Tennesse Williams The Glass Managerie
Tennesse Williams’ The Glass ManagerieThe Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams
The “Glass Menagerie” written by Tennessee Williams is a play involving four very different characters, all of whom are troubled in their own way. Amanda is a very affectionate mother, however she may be too affectionate, and seems to actually smother her children with her love. Laura is physically crippled, and this causes her to have what the book calls an inferiority complex, causing her to be very shy and withdrawn. The gentleman caller, Jim, is attempting to live up to his old high school standards, which he is finally beginning to realize may not actually be possible. Then there is the narrator, Tom, a dreamer who is caught up in the middle of it all.
I feel Tom is the most complex of these individuals. Though not physically crippled like his sister Laura, Tom finds himself paralyzed in his work, and by his mother. Tom is forced to work in a warehouse where he is faced with bleak aspects, and a day-to-day job in which he believes is a prison he regards the warehouse as a prison that shackles all the basic impulses with which, he believes, men are endowed. Tom even went as far as to say “I’d rather somebody picked up a crowbar and battered out my brains—than go back mornings!” This is in part due to the fact that Tom is a dreamer, and an idealist. Tom shows this by saying, “Man is by instinct a lover, a hunter, a fighter.” He loves to write poetry, and desperately wants out of his house, however these dreams are just that dreams, and seem far from reality. His mother is suffocating Tom by...
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