Themes Of The Glass Menagerie Essays - English-language Films

Themes Of The Glass Menagerie Essays - English-language Films Themes Of The Glass Menagerie The Glass Menagerie is a play that contains intense human feelings; frustration, shyness, regretfulness, anger, and sadness. The play is set in the apartment of the Wingfield family. In this cramped, dinghy place lives three characters; Amanda, Laura, and Tom, who are desperate to make their dream come true. Amanda is a shrew, she wants to live through her daughter, Laura. Her dream is for her daughter to marry to a well-educated man and support her throughout the rest of her life. Amanda always make complaining remarks about her husband who had left her with Tom and Laura. Amanda nags Tom for spending too much time watching movies instead of working and finding a suitable for Laura. She likes to brag about how many Gentleman callers came to her house to pursue her. Tom is the narrator of the play. His dream is to be a poet and have no responsibilities to his family. He works at a warehouse, which he doesnt appreciate because it avoids him to complete his dream. He detests when his mother tell him what to do and how to do it, sometimes he has to act without pity. Laura is shy and has a low self-esteem. She is compared to her glass collection, fragile in every sense. As an effect of a childhood illness, she was left crippled, which made her think that she was less than everybody else. She avoids socializing because she is afraid of breaking up, however this changes when she sees her old crush, Jim Occonor. Her dream is to feel good about herself and to get out of her depression. Each character desires to escape from this lifestyle, poverty is what has them trap. The fire escape provides a different purpose for each of the characters. From the opening of the play, Toms addresses the audience from the fire escape. The fire escape allows Tom to get out of the apartment and away from his nagging mother. Amanda sees it as an entrance for the Gentleman callers to enter their lives. Laura hides inside the apartment not in the fire escape. The fire escape separates authenticity from the undiscovered. Tom escapes in more than one way, first is the fire escape which leads him away from his home, then the movies. The movies temporarily takes him to another world, where mothers and runaways fathers doesnt exist. He also gets away by drinking. He wants to escape his responsibilities of taking care of his mother and sister. He wishes to have a life of his own. Laura finds an escape through her glass collection. She also finds relieves in playing the same old record day after day. Across their apartment is the Paradise Dance Hall. Perhaps the music floating up to the apartment from the dance hall is supposed to be her escape which she just cant take. As time goes its getting harder and harder for Tom to avoid the real world, and the time for him to leave comes. When he leaves , he feels guilty for abandoning Laura . However, he discovers that he hasnt escaped, but led himself onto a path of even more powerful desperation. The theme escape is used throughout the play to demonstrate the hopelessness of each characters dreams. For the characters, an escape is possible, however, in the end no one finds a clear break. Bibliography Williams, Tennesse. The Glass Menagerie.