The Glass Menagerie

A detailed Summary of The Glass Menagerie


Tennessee Williams describes Jim the gentleman caller as 'the long delayed but always expected something that we live for'. This idea can be applied to many other instances in the play, where something is long delayed but at the same time expected by certain characters. There are instances of covering up the truth, especially by Amanda.

Amanda has always tried to protect herself from the brutal reality of life. We can see this from the way she tries to convince herself that Laura should be 'fresh and pretty for gentleman callers', acting as if it will really happen, as if Laura will be whisked away into the sunset by a strong young man. Laura sees things in a whiter light and calmly tries to explain that she is 'not expecting any gentleman callers.' Amanda then returns to her ever present memories of Blue Mountain to act as another cushion to soften the blow of what is really happening.

All that Amanda wants for her life is for her children to succeed perhaps better than she has. She reveals this in two places, when she tells Laura what to wish for, and when she tells Tom that her children's happiness would be all that she would wish for on the moon. She hinders them herself in her efforts, s


Tom knows that his father managed to get out of the 'nailed - up coffin...without removing a nail' and he wants to do it too, but he doesn't know how without damaging Laura's fragility. He knows that Amanda expects expects him to leave too, and he needs to go to make a new life, away from this 'coffin'.The only problem is that he cannot get away from Laura without the guilt catching up, as we see in the end scene.



Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 957
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: English

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