"The Glass Menagerie"

Paper Summary:

This paper looks at the characters of Amanda and Tom in Tennessee Williams' play "The Glass Menagerie". It discusses how they are examples of tragic characters even though they are not tragic heroes. The paper explores how they are tragic and explains the effects they have on other characters and events in the play.

From the Paper:

"This play by Tennessee Williams describes a series of failures, defeats and losses, some of which occurred in the play's more distant past, some in the present and some must be assumed of the future. While the Aristotelian model demands that a hero fall from a great height in order to present a real tragedy, Williams instead creates several tragedies from everyday people who never had any hope of heroism, the gradual dissolution of people barely rising above mediocrity, which is even more tragic and more pathetic than the fall of one who had been great. The Glass Menagerie has five characters, including the absent father with the omnipresent photograph, all of whom are tragic figures in some way or another. Even Jim, the Gentleman Caller and former high school hero, hasn't managed to escape the slow decline to anonymous ..."

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