoke certain symbols in a more direct manner and how this symbolism always links back in some manner to Williams' own earlier life.

From the Paper:

"Laura is a fragile creature, as fragile as the glass figures in her collection of the title. The glass menagerie therefore is a symbol for her fragility. The glass menagerie and the phonograph records Laura plays are also a means of escape for the girl: "Through her timidity, her suffering from the friction between Tom and Amanda, and her retreat into a world of dreams, Laura evokes genuine sympathy; she is the one who must be cared for, loved, and understood" (Falk 49). The fragile glass creatures are just like Laura, and yet it is when the Gentleman Caller accidentally breaks one of the figures when he is dancing with Laura that Laura is suddenly set free from her dream world. In a larger sense, this also sets Tom free, allowing him to escape from the home after a fight with Amanda because the Gentleman Caller is already engaged. The broken glass figure is a symbol of the break with the past, though that break is always incomplete because memory, almost as fragile as the glass figures, keeps the past alive."

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