“The Glass Menagerie”

Introduction

According to Tennessee Williams, “The Glass Menagerie” is a “memory play.” (Devlin, 33-48) It is narrated from the viewpoint of the feature Tom Wingfield. What Williams calls “personal lyricism” is engaged in the play not so much to dispute the responsibility of Tom's narrative as to brandish, from a character's issue of outlook, the influence that illusion has on individuals. The play, for demonstration, depicts a large assembly of individual characteristics whose obsession with the past complicates their attachment to the present. Illusory worlds are conceived by these individual characteristics, either to cherish the not-so-accurate recollection of an idealized past or to defend an already-tattered emotional integrity. It is usual of Williams, a self-proclaimed loving dramatist, to conceive individual characteristics who favor house in a fantasy world. Yet, the playwright, cognizant of the inevitability of the confrontation between illusion and truth, furthermore departs the assembly with no question about his cynical and acrid mind-set in dramatizing the occasionally self-deceptive but habitually debilitating environment of his characters' illusory world. Flashbacks are utilized competently to highlight the labor that individual characteristics should undergo when they do not understand how to disentangle themselves from the past.

The major contrive of “The Glass Menagerie” hubs on what occurs to the Wingfield family on one unforgettable evening. A childhood sickness has left Laura Wingfield crippled; one of her legs is somewhat shorter than the other and is held in a brace. Self-consciousness and a need of self-confidence have turned Laura into an exceedingly timid person. She favors dwelling in an illusion world conceived through her fantasies and her assemblage of glass animals. Laura's mother, Amanda Wingfield, accepts as factual powerfully in tradition. Her belief in the customary Southern perform of having a “gentleman caller” has directed her to make a placement for Laura to rendezvous with one of Tom's coworkers at the warehouse.

Jim O'Connor displays up one night at the Wingfields' luxury suite as the “gentleman caller.” He behaves like a polite man, charming Amanda and reinforcing her conviction in this tradition. During the gathering, Jim's outward glamour and glibness for the time being renew wants in Laura's shut heart. She notifies him how much she adored him in high school and entrusts him with her very well liked glass animal, the unicorn. When Jim clumsily breaks the unicorn's hooter and notifies her that they are not matching with each other, Laura misplaces even more of her ever-dwindling self-assurance in herself and furthers her alienation from reality.

At the end of the play, Laura is evidently hurled off her emotional balance and prepared to withdraw lastingly into her fantasy world. Amanda, retaining Tom to blame for the fiasco of Jim and Laura's gathering, blames him as the constructor of aspirations and illusions. Tom, now completely cognizant of the detrimental consequences of the confrontations between the past and the present and between illusion and truth, concludes to depart the family and take on the dispute of forming his own life. (Donahue, 12-22)

Development and Analysis

“The Glass Menagerie” is ...