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    Glass Menagerie Thoughts

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    Gabi Poisson
    The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams explores how family members struggle to conform to limited identities imposed by society. Tom fails to fulfill expectations as patriarch and provider, while Laura is too shy to allow herself to develop. Feeling stifled, Tom leaves his family, though they never truly leave him. The play examines how people can be confined to lives they do not want. It also highlights how freeing oneself can damage others left behind, like Tom's mother and sister, robbing them of hope for freedom as well.

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    Glass Menagerie Thoughts

    Uploaded by

    Gabi Poisson
    44 views2 pages
    The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams explores how family members struggle to conform to limited identities imposed by society. Tom fails to fulfill expectations as patriarch and provider, while Laura is too shy to allow herself to develop. Feeling stifled, Tom leaves his family, though they never truly leave him. The play examines how people can be confined to lives they do not want. It also highlights how freeing oneself can damage others left behind, like Tom's mother and sister, robbing them of hope for freedom as well.

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    The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams explores how family members struggle to conform to limited identities imposed by society. Tom fails to fulfill expectations as patriarch and provider, while Laura is too shy to allow herself to develop. Feeling stifled, Tom leaves his family, though they never truly leave him. The play examines how people can be confined to lives they do not want. It also highlights how freeing oneself can damage others left behind, like Tom's mother and sister, robbing them of hope for freedom as well.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    44 views2 pages

    Glass Menagerie Thoughts

    Uploaded by

    Gabi Poisson
    The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams explores how family members struggle to conform to limited identities imposed by society. Tom fails to fulfill expectations as patriarch and provider, while Laura is too shy to allow herself to develop. Feeling stifled, Tom leaves his family, though they never truly leave him. The play examines how people can be confined to lives they do not want. It also highlights how freeing oneself can damage others left behind, like Tom's mother and sister, robbing them of hope for freedom as well.

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    We are living in a time where the definition of and the vocabulary for identity are both fluid and

    vast. Today, how we define ourselves is overwhelmingly our own choice. Tennessee William’s
    The Glass Menagerie provides an alternative to such liberation of identity. In this play Tom
    Wingfield and his family all struggle to conform to the limited identities society has defined for
    them. Tom fails to be the patriarch and provider that is asked of him. Laura is too shy, too frail
    to allow herself to grow into the woman she should be, and Amanda’s clinging to the one she
    once was comes across as cheap and desperate. People are boxed into lives and careers in spite
    of ambition, personality, or interest. Because of both the stifling and claustrophobic life Tom
    has been forced to lead in the shadow of his absent father and the lack of empathy with which
    his mother addresses his crisis of identity, Tom responds in the only way he can—violently. He
    leaves his family behind, but they never truly leave him.

    Tom is careful to express that this story is told through his own eyes, but the way in which he
    tells it exudes a yearning for finding and understanding the truth; it is an earnest request for
    empathy, both an acquittal and an indictment of his own guilt. We are living in a time where
    morality is blurred. In telling his story, Tom reclaims his own narrative, demonstrating how the
    claustrophobia he was living in was killing him; he makes it clear that in order to survive he had
    to leave.

    While a part of what makes this play interesting is how it uses the framing device of a memory
    play to shine a light on those who are left behind—chiefly sister Laura—because we are only
    looking at the image of Laura through Tom’s biased perspective, Laura as a person who thinks
    and feels is never explored, only observed. The way the play is written elevates Laura’s
    presence in the narrative to a degree. It puts a spotlight on her in certain scenes where she was
    not the focal point and includes conversations that Tom was not privy to when they happened,
    such as the one where Jim kisses her. This emphasis placed on Laura indicates how Williams,
    through Tom, is remembering his past in terms of his sister. When he left his family, he thought
    about himself, and now he is haunted by what he left behind. All of that being said, the Laura
    that was silent in the 1930’s when these events happened, though somewhat more visible now,
    remains largely silent in this retelling of history. Perhaps a better tactic of Williams would have
    been to let Laura tell the story, herself. Tom has always had plenty to say, and throughout this
    play we are shown that he did ultimately say and do what he wanted. In a play that asks for so
    much empathy, what would have been refreshing would have been to see if this sympathy is
    something Laura would have given. Instead of listening to men tell stories about men telling
    stories about women, sometimes what is needed is to just listen to the women.

    If produced correctly, however, this play also highlights how in freeing himself, Tom damned his
    mother and sister, robbing them of any hope for freedom themselves. The Glass Menagerie is a
    story of what people mean to each other and how they hurt one another. It should be handled
    with care, but it must be held in the light. It shows women, how they can be put in boxes and
    treated like glass, killing them slowly. It shows how those with the means, in this world men,
    are able to escape, but it demonstrates how the sins we commit to save ourselves become a
    part of us. This play deserves to be taken down from the shelf and re-examined again and again
    because it challenges us to honor those at the periphery of our own memories and bring them
    to the light.

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