The Glass Menagerie

Our first play of the semester is “The Glass Menagerie” by Tennessee Williams. I really had no idea what the play would be about, but after reading his bio in the Lit Reader I saw he wrote “A Street Car Named Desire”. I had watched the movie in my Junior AP class (which was in black and white). Both plays definitely have a style that only Williams could conjure.  I thought all the characters were unique but all shared one quality in common, they “manufactured illusions”.  For Tom it was the adventure that he craved. Amanda wanted to relive the part of her life when she was a young woman at Blue Mountain being courted for marriage. Laura, who is very weak, does not know much of the outside world due to her shyness and condition and creates a world in her glass and record collection. The end of the play is an emotional twist, because Tom finally does leave the apartment after a fight with Amanda and it leaves the reader with the decision of judging him harshly for abandonment, or accepting that he needed to find his own path in life and it was a push to make his mother realize she needed to do the same.