The Glass Menagerie

Essay by katyseanUniversity, Bachelor'sA, November 2004

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Analytical Essay

The Glass Meageriege

Jagged glass spikes ripped and tore through the lines of this heart broken play. The fragments of glass pinch you as a reader each page by page, slicing your anticipation to continue reading while scraping your own emotions. In this paper I plan to show the delicateness verses the heartlessness the author has portrayed through this play with the characters Amanda, Tom, Laura and Jim. The heartbreak suffered by Laura is so real, yet this play being so unrealistic sends you spinning into an enchanted world of a heartfelt story of a family and a broken daughter.

Amanda, the mother of this play is an interesting character to analyze. She relies solely on her son, Tom, to support the family and often goes on erratic flights of fancy towards her children. This is something this character possesses and makes her as vivid on paper as she is in the readers mind.

Her obsessions with a gentlemen suitor in a way shows her longing for her long lost husband who has left the family to travel, setting the footsteps for Tom. Her obsessions shine through the writing in the following example:

Amanda: You mean you have asked some nice young man to come over?

Tom: Yep

Amanda: You really did?

Tom: I did!

Amanda: You did, and did he-accept?

Tom: He did!

Laura, the centerpiece of The Glass Menagerie suffers physically and emotionally throughout this play. She is physically crippled and emotionally damaged, even before Jim O'Connor enters her life. She lives in a world of glass, as fragile as she is. The glass menagerie Laura keeps is a constant sign of her fragility. She sinks into her world of glass animals to escape the interactions of real human relationships. She cannot finish business school due...