"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...

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