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59 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
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Themes |
1. Freedom and Confinement 2. Duty 3. Family 4. Memory and the Past 5. Weakness 6. Deception and Lies 7. Dreams, Hopes and Plans 8. Abandonment 9. Marriage 10. Gender 11. Love 12. Drugs and Alcohol |
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Themes - Freedom and Confinement |
- Tom feels confined in his job and life at home - He wants to see the world and have adventures - Amanda is confined to the past - Laura is trapped in her world of glass animals - Two forms of escape = escape from reality into an alternate world, or escape from a trap or confinement - Moral ramifications of escape = who's left behind and what happens to them? |
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Themes - Duty |
- Tom has duties and responsibility for his family - Laura must get married - Conflict between obligations and desires - Duties are gender specific = societal norms |
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Themes - Family |
- Family = obligations - Men must bring home the money - Daughters must get married - Children take after their parents - Tom leaves like his father, Amanda wishes Laura were popular like she was - The play examines the relationship between brother and sister, Tom feels protective and guilty |
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Themes - Memory and Past |
- Memory play, told in Tom's perspective - memory is selective, reality is altered - Events are remembered through music and lighting - Detrimental effects of memory = Amanda’s living in the past |
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Theme - Weakness |
- Weakness = fragility = beauty and breakability - Laura's fragility keeps her in her own world of fragile glass animals - Gives Laura individuality - Also creates Laura's dependance on Tom - Relationship between physical fragility and mental fragility - Crippled leg brings on shyness |
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Theme - Deception and Lies |
- Amanda retreats from reality by denial and deliberately deluding herself as to the true nature of things - Refuses to see her daughter is crippled - Refuses to see her son is a writer who drinks - Blind to her own status, she is no longer the pretty young Southern Belle |
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Theme - Dreams, Hopes and Plans |
- Dreams of the future are the source of conflict - Amanda wants her children to fulfill the classic American Dream of hard work and success - Tom has dreams of being a writer - Laura is too shy to even leave the house - Parents imposing their dreams on their children |
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Theme - Abandonment |
- Abandonment = abandoning the family unit - Moral implications and aftermath of this act - Abandonment is learned from parents, Tom left like his father left |
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Theme - Marriage |
- Marriage = tool rather than a celebration of love - Amanda believes that marriage is a necessary step for her daughter to live comfortably - This play calls into question the lasting nature of marriage |
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Theme - Gender |
- Gender roles dictate the future plans of each character - Laura must get married because she is a girl - Tom should take business classes because he is a man - Gender roles arise from tradition = according to Amanda's Southern upbringing - Gender roles dictate values - Amanda wants Laura to stay "fresh and pretty", while in men it is "character" that is important |
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Theme - Love |
- Is love genuine or convenient? Real love or infatuation? - Closest thing there is to genuine love occurs between Laura and Jim - Mutual understanding of each other's individuality - Jim's love for Betty = they're "getting along fine" - Amanda loved her husband but he life = one sided love? - Familial love = nature of love between brother and sister |
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Theme - Drugs and Alcohol |
- Symbol for all undesirable activities - Amanda associates alcoholism with her husband, irresponsibility and abandonment - Covers any un-ambitious activities that her son takes part in, including writing, reading, and going to the movies - Amanda wants to know if Jim is a "boy who drinks", aka rowdy, goes out at night, and doesn’t care too much about his future |
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Symbols - Blue Roses |
- Represent Laura's unique and individual self - Only Jim recognizes it - Mythical significance, hard to come by = Laura is a one-in-a-million girl |
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Symbols - Jonquils |
- Representative of Amanda's past as a Southern Belle - They are a type of Narcissus = narcissism/vanity - Signify what she wants for Laura |
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Symbols - Glass Menagerie |
- Represents Laura - Laura's fragility is manifested physically in the glass - Delicate beauty - A world of magical illusions |
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Symbols - Unicorn |
- Unicorn represents Laura's uniqueness - The horn breaking off represents Jim making Laura realize that she is a normal person - Laura cannot become normal without somehow shattering - Represents all that Jim has taken from her and destroyed in her |
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Symbols - Movies |
- Representative of escape - Tom's coping mechanism for familial responsibilities - He uses the movies to briefly experience vicariously what he longs to have in his own life - Tom is "tired of the movies and [is] about to move" (96) |
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Symbols - Fire Escape |
- Pun = Fire Escape - Foreshadowing of Tom's abandonment of his family - Escape the fires of frustration - Laura tripped on the fire escape = inability to escape her situation - Tom (narrator) speaks from the fire escape (he as already escaped) |
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Symbols - Alcohol |
- In Amanda's eyes, symbolic of everything bad - Ex. reading D. H. Lawrence, going to the movies, dreaming of adventure - Connection between Tom and his father - Foreshadowing his escape |
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Symbols - Magician and the Coffin |
