The Glass Menagerie Memory Analysis

It’s safe to say that in a world of imperfections that even the average “American family” has its flaws. Tennessee Williams, also known as Tom, reveals and extremely vivid memory of his life because of the guilt he held after leaving his family alone for a second time. This play is based on the unpleasant memory of his life and within the overall memory the lives of his self and his small family are also based on memories from their own traumas in life. Amanda, Tom’s mother as well as Laura, Tom’s sister, are two people who are constantly reminded of their own memories which are the reasons why the two live life the way they do. Not only is this a guilt memory play written by tom who is living through his own memories but his sister and mother …show more content…
Tom reveals how shy and “disabled” his sister, whom he is very protective over, is. Laura is the complete opposite of her delusional mother. Laura is a girl who is also traumatized like her mother but in a completely different way. Laura, while talking to a gentleman caller named Jim, reveals how embarrassed she is of her brace and the noise it always made while walking up and down classroom isles (963). Laura uses her memory to seize herself from ever being like her mother. Just like tom and Amanda Laura uses her memory to control her lifestyle and the way she lives passed people and not through people like her mother. Laura is so incredibly traumatized from her disability that she avoids any boy she likes or even person she sees. She is so incredibly isolated she has created her own world with her glass figures and goes no further than those. Laura is so incredibly shy and embarrassed of her disability that her favorite figurine is ironically the animal that is beautiful but nonexistent, a unicorn. Its obvious that Laura uses this disability of her body to disable her mind which leads to the complete shyness she has the rest of her life. Laura and Amanda’s memories are used by them to control their lives by their own selves. Tom, along with Amanda and Laura, is also guilty of living through a child hood …show more content…
Not only does tom live the rest of his life through memory but ironically living through a memory runs throughout his family in his own “memory play’. Amanda dreams every day to live her young life while her daughter chooses to disobey. The memory play is not just about tom and the memory of his father but his own family and the memories they live through themselves. Tennessee Williams doesn’t just use the memory of tom but he also shares the way that his family members own tragic memories shaped the way that they would live and the way that they would act throughout the play and their