Amanda In The Glass Menagerie Essay, Research Paper

Characters, like the fruit that make a tree a fruit tree make a play, a novel, or even a sit-com. A characters personality can determine what path a story line might travel, or be used to guide a story down the correct path. Characters traits can also be called upon to give a story depth and meaning. Traits can be used to take away form the story or used to bring the story out like a bright shade of lip liner brings out a set of lips. I would like to look at the traits both good and bad, of Amanda in Tennessee Williams The Glass Menagerie. Amanda’s character is full of paradox, which supplies her with many good, and bad traits. All of her gains and falls play off of one another making her a good character that adds to the story, and if you ask the right person might even be the story her self.

Amanda is from Blue Mountain, where she lived on a time of gentlemen callers. She was a married woman, but was abandoned by her husband. Amanda is stuck between a world of illusion and reality, which is what causes most or at least the bad traits that I pick out to talk about. Amanda lives a very boring and empty life. She uses her alternate world to help make her life better. She slips back and forth through the whole story. She demonstrates one example of using her alternate world when she says to Laura “you be the lady this time and I’ll be the darky”. She plays games like this to make her life more exciting. However she is unable to live in her alternate world and she is forced into the pressures of everyday life, which she lives through her children.

Amanda lives through her children to help make her life more bearable. Amanda living through her children brings out the bad and the good. One of Amanda’s good traits is the fact that she gives all to her children. She shows this when she says “ I know so well what becomes of unmarried women who aren’t prepared to occupy a position.” That is her life’s main concern. She frets and worries about her children to no end. She wants the best for her children. She does not see that her wants differ form that of her children. She therefore does not gear her whole life towards their happiness, because she does not want them to end up where she has. This devotion makes Amanda fall into a trap of being overbearing, nagging and non-understanding.

Amanda shows traits through out the play. She was very critical of what and how who children did things, like when Amanda calls Laura to come wish upon the moon and tells her to wish for “happiness” and “good fortune”. She shows her overbearing side and Laura says ”mother you’ve made me so nervous”. Amanda then shows he inability to understand when she says, “you couldn’t be satisfied with just sitting home”. As stated before Amanda is not all bad.

She is a devoted mother with great determination. She however has let these good traits take her to bad places. After the loss of her husband Amanda’s life became empty and manilas. She makes up stories to replaces holes in her life. She is so devoted to her children that she starts to live through them. She flailed to recognize that her children had different wants in life and the end Amanda ends up driving one of her kids away. She used the to worlds to protect her from the brutal truth of her life. Amanda’s traits good or bad added a lot to this story.