"who the hell ever got himself out of one without removing one nail?" - Message = you can't abandon something without leaving something behind - Tom left Laura - Their father left Amanda and their family and is still a big presence in their life |
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Symbols - Photograph of Father |
- Represents the centre of the dysfunctional family - Cause for the rift |
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Motifs - Words and Images on the Screen |
- Words and images relevant to the action are projected - Emphasize the importance of something referred to by the characters - Refers to something from a character’s past or fantasy - Slate for impersonal commentary on the events and characters of the play |
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Motifs - Music |
"The play is memory. Being a memory play, it is dimly lighted, it is sentimental, it is not realistic. In memory everything seems to happen to music" - Used to emphasize themes and to enhance the drama - Sometimes the music is extra-diegetic (ex. "The Glass Menagerie") and sometimes it is diegetic (ex. “The World Is Waiting for the Sunrise” at Paradise Dance Hall) |
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What is the setting of the play? |
- The Wingfield apartment in St. Louis - US Depression era - Guernica - Buildings are arranged in "hive-like conglomerations of cellular living-units" (27) = dehumanization and confinement of working roles - Only takes place in the house = amplifies confinement felt by Tom - Fire escape = Tom's escape |
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What about the narration? |
- Narrator = Tom - First person narration - He infuses the play with its tone and memory-like appearance - The story has been altered and adjusted - Objectivity, and potentially accuracy, have been removed from the play |
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What type of play is this? |
- Family drama - Memory play |
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What is the tone of the play? |
- Melancholy - Reflective - Hazy - Dreamlike - Regret - Mocking - Metafictional ** Music reflects the tone |
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What is the writing style of the play? |
- Grandiose - Tom = figurative language, alliterative - Amanda = figurative language, extravagant, wants to impose her taste in words on her children - Laura = doesn't speak much, reserved |
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What is the meaning of the title? |
- Glass menagerie = Laura's collection of small glass animals - Importance = Laura mirrors its delicate beauty and fragility |
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What is the meaning of the epigraph? |
- "Nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands." – e. e. cummings - Comes from the poem "somewhere i have never traveled, gladly beyond." - Delicate = Fragile = Glass = Laura! |
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What is the initial situation of the play? |
- The apartment, working class family - Laura is painfully shy - Amanda lives in the past - Tom hates his life - No father figure |
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What is the conflict of the play? |
- Amanda realizes Laura has not been going to class - Insists she gets married - Tom wants to leave |
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What is the rising action of the play? |
- Tom gets a gentlemen caller for Laura, but it turns out to be the Jim from high school - Laura is painfully shy and feels sick as a result - Tom tells Jim of his plans to leave |
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What is the climax of the play? |
- Jim and Laura talk and dance = "the climax of her secret life" (107) - The unicorn breaks - Jim kisses Laura |
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What is the denouement of the play? |
- Jim is engaged - Amanda yells at Tom - Laura retreats back to shyness - Tom abandons his family |
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What is the conclusion of the play? |
- Although he separated himself from his family physically, Tom reveals that he was always haunted by the memory of Laura |
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What are examples of allusions in the play? |
- D.H. Lawrence - Shakespeare - e.e. cummings - Honoré Daumier |
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Characterisation - Laura Wingfield |
- Delicate (like her glass menagerie) - Breakable = at the slightest social challenge, she runs away - Translucent beauty - "The Glass Menagerie" music - Retreats from reality - Loves Jim for seeing her for who she really is - Non-confrontational - Perceptive (understand's Tom's desire to escape and her mum's love for the past - Dependant - Innocent "darts through the portieres like a frightened deer" (93) - Thinks her crippled leg "sounds like thunder" (112) |
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Characterisation - Tom Wingfield |
- Provider for the Winfield family and narrator of the play - Dreamer - Deepest desire = escape - Adventurous (Voyager) - Confined - Protective of Laura - Guilt-ridden (leaving Laura behind) - Takes after his father |
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Characterisation - Amanda Wingfield |
- Overbearing and nagging - Extravagant - Retreats from reality into the past but plans for the future - Suffocatingly loving and concerned mother - Loved her husband - Strong (she is a southern woman left by her husband, but acts like it's nothing) - Querelous - Stereotyped view of gender roles |
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Characterisation - Jim O'Connor |
- Laura's "gentleman caller" - Ordinary and simplistic at first glance - Only character to break through to Laura's imaginary world - Friendly and sincere - Vain - Conflicted = he really loves Laura, but is engaged to Betty |
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Who's the protagonist of the play? |
- Tom |
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Who's the antagonist of the play? |
- Amanda - Money |
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Who is a foil character? |
- Jim is a foil to Tom - Tom lacks ambition/Jim dreams of making it big - Tom goes to the movies/Jim takes public speaking lessons |
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What are examples of lighting in the play? |
