Customer Reviews

Glass Menagerie

5 star:		(51)
4 star:		(45)
3 star:		(24)
2 star:		(12)
1 star:		(12)

 

 

Amanda Wingfield, the matriarch of "The Glass Menagerie," always tells her daughter, Laura, that she should look nice and pretty for gentleman callers, even though Laura has never had any callers at their St. Louis apartment. Laura, who limps because of a slight physical deformity, would rather spend her time playing with the animals in her glass menagerie and listening to old phonograph records instead of learning shorthand and typing so she can be employable. When she learns Laura has only been pretending to go to secretarial school, Amanda decides Laura must have a real gentleman caller and insists her son Tom, who works at a shoe factory, find one immediately. After a few days, Tom tells Amanda he has invited a young man named Jim O'Connor home for dinner and at long last Laura will have her first gentleman caller.

The night of the dinner Amanda does every thing she can to make sure Laura looks more attractive. However, when Laura realizes that the Jim O'Connor who is visiting is possibly the same Jim on whom she had a crush in high school, she does not want to go through with the dinner. Although she has to be excused from the dinner because she has made herself physically ill, Laura is able to impress Jim with her quiet charm when the two of them keep company in the living room and she finally loses some of her shyness. When Jim gives Laura her first kiss, it looks as if Amanda's plans for Laura's happiness might actually come true. But no one has ever accused Tennessee Williams of being a romantic.

"The Glass Menagerie" was the first big success in the long and storied career of playwright Tennessee Williams. Written in 1944, the drama consists of reworked material from one of Williams' short stories, "Portrait of a Girl in Glass," and his screenplay, "The Gentleman Caller." In many ways it is an atypical drama from Williams, with the character of Tom (a role I will confess to playing on stage) serving as a narrator who breaks the "fourth wall" and addresses the audience, which evinces Williams' affinity for Eugene O'Neill (e.g., "The Emperor Jones") at this point in his career. Tom tells the audience that this play offers truth dressed up as illusion, and in his stage directions (which are usually not taken full advantage of in the various performances I have seen because what was cutting edge in 1944 is overly quaint today) he uses not only monologues but also music and projections to enhance the memories on display. Williams also explicitly tells his audience that the gentleman call is the symbol of "the expects something that we live for."

This "memory play" tells of a family trapped in destructive patterns. After being abandoned by her husband, Amanda Wingfield, a woman of the Great Depression, has become trapped between worlds of illusion and reality. She says she wants what is best for her children, but seems incapable of acknowledging what that would be or actually providing it for them. Tom, tired of only watching adventure at the movies, is determined to break away from his dominating mother, but stays only for the sake of his sister. Laura may not be the glamorous belle of the ball her mothers wants, but she has her own inner charm and when confronted with Jim, a visitor from the normal world, there is the chance that she will finally claim her life as her own. This is a poignant drama on the importance of love and it represents a memory of not only family but also of loss.

The three main characters, mother Amanda, daughter Laura, and son Tom interact interestingly. Amanda, a woman of the South, truly wants the best for her children. Laura, the shy and crippled child, shys away from her mother's "high" expectations and retreates to the comfort of her Glass Menagerie. Tom finds and escape from the atmosphere his mother places over the house in the movies, but would like to find real adventure some day. Will the gentlemen caller that Tom brings be Laura's (and Amanda's) answer to happiness?

Sometimes, the most important and influential characters are those that never come forth and make an appearance. This is the case in Williams' The Glass Menagerie. The absent father serves as an explanation and a foreshadow for why his wife, Amanda; his daughter, Laura; and his son, Tom behave as they do.

The story has somewhat a dry line; however, it is not so much the plot but the characterization that makes this story memorable, introducing odd and unique characters that can be, unusually enough, identified with. Many who venture into this work see the characters by their surfaces only-a loony, demanding mother; a shy daughter; and an uncaring brother. However, this play requires a deeper look, a search for an explanation that reveals that the mother is not nuts, only lonely and worried her son will abandon her, just as her worthless husband has. She has fears, such as worrying that her Laura will become alone and unsupported, just as she is. Laura can also be examined, discovering she is not only shy, but is a victim of low-self-esteem, for her disability causes her to believe she is unable to be like others, never able to partake in the activities other girls enjoy, such as dancing; thus, she lives a life in solitude, for that is where she feels unexposed. Tom, too, with a closer look, can be viewed as a man tiresome of being treated as a boy, stuck in a world he is unhappy with, desiring escape to follow his dreams.

A close characterization reveals the turmoil inflicted by the father, exposing characters with problems, worries, fears, and desires. This is a play about real life, a dysfunctional family who wants only the happiness that they cannot achieve. This, by far, is Williams' greatest work yet.

