Laura is also extremely fearful and anxious about disappointing her mother. She says, "When you're disappointed, you get that awful suffering look on your face, like the picture of Jesus' mother in the museum! I couldn't face it" (Williams PAGE #). She wants to please her mother, but she cannot, and that helps reinforce her insecurities as well. Laura has nothing she is good at, and her mother does not help her discover her strengths, she capitalizes her weaknesses and victimizes her daughter. Tom is the only family member to get away from the toxic environment of the small apartment, but he cannot fully forget Laura and her tragic life. He says at the end of the play, "Oh Laura, Laura, I tried to leave you behind me, but I am more faithful than I intended to be!" (Williams). He loves her, but not enough to help her get away and live a good life. He reinforces her tragic status by leaving her alone with her controlling mother, who he knows will never let Laura out of her grip. In reality, Laura is like glue. She holds the family together and still holds on to Tom after he leaves. Tom is tragic in his own way, because his method of coping with his controlling mother is simply to leave the situation and let it sort itself out, somehow. However, Tom ensures Laura's fate by leaving. He might have been able to urge her to change, or find something she could succeed at, and "saved" her so to speak. However, because he leaves, he simply ensures that Laura will remain exactly the way she is - timid, shy, and unsure of herself. Tom does not want to "shatter" Laura when he leaves, but he does just that. He leaves in a rush, out of anger, and leaves her shattered unicorn as a reminder of her failure at love and life. Tom cannot forget Laura, but he leaves just the same,...
In fact, some critics "blame" Tom for leaving Laura persistently a virgin and always alone (Adler 39). There is nothing left for Laura but her tragic, lonely life and her glass menagerie, and that makes her the saddest character in this play.
Glass Menagerie Tennessee Williams, His Mother and the Glass Menagerie Tennessee Williams is among the most celebrated playwrights of the 20th century. His family portraits, set to the backdrop of a deteriorating Southern tradition, are a window into human foibles like vanity, insecurity, detachment and personal disappointment. All of these themes are in full display with Williams' breakthrough work, 1944's The Glass Menagerie. A peering insight into the unhappy lives of the
86). Jim symbolically inspires Laura to accept her individuality and to see that beneath her outstanding traits she is no different from anyone else. His gentility and kindness, borne of Southern culture, help Laura come to terms with herself and her social awkwardness. Laura's personality transformation through Jim's kindness paralleled her symbolic transformation through the unicorn. Had the unicorn not been made of glass, its horn would not have so
Glass Menagerie Tennessee Williams play, The Glass Menagerie, presents the drama of three family members who live in a world whose values and supporting pillars are shaking as a consequence of the disastrous economic times people went through during the Great Depression. The lack of role models in the micro universe of the Wingfield family as well as their dissolution in the macro universe of the whole American society is deeply
Glass Menagerie Tennessee Williams's play The Glass Menagerie is about the three members of the Wingfield family, Tom, Laura, and their mother Amanda. They live together and have done so since the loss of the Wingfield patriarch. This family dynamic is very dysfunctional and the three serve to harm one another more than provide support as a family unit with the exception of Laura who tries to provide positivity in
Menagerie REVISED Prince, don't ask me in a week / or in a year what place they are; I can only give you this refrain: / Where are the snows of yesteryear? Francois Villon, c. 1461 "Where are the snows of yesteryear?" asks Tennessee Williams in the opening screen of The Glass Menagerie (401), quoting a poem by Francis Villon. Williams explains in the production notes to this famous play that he has left
Towards the play's end, Tom tells his audience/readers: "Oh Laura...I tried to leave you behind me, but I am more faithful than I intended to be! I reach for a cigarette...anything that can blow your candles out!" This passage from the play showed how, in his fear for his sister and attempt to shield her from the harshness of life, Tom wanted to "blow (Laura's) candles out," an act
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