Free Essays - Imagined Lives in The Glass Menagerie:
Length: 706 words (2.6 pages)
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Imagined Lives in The Glass Menagerie
The Glass Menagerie is representative of how modern home life is perceive in many modern works of literature. The home is broken, and each family member survives only because of their dreams, which lie in a fantastic world. Amanda, Tom, and Laura's fantasies significantly affect how they interact with each other, and foreshadow the type of disappointment that each character faces at the end of this tragedy.
Amanda, while living in the Depression, is still caught up in her youth. Her days are filled with dreams of Gentlemen Callers, multitudes of servants, and all the benefits of being a planter's daughter. Because of this fixation, she harasses and berates her children when they do not play the desired characters in her dream. Her constant pestering of Tom about his appearance, his manners and his job estranges from her. Laura tries to hide her failures from her mother, and is ashamed of herself because of the expectations placed upon her by Amanda to be married. Amanda persists in believing that if Laura marries, everything will be peachy, and Laura and herself will have a secure future. This fallacy is in direct contradiction to Amanda's own past, who married, only to have her husband run off, leaving her with two children. It is because of her failed marriage, in fact, that the family is in such poor shape, emotionally and financially. The absence of a father figure has forced Tom into the uncomfortable position of being sole breadwinner.
Though not a `Shakespeare', Tom is a tragic romantic. He spends much of his time at home standing on the balcony, smoking, and listening to music from the symbolic Paradise Dance Hall across the street. At one point in the piece, he delivers a soliloquy to a friend about how every time he picks up a shoe, he feels sick, because even though they surround him, he cannot use shoes for their intended purpose - travel. Every night, Tom goes to the `movies' to escape the harsh reality of his home life. One evening, he returns home (obviously a bit drunk) and tells Laura of a magic act he had seen. He had seen a man escape from a coffin, nailed shut, without removing a single nail. That is Tom's dream. He wants to escape from his proverbial coffin, but realizes that without magic, he won't be able to without hurting people, or `removing nails'. Tom is perhaps the only character in the story that sees his dream through. He does leave the family, but belatedly realizes how much he cared for Laura. Not only was the coffin damaged in the disappearing act, the magician was hurt as well.
Laura is the most inwardly absorbed of any character in the work. She rarely speaks, and when she does, it is a response to a question. She spends an inordinate amount of time cleaning and observing her collection of glass figures. In order to keep up the appearance that she still attended business school, Laura would just walk around the city during the day. In addition, Laura had what the gentleman caller called an inferiority complex. She was malleable to her mother's wishes, and like putty in the hands of Tom or Jim. Jim especially was able to see through Laura, he could see her fragileness, but also her sparkling beauty. He dared to hold her, and changed her forever because of this. She became more normal, she had finally fulfilled a desire. This was a significant step for her, because she realizes that her shyness and disability do not constrain her to a world separate from her desires, and this allows her to become more human.
Laura's loss of innocence as juxtaposed onto her crystalline unicorn reflects the symbolism that Williams imbued the story with. Every character has a strong link to an object or symbolic concept that parallels their story and method of thinking. The ending of this book is the model of a tragedy; Tom leaves his former life in ruins, and is scarred himself. Though Williams takes a pessimistic view of modern society, he leaves us with an important message: our dreams are ourselves.
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