I enjoyed the book, The Glass Menagerie. It wasn't too long and it was very interesting to read. This was my favorite out of all the summer reading books i had to read. One reason is that it is written as a play. The play focuses on three main characters: Amanda, the mother, her daughter Laura, and her son Tom. I also liked it because it is one of those books you can't put down. I found myself wondering what was going to happen next. I perceived the atmosphere of this play to be a sad one. It's not like a sudden tragedy had occurred, but just their day-to-day life seemed hopeless. I felt sympathy for the characters. I wanted to give them help and support at times! Amanda and Tom always fought with one another. Tom was sick and tired of the way he had been living. He wanted real adventure instead of just watching it on the movies. Laura, on the other hand, was content to sit at home with her glass menagerie. Their mother, Amanda, had become so obsessed with finding a gentleman caller for Laura that everything else almost didn't matter anymore. Amanda always reminisced of how she had so many gentleman callers in her day. She wanted the same for Laura. But Laura was much different than her mother was. It wasn't that easy for Laura to meet gentlemen. Amanda needed to realize and accept that. I was impressed by this play. It was filled with emotion and diverse characters. They were almost oblivious to reality. They had their own worlds and expectations of what life should be. Their struggles to make their lives better were desperate and real. In the end we don't really know how everything turns out, but we were left thinking that anything could happen.

This play is one of the most moving, realistic works ever written. Each character is given such an intricate psychology that they feel real.You are able to empathise with each character's pain, hope and reality. For those of you who say it is boring, don't read classics anymore. The play is not about plot but about REAL people in REAL situations with profound symbolism and harsh, harsh reality. From start to finish, this play shapes itself. Every word must be there. Every scene has to exist or the meaning would be lost. Real life isn't exciting, it is filled with emotion and thoughts that no other writer has ever been able to potray so well as Tenesse Williams. This is definately his finest work and a true gem in American Literature.

He cuts right to the core of every character's heart in his plays. And he leaves his characters so emotionally naked that you feel shattered and exposed at the end of your reading of the play.
Part of the enduring magical appeal of Tennessee Williams plays is the relatability of his characters .You see yourself in them or someone you know.
Laura reminds me very much of myself and my heart went out to her throught the whole play,especially at the end.One can only wonder what ended up happening to her for the rest of her life.
Mr. Williams plays and the people in them imprint themselves in your heart and mind and never leave.Thats why his plays will never be forgotten and are still so widely and deeply loved.

This drama of the Wingfield family is one of the twentieth century's great American plays, and it is no surprise that it is still taught throughout the country as an example of fine theater. The characters are psychologically true for their 1930's setting, and they reveal themselves brilliantly through their dialogue. The story is simple, the symbolism is obvious and readily understandable, the claustrophobic and depressing atmosphere is heightened by the fact that all the action takes place in a small apartment, and the line between reality and dream world, while clear to the audience, is tragically unclear to the players on stage.

Though the play may be structurally and aesthetically satisfying to an older audience familiar with this period, it may be less successful, after sixty years, to a contemporary audience. Amanda is so meddlesome that her good heart, her dreams for her family, and her control over Tom are unrealistic by today's standards. Tom, with his sense of obligation toward the family, sometimes appears personally weak. Most difficult, however, is Laura, so pathologically shy and introverted that she is happy to stay indoors all day, polishing her glass animals and remaining completely dependent on her brother and mother to support and protect her.

This has always been one of my favorite plays, but reading or watching it now feels a bit like watching a costume drama. Though it is brilliantly written, its characters and dramatic situations are so different from our twenty-first century lives, that the play and characters really come alive only when analyzed in conjunction with the social context in which they were originally presented. For a modern audience, Laura may be more pathetic than tragic. Mary Whipple

His first big Broadway success, "The Glass Menagerie" is Tennessee Williams' beautifully detailed semi-autobiographical memory play set in Depression-era St. Louis. Reading the play makes one genuinely appreciate the art of his prose in masking the self-deceptions of the four characters. I am so used to seeing this play dramatized that reading the words shows the care with which Williams nurtured each of the character arcs. Beyond the play's title, his use of symbolism becomes clearer from the fire escape to the various religious references. It doesn't have the heated melodrama of his later "A Streetcar Named Desire", but it is arguably his most poignant work as a playwright.

An aging Southern belle whose husband left her sixteen years earlier, Amanda Wingfield desperately clings to her despotic role as the matriarch of her small family. Her concerns revolve around keeping up appearances, retaining a sense of gentility and etiquette in her dilapidated house and finding a life for her daughter Laura. Amanda's narcissism stands in direct contrast to her painfully shy daughter overly sensitive to her slight limp, but it is a cause for fury in son Tom, a poet who has to work at a shoe factory to support the family. Modeled after Williams, he acts as the narrator of the play and provides insights to the characters that are not readily apparent.

Each character holds onto dreams. Amanda shares her past at every opportunity. Laura cares for her collection of glass animals and listens to her father's worn records on the vitrola. Tom dreams of joining the Merchant Marines to avoid Amanda's clutches like his father did. It comes to a head when Tom surprisingly heeds his mother's wishes to bring a gentleman caller, a co-worker named Jim O'Connor, to the house for dinner as a possible suitor for Laura. The confident Jim turns out to be Laura's crush from high school, and the play's most touching scene has Jim and Laura reminiscing by candlelight after dinner. In an ironic twist, Jim turns out to be engaged, and the family is irreparably damaged.

