The Characters of The Glass Menagerie The classic play The Glass Menagerie was written by Tennessee Williams. The memory play takes place during the 1930’s Great Depression era in St. Louis, where you see the narrator Tom Wingfield walking in his old dingy apartment where he once lived with his mother Amanda Wingfield and Sister Laura Wingfield. That’s where he starts to narrate the past memories he spent with them as well as describing each of the protagonist’s characters in the play. All three protagonists are striving for something within and are and is proven by a defined certain symbol. The narrator Tom Wingfield throughout the play is clearly striving to escape the life he lives with his mother and sister with hopes of following his
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She is striving to cling on her memories of Blue Mountain, and what could have been of her future with one of the seventeen other gentlemen callers. This is defined by the stories she repeats to her children about the life she had in the South and how prominent her future could have been. “One Sunday afternoon in Blue Mountain your mother received seventeen gentlemen callers! Why, sometimes there weren’t chairs enough to accommodate them all” (Williams 754). Amanda uses these stories to escape her harsh reality of falling in love with a man that fell in love with long distances and later being abandoned, she clearly wanted to still feel some sense of popularity she once did back in her golden days. “It wasn’t enough for a girl to be possessed of a pretty face and a graceful figure although I wasn’t slighted in either respect” (Williams 754). She is still living in her delusions about her girlhood conquests. Her estranged husband is only present in a picture in the living room over the mantle, as an only a distant memory and constant reminder of what could have been her life which in return helps her cope with the life she now deals with by the memories she clings on. “Amanda’s instinct for the preservation of the family (reality) and her memories of her girlhood and the many gentleman callers (illusion) give her life a balance in a world that otherwise would be overwhelming in its dreariness.”
She is striving to cling on her memories of Blue Mountain, and what could have been of her future with one of the seventeen other gentlemen callers. This is defined by the stories she repeats to her children about the life she had in the South and how prominent her future could have been. “One Sunday afternoon in Blue Mountain your mother received seventeen gentlemen callers! Why, sometimes there weren’t chairs enough to accommodate them all” (Williams 754). Amanda uses these stories to escape her harsh reality of falling in love with a man that fell in love with long distances and later being abandoned, she clearly wanted to still feel some sense of popularity she once did back in her golden days. “It wasn’t enough for a girl to be possessed of a pretty face and a graceful figure although I wasn’t slighted in either respect” (Williams 754). She is still living in her delusions about her girlhood conquests. Her estranged husband is only present in a picture in the living room over the mantle, as an only a distant memory and constant reminder of what could have been her life which in return helps her cope with the life she now deals with by the memories she clings on. “Amanda’s instinct for the preservation of the family (reality) and her memories of her girlhood and the many gentleman callers (illusion) give her life a balance in a world that otherwise would be overwhelming in its dreariness.”