The Glass Menagerie Essay, Research Paper

Seilgrank ([email protected])

American Literature

Novel Report

1-22-98

The author of my novel, The Glass Menagerie, was Tennessee Williams, a writer

who lived from 1911-1983 and wrote more than 25 full length plays, over forty short

plays, a dozen produced and unproduced screenplays, an opera libretto, two novels, a

novella, more than sixty short stories, over 100 poems, an autobiography, a published

book of letters, introductions to books and plays by others, and occasional pieces and

reviews. Of these, his most famous works are The Glass Menagerie, Night of the Iguana,

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and A Streetcar Named Desire, the latter two each winning

Pulitzer prizes. Tennessee Williams was born Thomas Lanier Williams on March 26,

1911, in Columbus, Mississippi, and at the age of fourteen he won his first prize in an

essay contest sponsored by the magazine The Smart Set. At the age of seventeen he

published his first story in the August 1928 issue of Weird Tales, and the very next year

he enrolled in the University of Missouri, but withdrew in 1932 to take a job at the shoe

factory where his father was sales manager. After working there for three years he finally

returned to college and graduated from the University of Iowa in 1938. He won a national

drama award in 1939 for a group of plays entitled American Blues, but his first great

stage success came with The Glass Menagerie, which was produced in New York City in

1945 and won the New York Drama Critics? Circle Prize for the best play of the year.

The Glass Menagerie is a memory play, meaning that the play is being told from

the memory of the narrator. The effect of a memory play is created by using

light-colored, hazy backgrounds, omitting some details and exaggerating others,

according to the emotional value that the item has to the narrator, and using unrealistic

lighting to show what stands out the most in the narrator?s mind.

The narrator for The Glass Menagerie is Tom Wingfield, the youngest of the

family. Tom is the only son and the family?s sole means of support ever since their father

left some time ago. Laura Wingfield is Tom?s older sister who is left slightly crippled due

to a childhood illness which left on leg shorter than the other. She spends most of her

time at home listening to the record player and taking care of her glass collection.

Amanda Wingfield is Tom and Laura?s mother, who is constantly nagging Tom, trying to

keep him from ending up like his drunk and runaway father, but in reality only drives him

closer to being like his dad. The play starts out with a short monologue from Tom, who is

now a merchant sailor. He gives a brief description much like the one I just did,

introducing the main characters and setting up the scene. After Tom finishes, he walks

into the dining room and the memory starts with Tom?s mother nagging him about how

to eat his dinner. Tom finally gets fed up with this and leaves the table, and Amanda

begins to talk with Laura about how Amanda was always being called on by gentlemen

callers. For the rest of the play the story seems to center around Amanda?s obsession to

get some young men to visit Laura and get her married off to a nice young man so Laura

can have a better life than Amanda did. In scene two Amanda finds out that Laura had

dropped out of business school because she was too nervous and shy to deal with it and

this makes Amanda very disappointed in her daughter. Amanda once again gets to talking

to Laura about getting some gentlemen to come and visit and asks Laura if there hasn?t

been anyone who Laura is interested in. Laura tells her mother that she once liked a

young man in her high school operetta class who used to call her Blue Roses, because

when she had an attack of pleurosis he thought she said Blue Roses and called her that

even since. Tom and Amanda get into another fight, and Tom begins to leave. Amanda

demands to know where he is going, and he tells her that he is going to the movies. She

refuses to believe this, because he is always gone all night and claims to go to the

movies. She is afraid that he is actually going out drinking all night and this only makes

Tom angrier. He yells at his mother and tells her that he just wants a little adventure in

his life and that he?s tired of his job stacking crates at the warehouse and storms off to

the theater. Later that night Tom comes home and Laura is up waiting for him. She tries

to talk him into making up with Amanda and Tom does the next day. Amanda tells him

that she doesn?t mean to be so hard on him all the time and that she just wants the best

for the both of her children. She knows Tom wants to just run off like his father and be

adventurous but she asks him to at least stick around long enough for Laura to get

married so she can be provided for. Tom starts to leave for work but his mother stops him

and ask him to do her the favor of trying to find a gentleman caller at the warehouse to

come and visit so maybe they can find someone for Laura. Tom finally agrees and that

night he comes home and tells his mother to expect a friend of his, James O?Conner for

dinner the next night. Amanda hurries to make preparations for the event and Laura asks

who the young man is. Laura is shocked to find out it is none other than the boy she had a

crush on in high school, and this only serves to make her more nervous. James arrives for

dinner and Laura becomes so nervous that she becomes ill and has to lie down in the

living room. After dinner the power goes out and Amanda asks James to take Laura a

glass of wine and some candles. James does so and Laura and he end up talking. He

doesn?t remember her from high school at first but after they talk for a while he gradually

remembers. He talks to her about not being so self-conscious, that she is unique. In a

world of people who are weeds, she truly is a blue rose. He gives her a kiss, but then he

curses himself for it, explaining that he is already going steady with another girl. Just

then Amanda comes in with some lemonade but James says he has to go, he has to pick

up the girl he is going steady with from the train station and he leaves. Amanda calls

Tom in and asks him why he played such a cruel joke on them. He explains that he didn?t

know that James was going steady with someone and when he invited James over he

didn?t tell him it was to see Laura because he didn?t want to scare him off. Amanda still

feels betrayed and the two break out into a giant argument and Tom finally walks out the

door, never to come back.