The play has a universal and enduring appeal because of the relevance of the dysfunctional family at the core. Tom's frustrations remain a touch point for anyone feeling trapped by obligation and using it as an excuse not to pursue one's dreams. Amanda is such a rich character, steeped in the reality of her impoverishment but maintaining illusions about her daughter's condition and returning to the wealthy lifestyle she once had in Blue Mountain. Laura is the perennial victim of her family's follies, as she cannot summon the strength to break her dependency on them.

It's no wonder this play has provided such a powerful acting showcase since its debut in 1944 beginning with Laurette Taylor's legendary performance as Amanda. Her successors are a virtual who's who of acting luminaries - Gertrude Lawrence, Katharine Hepburn, Jessica Tandy, Joanne Woodward, Maureen Stapleton, Julie Harris and Jessica Lange. Last night, I saw Rita Moreno give a monumental performance at the Berkeley Repertory Theater, and the drama still resonates as clearly as it must have sixty years ago. This 1999 paperback also includes an introduction by Robert Bray, editor of The Tennessee Williams Annual Review, who looks at the lasting impact of the play; a brief essay by Williams, "The Catastrophe of Success", in which he describes his surprise and horror at sudden fame after the play opened; and some interesting production notes from the original staging by Williams himself.

"The Glass Menagerie" by Tennessee Williams was very well written. Williams did an excellent job of portraying life-like characters. They were so well written, that they seemed real, like us at certain points in our lives. At one time, we were all like the mother, Amanda, who seems to live in the past, and be kind of overbearing at times, for example when Laura only went to three days of her business class that she was sort of forced into going to. Laura, the shy character, also is very life like in the fact that we all were a bit like her too. Everyone, at one point in their life was really shy and just wanted to stay locked up in their room. Tom, the son, is the narrator in the story. He constantly tries to escape reality by going outside and to the movies. He's the sort of person who just needs to constantly escape from life. The main theme of "The Glass Menagerie" is just that. Trying to escape from the sometimes-disappointing reality called life. The plot was simple, yet very effective. A reason for the simplicity I think is that this book is meant for us to realize that even though things may have been better in the past, not to live in it, but rather to live in the present, because we may be missing something even better than what we had that is right in front of us, waiting for us to notice it, but we're so enthralled in the what has happened in the past we don't see it. Basically what "The Glass Menagerie" is trying to tell us is that we need to live in the future and if we don't, then we will miss out on all the un-lived life that lies right in front of us, waiting for us to discover it.

When I first bought the book, the name sounded really interesting, but I didn't understand what "menagerie." After I flipped a few pages, I notice
how dysfunctional, yet almost normal, family the book portrayed. In a way, many people can relate the situation with their personal life.
During the 1940's and after the World War II, many people were in desperation trying to find jobs and create a better life. However, as a result of this mindset, some did not succeed and ended up living in a life of disaster. Such calamity resulted in not only financial misfortune, but also social and mental failure. Everyone seemed to scramble to quickly find a great life, but little did they know, the truth of the reality was that not everyone could succeed at the same time. As a result, many hoped for too much, plunging in a world of delusion. Avoiding reality, several other were just assuming fortunes would find them, creating self-fulfilling prophecies.
In Glass Menagerie, Tennessee Williams wants to depict exactly that tragedy resulted from constant escapades to fantasy by employing Amanda as the typical woman who just lost her grip on reality. Amanda has lost control ever since her husband had left her, destroying the family. Unable to cope with that reality, she just drifted onto another world. She refused to believe that fact and tried to impose her ideals onto her daughter, Laura. Amanda has always boasted that she was the most popular girl attracting all the find young men. She lived a life of glamour, while everyone stared enviously at her success. However, success took a u-turn and even a crash into the wilderness of failure. Amanda was distraught, devastated by the fact that her husband had left her and her family was filled with shame and quirk. Unable to get a grip of reality, she loses her control and drifts into a fantasy, where everything seems to work out perfectly. She puts too much emphasis on being popular and attracting all the rich suitors. She superimposes all her ideals onto her daughter, Laura, so she could be just like her mother. Unintentionally, she forces her daughter to achieve exactly what she has. Despite Amanda's genuine push, she actually forces Laura off the edge, but she changes and matures into a woman, more open to the world around her. Although Laura grown to be less inclusive and more open to the world, the family has broken apart as a result of Tom's escape. Ultimately, as a result of Amanda's fantasy world, the family has been torn apart into bits and pieces, revealing the notion that the escape to fantasy would only ruin one's life.
Tennessee Williams argues that fantasy is only a false depiction of the world in its most rudimentary image, which causes one to lose control of the complications of reality, inevitably resulting in a disaster.