"GLASS MENAGERIE, THE" (TENNESSEE WILLIAMS).   Term Paper ID:24812 Click to get this paper

Essay Subject: Symbolism & imagery in development of characters & ideas in play.... More...

8 Pages / 1800 Words 7 sources, 16 Citations, MLA Format $32.00 Return to List of Papers

Paper Abstract: Symbolism & imagery in development of characters & ideas in play. Paper Introduction: The purpose of this research is to examine the use of symbolism and imagery in The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams. The plan of the research will be to set forth in general terms the pattern of ideas emerging in the work, and then to discuss the symbolic and imagistic means by which the pattern is elaborated, the ideas are given concrete representation, and the combination of dramatic and thematic content given emotional expression. The action of The Glass Menagerie is built around Tom Wingfield's memory of a family of sometimes violent and often pathetic emotions, and of the just plain sad fate of his mother Amanda and his sister Laura, who each in her way is doomed when it comes to coping with the realities of the outside world. The difference between them is that Amanda is a survivor and Laura a victi Text of the Paper: The entire text of the paper is shown below. However, the text is somewhat scrambled. We want to give you as much information as we possibly can about our papers and essays, but we cannot give them away for free. In the text below you will find that while disordered, many of the phrases are essentially intact. From this text you will be able to get a solid sense of the writing style, the concepts addressed, and the sources used in the research paper. Meanwhile,enrolling Laura in the secretarial course is not only a strategy ofbringing extra income into the household but also a way of helping Lauracope with the real world. Ed. If thesymbol is apt, however, the real emotional power of "Blue Roses" has to dowith the Gentleman Caller's hazy memory of the name. Thereis not universal agreement about the power of the stage directions in TheGlass Menagerie, however. ForJim O'Connor, the symbolism is more direct, inasmuch as he can beinterpreted as functioning more or less as a synecdoche, which is a figureof speech in which a part is made to stand for the whole. For example, if thefamily tension becomes too violent or if Amanda's frantic behavior remainstoo extreme, there is no haven inside or outside the world for Laura. That reality is illusoryprecisely because it is fragile and without connection to the hard coldworld. Onlyon the fire escape can Tom escape the fire of Amanda's volatile emotions.That explains, too, why the breaking of one of the animals in the menagerieis such a profound moment of horror--no other word suffices--for everyonein the household. Block and Robert G. Kerr criticizes the stage directions calling for"the absent father's portrait [to] be lighted up arbitrarily--that is tosay, without realistic motivation--at certain key points in the dramaticaction," while applauding the fact that, in the original Broadwayproduction, "this slight gesture toward the abstract was somewhat playeddown" (Kerr 128). The plan of theresearch will be to set forth in general terms the pattern of ideasemerging in the work, and then to discuss the symbolic and imagistic meansby which the pattern is elaborated, the ideas are given concreterepresentation, and the combination of dramatic and thematic content givenemotional expression. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1959. Dutton, 1968.Rowe, Kenneth Thorpe. Cardullo sees the name "Blue Roses" as symbolic of aRomanticist retreat into and affinity with nature mysticism (162). But as a matter of fact, theevidence of the text is that Amanda relies on illusion and retreats intoher past only when she has nothing practical to do. The hard reality that the audience knows and thatthe play itself reminds everyone is that the outside is not friendly to acripple, whether emotional of physical. Indeed, the illusory world inside is made unbearable to himby Amanda's insistence on living as if her memory of decorous plantationmanners had relevance to the realities of life in the St. 992- 1 17. Once havingfailed that test, she cannot conceive of attempting to cope with a new man,a new evening, an predictable world outside. It isbecause of that practicality that she abandons her silliness for "dignityand tragic beauty" (Williams 1 17) in the service of comforting Laura afterher dream is crushed. Because Williams says Amanda is "clinging frantically to another timeand place," it is tempting to think of Amanda as being lost in theillusions of her past in Laurel, Mississippi. Now of course this is partly due to the metaphorical nature ofdrama more generally. Andfrom that fire there is neither escape nor warmth, as Laura discovers whenthe gentleman caller explains his marriage plans. Laura afflicted on both accounts,will simply not survive its pitilessness. A Theater in Your Head. And the manner of his recallshows the enormous gulf between Laura's illusion of memory and theimperfect reality of actual memory. The purpose of this research is to examine the use of symbolism andimagery in The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams. What to her is the one precious memory of herlife, being called Blue Roses is for the Gentleman Caller somethingrecalled only casually, with some prompting. Meanwhile, as the visit of the Gentleman Caller and the revelationthat Laura has quit Rubicam's prove, the outside contains surprisesunpleasant and pleasant. That is also why she cannot refrain from theanger at Laura's failure at school or from experiencing Laura's failure asa deliberate deception (995) and why she cannot refrain from nagging Laura,all out of realistic hope, toward getting a