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Free Glass Menagerie Essays: Avoiding Reality Glass Menagerie essays

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Avoiding Reality in The Glass Menagerie Tennessee Williams presents us with four characters whose lives seem to consist in avoiding reality more than facing it. Tom uses the movie theaters and dreams of a better life to avoid the harsh fact that he has nothing. Laura uses her victrola and collection of glass animals to help maintain her fantasy world. She would much rather pretend to be somewhere else than actually be somewhere else. Amanda lives her life through her childrens lives. This helps her to avoid seeing how truly sad her state of life has become. And Jim, who probably has the least need to escape reality, by avoiding telling people whats really going on in his life. Instead of telling Laura that he is engaged, he takes her memories of him as the high school hero and feeds off them. All the characters seem to separate themselves from the cruel realities of their lives. Their efforts to escape serve only to distract them from their problems. Laura is till an introverted, dependent, sad girl. Tom still faces a dead-end life, though he runs away to find his dream. Amanda still has no means to support herself and Laura and remains beset by a past colored by fantasy. Jim leaves the stage and we wonder if he ever leaves the warehouse. The play, like our own lives , is filled with possible escapes. The characters, like so many of us, try to find their ways out but succeed in tangling themselves in their problems. And we the audience wonder at it all.

Free Glass Menagerie Essays: Characters and Symbols

Characters and Symbols in The Glass Menagerie

In The Glass Menagerie, the main characters are Laura, Amanda, Tom, Jim, and Father. Each character can be found with symbols that best represent them. Laura ‘s two symbols are Blue Roses and her glass menagerie, Unicorn. Amanda ‘s yellow dress and bathrobe can express her love she has of the past event. Tom ‘s symbols are the movies and merchant marine. Jim’s symbolize itself as a gentlemen caller for Laura. The Father ‘s portrait portrays his abandonment of the Wingfield family.

Laura is a hypersensitive young girl. She spends all of her time in a world of glass ornaments and stayed in her apartment. Even though she tries several times to participate in the outside world, she is too fragile. The Blue Roses represent the uniqueness of Laura. Blue Roses do not exist in this world or even if there is, it is not by nature. This rose is different from other roses just as Laura is different from other girls.

The color blue represents the sadness and depression. Laura felt these feelings at home because she is not as popular as Amanda and she cannot succeed in college that Amanda hopes her to be. Amanda’s expectation caused Laura to feel bad when she does not meet her requirements. Laura had dropped out of Rubicam Business College and she can not find any gentleman caller. Roses represent Laura along with her beauty and innocence. The stem of the rose can define as the support that Amanda and Tom gave her. The thorn is her shyness. It is her shyness that no one wants to go near her and she does not want to go near anyone.

The Glass Menagerie represents Laura’ hypersensitive nature and fragility. Laura is just as easily broken as a glass unicorn and just as unique. When Jim accidentally bumps into the unicorn and breaks it, the unicorn is no longer unique. When Jim kisses Laura and then shatters her hopes by telling her he is engaged, she becomes broken-hearted and less unique. The innocence that made Laura so unique is now lost. Both Laura and the glass menagerie break when they are exposed to the outside world. When Laura gives Jim her broken unicorn, it symbolizes her broken heart that Jim will take with him when he leaves. She gives Jim a little bit of herself to take with him and he leaves behind a little bit of himself with her shattered horses.

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