Essay about Characters in The Glass Menagerie - 612 Words

Characters in The Glass Menagerie Of the three main characters in Tennessee Williams’s ‘The Glass Menagerie’ Amanda is set to appear as the most dominant and in control. As the mother of the family unit the audience expects her to hold some kind of responsibility over her children as well as providing for them. The idea of the sense of duty she has for Tom and Laura’s future still remains even when the audience discover that the person financially supporting the Wingfields is actually Tom. Amanda Wingfield is in many ways like most parents. She only wants what she thinks is best for her children. In the ‘Glass Menagerie’ this can be a strength and a weakness. Amanda believes that gentlemen callers will be chasing after Laura†¦show more content†¦Ã¢â‚¬â€œ gentlemen callers!† When Amanda visits the Business College and finds out that Laura has quit, another strength is revealed. She tells Laura not to let her disability hold her back. Although her diction is not appropriate in inspiring Laura her intentions were ultimately for the betterment of Laura’s future showing strength as a parent. She forbids the word ‘cripple’ to be used in the house and this shows another Amanda weakness that she will not accept fact and would rather resort to her dreams. Amanda reveals that she is not always living in a dream world during the business college incident as she focuses on her dependence on Laura to succeed in life and to thus take care of her. â€Å"What are we going to do, what is going to become of us, what is the future?† Amanda constantly favours Laura over Tom. This is a devastating weakness which eventually drives Tom and thus the breadwinner out of the house. She constantly criticises Tom over every small thing he does and does not approve of his love for the movies. â€Å"It’s you that makes me rush through meals with your hawk-like attention to every bite I take.† Eventually in an ironic statement Amanda pushes Tom over the edge by accusing him of living in a dream world. â€Å"You live in a dream, you manufacture illusions!† It could be argued though that Amanda’s criticism is more a way of making sure that Tom does not follow the same path that his fatherShow MoreRelatedCharacter Analysis Of The Glass Menagerie1463 Words   |  6 Pagesto his play, The Glass Menagerie as a â€Å"Memory Play.† The play is narrated in perspective of the character, Tom Wingfield, his memory of living in an apartment with his overbearing mother, Amanda, and his shy sister Laura. Tom is an aspiring poet who is forced to work in a shoe warehouse to support his sister Laura and his mother Amanda. His sister Laura is a shy girl with a limp as a result of pleurosis attack as a teenager, who needs to be constantly taken care of as her glass figurines. His motherRead MoreRole of the Characters in The Glass Menagerie Essay653 Words   |  3 PagesRole of the Characters in The Glass Menagerie All of the characters in The Glass Menagerie have specific symbols in the play representing themselves. Some of the symbols for Tom are the Merchant Marine and the magician’s nailed coffin, while Amanda’s are the yellow dress and her membership to the Daughters of the American Revolution and some of Laura’s are the unicorn and blue roses. Tennessee Williams play has a simple face but the meanings behind the countless and increasingly complexRead MoreEssay on The Complex Character of Amanda in The Glass Menagerie2008 Words   |  9 PagesThe Complex Character of Amanda in The Glass Menagerie    Amanda Wingfield in The Glass Menagerie furnishes an excellent example of a carefully crafted, complex character whose speech and action arise from the psychological being created by the playwright. In his character description, Tennessee Williams starts his reader on the road to discovering Amandas complexity. AMANDA WINGFIELD the mother. A little woman of great but confused vitality clinging frantically to another timeRead More The Glass Menagerie: Existentialist Responsibilities Conveyed Through the Character Tom1655 Words   |  7 PagesThe story of a young Tennessee Williams is poetically portrayed through a 1945 Broadway Play, The Glass Menagerie. The main character, Tom Wingfield, lives in his family’s apartment with his mother, Amanda Wingfield, and sister, Laura Wingfield. Their father left the family, and he remains a silent character appearing as a portrait on the apartment wall. Throughout the seven scenes, the immaturity of each family member is revealed. In search of adventure, Tom has dreams of being a writer andRead MoreThe Father As The Most Important Character In The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams744 Words   |  3 PagesThe Father As The Most Important Character In The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams In The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams the father is not a proper character, he is instead, portrayed by a larger-than-life-size photograph over the mantel in the Wingfield household. Even though he is not a real character, he still has an influence on the other characters in the play because of the actions he had taken in the past. He is mentioned very little in the play yet Read MoreThe Concincing Character Develpoment in Nora Helmer of A Doll’s House and Laura Wingfield of The Glass Menagerie 757 Words   |  4 Pagesillustrate their characters in their plays. Although characters Nora Helmer of A Doll’s House and Laura Wingfield of The Glass Menagerie are incredibly different, the authors used very similar techniques of creating them as convincing characters. Nora and Laura both undergo convincing character development with specific motivations behind their actions. Williams and Ibsen also use direct and indirect characterization to further develop Nora and Laura. Without such qualities, the characters would fall shortRead MoreEssay on Glass Menagerie722 Words   |  3 Pagesnbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;The Glass Menagerie, by Tennessee Williams contained well-characterized characters. The quot;Dead Poetamp;#8217;s Societyquot; also contained a great set of characters that were similar to those in The Glass Menagerie. It is fair to say that the characters of The Glass Menagerie and the characters of quot;Dead Poetamp;#8217;s Societyquot; are more similar than different. nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;Both stories had no main characters; therefore it was easy to distinguishRead MoreIllusion Vs. Reality In The Glass Menagerie By Tennessee Williams1022 Words   |  5 Pagesillusions on someone. In The Glass Menagerie Tennessee Williams uses metaphors, the fire escape, and Laura’s glass menagerie to emphasize how the characters retreat to their world of illusion to escape from reality. Williams uses Laura’s glass menagerie to exemplify how the characters retreat into their private world of illusion. Because of Laura’s defects, she feels as if others do not accept her. She makes a world of illusion to escape from reality. Her glass menagerie represents this kind of worldRead MoreThe Glass Menagerie By Tennessee Williams1547 Words   |  7 PagesThe Glass Menagerie, by Tennessee Williams, is a play narrated by Tom Wingfield, one of the three main characters in the play. The story is based on Tom’s memories of his past life while living with his mother Amanda and sister, Laura, during 1937 in St. Louis. These memories are skewed because of his inability to escape from his feelings of entrapment and the abandonment from his sister. The title suggest that the characters are a hodgepodge of fragile, sensitive, opposite people striving toRead MoreThe Glass Menagerie By Tennessee Williams985 Words   |  4 Pageshardly catch it going. ¨ This quo te by the author of The Glass Menagerie, Tennessee Williams, describes both The Glass Menagerie, a memory play, and the life of Tennessee Williams himself, for whom memories played a large role in his life. Within the play, many parallels can be drawn between the life of Williams and the life of Tom, the main character, such as a disdain for factory work. In addition, several characters in The Glass Menagerie have a difficult time fitting into the roles that their