husband. For it is not only symbolic of ahaven. Laura's reality is of paralysis not only of body but also of spirit.Her illusion is that she can live a satisfactory life by living a life oflimitation, and by retreating to the shelter of with her glass menagerie.According to Cardullo (161), Laura is a Romantic symbol familiar to thelandscape of nineteenth-century American society, "the fragile, almostunearthly ego brutalized by life in the industrialized, depersonalizedcities of the Western world." As a Romantic, however, she fails the test ofthe real-world gentleman caller in large part because she cannot keep frominvesting this particular man and this particular visit so much withRomanticism itself, in particular a dream of transformed life. Williams's stage direction to theGentleman Caller is that he is "smiling doubtfully" as he tells Laura, "Youknow I have an idea I've seen you before. What she has invested withenormous meaning, he has to be reminded of. The irony is that thehouse as a practical matter functions very much as a haven from the real-world fire outside, which is a real threat to the Wingfield household. The difference between them is that Amanda is a survivor andLaura a victim. Her single mostpowerful illusion is that somehow she can hang on to something of theelegance of her former life even in dire circumstance, but this repeatedlycomes up against the reality that life for her is not what it was--oranyway is not how she remembers it. On theother hand, like Mr. Wingfield, he is a temporary presence in thehousehold. She began to take logicalsteps in the planned direction" (997). Thus thehousehold as haven is doubly symbolic. Thedifficulty is that he is not careful enough in his attempt, so that thegentleman caller turns out to be engaged, no more serious suitor materialfor Laura than Laura is serious material for any suitor. The discovery of Laura's subterfuge with Rubicam's Business College,the social failure of Laura at public school except with the decent chapwho called her Blue Roses, the bleak prospect of Laura's future are allaspects of this. Pieces at Eight. In the straddling function, Arnott sees Tom as a "chorus figure"mediating between present and past, and eventually fully "estranged fromhis family and finally leaving it to make some sort of life for himself"(Arnott 479). This does not mean that Williams is saying that the outside world isbenevolent or that the inside world is entirely safe. The stage directions of The Glass Menagerie can be interpreted insymbolic terms. "One Small, Unhappy Family: The Glass Menagerie." Time 5 December 1994: 94.Williams, Tennessee. Louis apartment.Though his everyday experience of the world of truth tells him howvulnerable the household illusion is, he cooperates in Laura's illusion,trying to make it emotionally whole--also trying to relieve himself ofresponsibility for her well-being--by means of the gentleman caller. And by the way,what seems a flighty conversation of former days with him is really afairly calculated, though abortive, effort at encouraging the match. The action of The Glass Menagerie is built around Tom Wingfield'smemory of a family of sometimes violent and often pathetic emotions, and ofthe just plain sad fate of his mother Amanda and his sister Laura, who eachin her way is doomed when it comes to coping with the realities of theoutside world. Tom functions as personification of the illusion, principally, that hecan successfully straddle the illusory world inside the apartment and theoutside world of unpleasant truth in a way that will keep Laura from beingdoomed. Isn't it funny what tricksyour memory plays?" (Williams 1 11). But Amanda is also a fighter, in touch with the disagreeable realitiesof the universe--so in touch, in fact, that it is she who rises, so tospeak, above memory to the level of heroism at the end of the play byenfolding Laura in her arms and comforting her (Williams 1 17). Rowe cites the appearance--without dialogue, but written in thestage directions--of Amanda's "making a comforting speech to Laura who ishuddled upon the sofa. But there is an almost programmatically metaphoricalquality about The Glass Menagerie. She is,however, inaccurate about the content of the dream, which has less to dowith Laura than with his own wish to be free of an emotionally oppressivefamily environment. . Boston: Little, Brown, 1981.Atkinson, Brooks. As a concrete reality, it is meant toserve as an escape from danger in the house in the form of a life-threatening fire to the safety of the outside world. Further, as Tom says,"Mother was a woman of action as well as words. In a broad sense, all of the characters of the play can be seen assymbolic. It is also, so to speak, a symbol of an illusion. But as he implies while describing the"memory play" (Williams 993). . Shedd. As Brooks Atkinson noted about the playin 1947, two years after it had premiered on Broadway, it was "a quietlywoven study of intangibles" (Atkinson 44 ). The characters themselves canbe said to stand for intangibles, and it is possible to see Tom, Laura,Amanda, and the Gentleman Caller as figurations of response to and ofcoping strategies for the found universe. This is Arnott's view (479),as well as Tynan's (94), which suggests that Amanda's character is symbolicchiefly of a desperate clinging to the past. Laura longs for an impossible human reality, as breakable afterone blow as the menagerie itself, which is no compensation for her lack ofconnection to the world. One feels she will neverextend herself out the doorway into the alley and will remain confined tothe delicate and ephemeral world of the glass menagerie, as vulnerable tothe real pressure of one disappointment as the glass animals are to onesharp blow. Jim can be compared to, or more exactlycontrasted with, the telephone man per se. New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 196 .Tynan, William. Jim O'Connor functions in the unfolding events of the play much as areal-life telephone caller does, not a conventional (i.e., real) visitor orsuitor per se but rather a consumer and user of communication, notpermanently present in the Wingfields' lives, but rather temporary in thelife of the household. . Therefore the idea that Amanda's clinging to the pastis what defines her character is surely wrong, repeatedly andprogrammatically not confirmed by the text. He is as unreal, impermanent, and fragile to Laura'spersonal experience of the world as her assertion of reality in connectionwith the glass collection is unreal to the experience of the wide world. Tom, for his part, is an escapee from the encased physicaluniverse of the Wingfield apartment. 