The Glass Menagerie is written by Tennessee Williams, a playwright who originally hails from Mississippi. The main characters are Tom Wingfield, an aspiring writer; his sister, Laura Wingfield, who has been crippled since the age of seventeen after she was attacked by a man on her way home from school; and their mother Amanda. The three reside together in St Louis, Missouri. The story begins with Tom describing The American Dream to the audience through the use of many metaphors and symbols.
The American Dream can be broadly defined as one’s ambitions for success in life coming true through hard work – something which is deeply entrenched within The Glass Menagerie, particularly when it comes to The Characters’ dreams for their own futures . The idea of The American Dream is also connected to The Characters’ escape from reality, not just because The Mother and The Daughter are stuck within their own mental worlds but because The Entire play is about escaping from these ‘realities’.
The Glass Menagerie, unlike many of Tennessee Williams’s works, has a plot which largely follows the ideas of The American Dream. Laura is hindered by her disability so she dreams of being beautiful and finding a love interest who will take care of her forever. Tom longs for independence so he can follow his dreams in becoming a writer. Amanda wants both her children to marry well – living up to her own version of The American Dream .
Thus, The Characters’ dreams reflect the story’s theme; they all dream of The American Dream being fulfilled for them, although The Entire play is an examination of The Common Misconception that The American Dream can be achieved through hard work. The Problems with pursuing The American Dream are demonstrated in the fact that The Characters’ lives are largely unhappy and unsatisfactory. The only character who achieves The American Dream is The Gentleman Caller, but The Common Theme is that The American Dream can be achieved through escaping from reality.
One reason why The Glass Menagerie has become so famous is that it has been described as a character-driven drama rather than plot-driven. Thus, Tennessee Williams places more emphasis on The Characters’ mental states rather than what actually happens to them. For example, The Entire story begins by setting up the idea that Tom’s dreams have not come true despite his best efforts – he says at one point that ‘I have always depended on the kindness of strangers .
The Characters, particularly The Mother and The Daughter, are fixated on The American Dream as The Driving Force of The Plot – what makes The Glass Menagerie a drama is the fact that they do not achieve their dreams. Amanda wants her children to become successful in order to improve society – it is this idea that leads her to push them into obsessive relationships with men who will ‘make something of themselves. Both The Gentleman Caller and Jim O’Connor fall short of The Dream, although Laura’s aim is for a stable existence rather than success. This can be seen when she says ‘I want someone who’ll make me play romantic roles’.
The play covers themes such as family relationships, loneliness and belonging. The story takes place in St. Louis, Missouri in the year 1937. The following paper will explore how Laura escapes reality through her glass menageries of horses and other animals to cope with her boring life, family life and poverty of the lower-class working class lifestyle of 1930’s America.
The symbolization of animals throughout The Glass Menagerie reveals that there are many similarities between humans and their animal counterparts which enable Laura to escape into her imagination. The glass menagerie is a collection of pieces that were given to Laura’s parents by Laura’s grandfather, they are broken miniatures of animals made out of glass which are displayed on the Wingfield’s living room mantlepiece. The set was given because Mr. Wingfield felt he could not survive without his favorite animal, the elephant (Kushner 74).
The similarity between humans and their affinity for keeping pets has been documented throughout time, but The Glass Menagerie emphasizes this theme through Laura’s love of these glass animal figurines that resemble what she considers to be her only friends. The protagonist becomes fixated on these mini-beasts when there seems to be nothing else in her life. The animals depicted in The Glass Menagerie serve as a means of escape for Laura, and she imagines conversations with them to alleviate her loneliness.
The little glass animals on the mantle-piece were a sign of wealth and respectability before The Great Depression, but they also represent Laura’s failure to find an identity outside of waiting on gentlemen callers who never come (Kushner 84). In the case where Laura is playing the roles of different animals, this reinforces that her imagination has no limits. The play begins with Tom convincing his sister to stop “playing horse” by reenacting The Call of The Wild , because it is not appropriate anymore since she is too old.
However, the protagonist continues to role play as animals throughout The Glass Menagerie , and this is a clear indication that acting as an animal is her way of escaping reality. By playing as animals, Laura creates a world where she becomes the object of control rather than the powerless person she feels herself to be. The protagonist conceives herself as a horse in order to feel more powerful, and Tom again chastises his sister for her childish behavior.
The protagonist then imagines Tom’s future wife as a mare that Laura has tamed, which adds another level of complexity because Laura is able to offer her brother advice on marriage before it happens through these projections (Kushner 94). The Glass Menagerie emphasizes how reality can be escaped by imagining alternate realities in which humans are able to control animals. The world of The Glass Menagerie is one where the laws of nature do not exist, and Laura escapes through her imagination because she does not feel like she matters in her family’s reality.
The protagonist is free to do anything when she imagines herself as an animal, but it is only a temporary escape that takes away from any sense of self-identity outside of the realm that exists within The Glass Menagerie . “Laura escapes into animals because there is something comforting about having them near. ” (Kushner 93) The final scene in The Glass Menagerie shows Tom trying to convince his mother not to leave with The Gentleman Caller, and he does this by using complimentary words of how The Gentleman Caller is nothing without Amanda Wingfield.
The protagonist interrupts this conversation with excitement because she found The Misfit in the family wood pile (Kushner 105). The protagonist is able to escape reality when she becomes The Misfit, a character from an old issue of The Dime Detective Newspaper where the criminal has no lines to speak. The fact that Laura can easily step into these roles shows that her imagination is only limited by what characters are available in The Glass Menagerie and her mind.
She seems to have an affinity for becoming violent criminals in order to escape the limitations in her life imposed on her by society. It is evident that The Glass Menagerie emphasizes Laura’s love of animals in order to show how she escapes reality by projecting herself into these beasts. The protagonist creates a world where she is able to imagine interactions with animals much larger than herself, which is comforting because The Glass Menagerie has already shown the limitations of her life when it comes to socializing.
The protagonist reverts back to childish behavior in order to avoid dealing with her mother’s “gentleman caller” who brings the possibility of leaving the family behind. The reader can see this in real time when The Gentleman Caller says he will take Amanda Wingfield out for an evening on the town, and Laura interrupts by saying The Misfit was in the woodpile (Kushner 103). The Glass Menagerie ends with The Gentleman Caller leaving behind Laura’s family, and it is the protagonist who must be the strong one to say goodbye.