**Memory play = the lighting is not realistic "the dining-room area is light with a turgid smoky red glow" (50) - Reflect the angry tone of the fight between Amanda and Tom "As if in answer, the father's grinning photograph lights up" (57) - Response to coffin story - You can't escape without leaving behind a nail - Nail = his lasting presence in the household "its (the areaway) light on her face with its aged but childish features is cruelly sharp, satirical as a Daumier print" (59) - Allusion to Honoré Daumier - Characterisation of Amanda Alley lights light up Tom's face and make him "look like a voyager" (95) - Tom's characterisation = adventurer - Foreshadowing his escape "The new floor lamp with its shade of rose-colored silk gives a soft, becoming light to her face, bringing out the fragile, unearthly prettiness which usually escapes attention" (103) - Characterisation of Laura - Girly, delicate and beautiful When the lights go out during supper (103) - Foreshadowing of Tom's escape - He didn't pay the bill "The holy candles on the altar of Laura's face have been snuffed out" (130) - Reflects Laura's retreat back into herself, into shyness - Her disappointment that Jim is engaged "The moon breaks through the storm clouds, illuminating his face" (136) - Pathetic fallacy - Tom escapes - The moon illuminates his escape, which ironically, was his wish The play ends with Laura blowing out candles |
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What are examples of sound/music in the play? |
"The Glass Menagerie" - Reference to the emotion, nostalgia, which is the first condition of the play - Comes out most clearly when the play focuses upon her and the lovely fragility of glass which is her image - Extra-diegetic music "Ave Maria" (59) - Representative of Amanda's sadness and motherly instincts - Tense "There is an ominous cracking sound in the sky" (133) - Pathetic fallacy - Amanda finds out about Betty - She is holding in her anger at Tom "The World is Waiting for Sunrise" (70) - Music from the dancehall - Diegetic music "The dance hall music changes to a tango that has a minor and somewhat ominous tone" (80) - Tom tells Amanda Laura is peculiar - Fight between Tom and Amanda "Low drums sound" (90) - Announce the presence of Tom and Jim "a man's voice is heard singing offstage" (110) - Jim's singing in high school - Reflects the conversation between Jim and Laura When Jim kisses Laura "the music swells tumultuously" (127) - Reflective of the mood of the scene - Emotions are flying high |
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What are the costumes in the play? |
-Amanda = - "a girlish frock of yellowed voile with a blue silk sash" and "she carries a bunch of jonquils" (87) - The legend of her youth is revived - Living in the past Tom = - shoes are not something Tom feels he should be making but rather they should be used as "something to wear on a traveller's feet" (97) - "dressed as a merchant sailor" (29) - attire at the outset of the play highlights his having escaped Laura = - "soft violet material for a kimono" (37) - She is delicate - "her hair is tied back from her forehead with a ribbon" (37) - She is innocent |
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What is an example of pathetic fallacy? |
- When Laura faints - "outside a storm is coming on abruptly" and there is a "sorrowful murmur from the deep blue dusk" (101) - Reflects Laura's fear of social contact |
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Did Tom really escape? |
- No, he is left with regret and guilt over leaving Laura - "The cities swept about me like dead leaves, leaves that were brightly colored, but torn away from the branches" (137) - Everything is tainted with his guilt - Coffin = Wingfield home - Nail = Laura |
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How is the decor described in the play? |
- Lack of utensils (Not important enough to the memory - slightly faded and based in actions and emotions rather than atmosphere) - Only shown the kitchen , living room and fire escape - "larger-than-life-size photograph of the father" (30) - Type writer - Victrola (record player) |
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Where is the catharsis in the play? |
- Tom's escape = he is finally purging himself of his family |
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Examples of indirect characterisation (absent characters)? |
The Father = - through the photograph, Amanda's storytelling and Tom's likeness to him - "a telephone man who fell in love with long distances" (30) - "Hello - Goodbye" (30) Betty = - Through Jim, the cause for him to leave Laura - Jim's fiancée |
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What are examples of internal conflict in the play? |
- Amanda struggle to abandon her past, she's clinging to her old glory - Tom struggles to find his freedom, constraint to his family and meeting their needs - Laura struggles with her shyness and her attempt to socialize with people in a normal manner |
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What are examples of external conflict in the play? |
- Amanda struggles with her own survival since her husband left, must try to convince Tom to stay at home and that he should provide for them like the father - Tom also struggles in dealing with his mother and seeks refuge at the movies (escapism), finding his own place in the world (how he contributes as a writer) - Laura struggles with her love for Jim because he is engaged and with meeting up to her mom’s high expectations |
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What are elements of fantasy in the play? |
- Everyone lives in a fantasy world - Memory play - Eating without utensils |
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Describe the time in the play. |
- Memory play - Going back and forth between the past and the present - Really quick, over a few days - Flashbacks - 1940s |
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What is the social or political purpose of this play? |
- The play explores the moral ramifications of escape = who's left behind and what happens to them? - You can't escape without removing one nail - Criticism of living in the past, in one's own world - Criticism of parents imposing/controlling the lives of their children |
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What are examples of monologues/soliloquies in the play? |
- Tom as the narrator - Explaining his personal aftermath of leaving Laura - Guilt |
