Glass Menagerie

A detailed Summary of Glass Menagerie

For centuries, men and women from all over the world have seen in America a place where they could realize their dreams. We each dream our own American Dream. For some it is a vision of material prosperity, for others it can be a feeling of secure and safe. It can be the dream of setting goals. It can be about social justice, as Martin Luther King Jr. gave the speech of "I have a dream", says "In spite of the difficulties and frustrations of the moment, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American Dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: „We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.'"

We believe in the American Dream because it does not fit with any temporary contentedness, rather it brings us the power for improvement and equality. However, why does the American Dream still fall? The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, is considered as the representative of the decline of the American Dream, can give us some ideas of what it is about.

The Great Gatsby describes the failure of American Dream, from the point of view that American political ideas conflict with actual conditions that exist. For whereas

The Glass Menagerie is simple on its surface V it tells a single incident in the life of a small family. It has no heroic characters like what we see in The Great Gatsby. The poorly born characters in The Great Gatsby, such as James Gatz and Myrtle Wilson desire to change and to go away from the "valley of ashes". Gatsby's dream comes from his past and he will sacrifice everything just for the accomplishment of his goals, while Amanda, Laura and Tom are just too obsessed to their past events.

In the story, we can see that the American Dream does not exist - Jim tries but the Wingfields have almost given up on their lives. They avoid reality and are so involved in their illusory world that they have no time to work on their goals. In the end, it appears that Laura is finally overcoming her shyness, but as she knows Jim is engaged, she returns back to her Victrola which is also the symbol of her fantasy world. Tom determines to leave but he sticks too much to the past memory, especially his memories with Laura. Jim is the only one in the story that faces reality. He believes in himself. He knows that as he works hard, one day he will achieve great success. He said, "Being disappointed is one thing and being discouraged is another. I am disappointed but I'm not discouraged." (116).

Benjamin Franklin believed that the only way to true wealth was through hard work. He also believed very strongly, that all people were created equal and had the same opportunities available to them to achieve the American Dream. However, for our central character, Jay Gatsby, this is not quite true. Gatsby tries very hard to transform himself from James Gatz to Jay Gatsby, "an Oxford man". He wants to erase his history but in the other side, he wants to "repeat the past". He attempts to delete his past record because he does not want to involve in poverty anymore. However, on the other hand he longs for the past because in the past, he had a love affair with Daisy. He knows that he could not marry her because they are of different social class. He leaves her and achieves his American Dream. Once he becomes rich, he moves to the opposite bay to Daisy's house just want to be near to Daisy. He holds extravagant parties, hoping he could se

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Approximate Word count = 1518
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: Novels