Illusions: Amanda's Motivation to Live in Tennessee Williams's The Glass Menagerie
Tennessee Williams's play The Glass Menagerie describes harsh realities faced by people in a modern world, those who live in the past (Amanda) and those who cannot keep up with the present (Laura), as well as those who wish to escape into the future (Tom). The Glass Menagerie also describes lost dreams of the Wingfield family, and their (and Amanda's in particular) desperate struggle to escape reality. The symbols in this play reflect the characters' emotional states. For example, while Laura's fragile glass animals represent her fragile emotions and low self-esteem, Amanda's old yellow dress represents the faded, once glorious youth she wishes she could relive (and seeks in vain to relive through Laura). Laura, Tom's slightly crippled sister, lives in the dreamlike state inside the family apartment. The apartment's dreamlike, unreal atmosphere, chock full of symbols of the past, like pictures of Laura and Tom's long absent father, provides Laura with a place where she can dream, and thereby contin
Even though she does not want Laura to share her own disappointing fate, Amanda's inability to live other than in the past makes her blind to her (and Tom's and Laura's) present circumstances. If someone were to remove Amanda's fantasy life, she would find it extremely difficult, if not impossible, to live in the real world. Amanda still hopes alive for someone (e.g., a "gentleman caller") to rescue Laura from a life of dependency. After Amanda's first idea of enrolling Laura in a typing course to help Laura overcome her shyness and learn a skill fails, Amanda next, foolishly, gets her hopes up that Tom's friend Jim from the warehouse where Tom works will be Laura's savior. As a result, Amanda ultimately drives her son Tom away, fails to truly help her daughter Laura emerge from her lonely and isolated shell, and cheats her own self, of life and vitality. In this play, author, Tennessee Williams shows us a family that lives in a fantasy world instead of a real world, and in which Amanda's insi
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Approximate Word count = 685
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)
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