439-41.Cardullo, Bert. The glass menagerie is plainly symbolic of the emotional andpsychological reality and fragility that are within the universe of theapartment and especially within Laura's psyche. "Poetry of Emotion." Theatre U.S.A. Amanda prepares for the gentlemancaller with great practicality (dinner, rug, lamp, etc.). Haskell M. Only Tom finally escapes beyond the fire escape itself,although of course it is a bittersweet irony that he is attached to itforever, by way of inescapable memory. The Glass Menagerie. New York: E.P. of his life, he cannot escape the reality ofthat world. Works CitedArnott, Peter. As Williams puts it, the building is "burning with the slowand implacable fires of human desperation" (Williams 992). The concrete, as it were, fact of the fragile glassstands for the hard reality of the fragile and doomed emotional life of theWingfields. Rowe observes that the stage directions in The GlassMenagerie are particularly meaningful with regard to the emotional functionof memory in the play: "[T]he meaning of memory in its softening of harshreality is made most clear in the stage business and directions at the end"(Rowe 222). Masters of Modern Drama. The (Telephone/Gentleman) Caller has beenthe residual dream of Laura, and the fact that he arrives in her life moreor less as casually as a typical telephone call, to say chiefly that he isvanishing into a solid Catholic marriage, shows that he is something thatcannot be grasped. New York: Random House, 1966. By Barnard Hewitt. This does not mean the household itself is not a danger, for it is socircumscribed by its self-contained reality that it cannot survive theoutside world. It is also an illusory construction, containing the psychologicaland emotional safety and reality of the family, which are of course notsafe or real, vis-à-vis the world, which continually makes its presencefelt. Amanda saysaccurately that Tom manufactures illusions and lives in a dream. As Tom says, Jim is "an emissary from a world of reality that wewere somehow set apart from." Indeed, Jim is socially set apart from theWingfields--normal whereas they are idiosyncratic, an ordinary fellowwhereas they are extraordinary characters, socially inferior by the lightsof Amanda's fine Southern upbringing but socially (or at leasteconomically) superior as far as the cold facts of American Depressionexperience are concerned. As such he is perforce symbolic, or anyway a passing figure onthe stage. Now that we cannot hear the mother's speech hersilliness is gone and she has dignity and tragic beauty" (Rowe 222). Still, Jim is set apart from theWingfields as far as the pattern of ideas about illusion and reality andabout the power of symbol to convey ideas in the play are concerned. But this is abeauty that is also fragile on account of its being planted firmly inillusion. For the Wingfields, the outside world isas dangerous in its reality as the inside world of illusion is--burningwith desperate fires though it may be. "Williams's The Glass Menagerie." Explicator 55 (Spring 1997): 161-163.Kerr, Walter. The Theater in Its Time: An Introduction. The character of Jim O'Connor in full can also be seen as an illusion.Partly, he is the polar opposite or complement of the vanished Mr.Wingfield, the telephone man who fell in love with long distance and whoseimage, according to Williams's stage directions, is meant to dominate keyemotional points in the play. The content ofthat illusion is Amanda's selective memory of life in the Old South of heryouth. Yet that reality is conveyed, as he also explains, by illusionand symbol. This is a function that a telephone call has in thelife of everyone on the outside. The GentlemanCaller, of course, stands for the whole world outside the environment ofthe apartment, as will be seen hereafter. The fire escape into the alley is the main concrete symbol of theplay, and it is an ironic symbol. Now this practicalitymay have relevance to her past, but she is goal directed, whether waking upthe household or preparing to receive the Gentleman Caller. He is not the fleeting symbol ofhousehold security that Mr. Wingfield might have been but was not. Because, compared tothe real world it is also a haven of illusions, the apartment is thereforesymbolic of the desperate emotional fragility of the family and itsinability to cope with that world. The menagerie, as fragile asLaura, symbolizes her life of fragility and confined beauty. Indeed, the Caller's ordinariness is an extremelyimportant point, driven home by Tom's explanation that Jim had been a starhigh school athlete but these several years later is now pretty much Tom'ssocial and economic equivalent on the job. For the Wingfields, what thiscomes down to is their entire emotional content, and more particularlytheir manner of dealing with the tension between illusion and reality. If this paper is not what you are looking for, you can search again: Search for: or Click here to request an essay written just for you.