Futile Dreams of Escape in The Glass Menagerie :: Glass Menagerie essays

Futile Dreams of Escape in The Glass Menagerie I hurt always been more interest in creating a character that contains something crippled. I think nearly totally of us have some kind of defect, anyway, and I suppose I have found it easier to identify with the characters who verge on hysteria, who were frightened of life, who were desperate to reach out to another person (Rasky 134). This statement of Tennessee Williams supports the idea that he incorporates something crippled into all his major characters. In his play, The Glass Menagerie, Williams portrays a crippling mother and child relationship. He clearly illustrates that none of the characters are capable of living in the present. The characters mean that happiness will be found in their repeated quests for escape from the real demesne. As such, they retreat into their separate worlds to escape lifes brutalities. Set in Depression-era St. Louis, the triumphal Southern ex-charmer, Amanda Wingfield is the de facto head o f the household. A former Southern belle, Amanda is a single mother who behaves as though she still is the high school beauty queen. Williams still-resonant think reveals her desperate struggle with the forces of fate against her dysfunctional relationship that looms and grows among her adult children. (Gist) Laura, Amanda, Tom, and Jim resort to various escape mechanisms to avoid reality. Laura, fearful of being denigrated as inferior by virtue of her innate inability to walk, is shy and detaches herself from the unfeeling modern world. Amanda tries every means to integrate her into society, but to no avail. She sends her to business school and invites a humans caller to dinner. She is both unable to cope with the contemporary worlds mechanization represented by the speed test in typing and unable to make parvenue acquaintances or friends due to her immense inhibition with people. Her life is humdrum and uneventful, yet it is full of dreams and inundated with memories. Whenever the outside world threatens Laura, she seeks solace and retreats to her crosspatch animal world and old phonograph records. Amanda, her mother hints at the alternative of matrimony for fiasco in business careers and Laura utters a startled, doubtful laugh. She reaches quickly for a piece of glass. (Williams, ). The glass menagerie becomes her tactile consolation. The little glass ornaments represent Lauras self and characterize her fragility and delicate beauty.