"The Glass Menagerie"

Paper Summary:

This paper examines how Tennessee Williams's 1944 classic, "The Glass Menagerie", can be considered a study in multiple-level metaphors. It attempts to demonstrate how a collection of glass ornaments is an extrinsic comparison between the lives of the characters in the play, the family dynamic shown in the play, and also the interplay between the audience, who are merely passive observers, and the actors. It looks at how, in "The Glass Menagerie", we trace a few slices in the lives of three individuals with different characters and yet who share the commonality of fragility; this tenuous thread weaves around the characters and can be easily shattered from within and from the outside.

From the Paper:

"The Glass Menagerie is about several slices in the lives of a family that lives in a rundown apartment in St. Louis. The family consists of an overbearing but concerned mother, Amanda Wingfield; a son, Tom, who is the sole breadwinner of the family; and, his sister Laura, who is possessed of a fragile physical constitution and an even fragile psyche. It is not difficult to imagine that the lives of this family resemble fragile pieces of glass arranged in a menagerie. The family is poor. The father abandoned the family several years ago and fled to Mexico. His only correspondence from Mexico was a postcard that had no return address."

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