Heroines Vacillating between illusion and reality in "The Glass Menagerie".

Heroines Vacillating between illusion and reality in The Glass Menagerie" Amanda Wingfield in The Glass Menagerie is an example of the woman who is vacillating between illusion and reality. She is obsessed with the past and its memories. This obsession leads her to recall her past days to stand as a shelter from the harsh reality that surrounds her. She cannot bear facing the new reality that encounters her family life. Being deserted by her husband, with neither a job nor money, she always retreats into her past to make life more bearable. "She is clinging frantically to another time and place" (Griffin 24). She recalls the memories of her past, especially the supreme moment when she received seventeen gentlemen callers, all loving and caring for their wives. For Amanda the past represents her youth, before time worked out its dark alchemy. Memory has become a myth, a story to be endlessly repeated as a protection against present decline. She wants nothing more than to freeze time; and she in this mirrors a region whose myths of past grace and romantic fiction mask a sense of present decay.(Bigsby 38) Although Amanda recognizes that their situation is desperate, she refuses to take reality as it really is, as far as it concerns her kids, Tom and Laura. She is unable to accept them as they really are. She refuses to accept Tom's writings or even the books he reads. She

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  • Level: GCSE
  • Subject: English
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Choose any three speeches by Amanda in the Glass Menagerie, how far do these speeches reveal the truth about her character and self possessed personality.

The Glass Menagerie Choose any three speeches by Amanda in the Glass Menagerie, how far do these speeches reveal the truth about her character and self possessed personality. 'AMANDA: One Sunday afternoon in Blue Mountain- your mother received - seventeen! - gentlemen callers! Why, sometimes there weren't chairs enough to accommodate them all. We had to send the nigger over to bring in folding chairs from the parish house.' Amanda is always returning mentally to this past, which is immaterial and far-removed from her current reality. Her reaction to Laura shows that she is strangely in denial about the nature of her own daughter. Laura is crippled, able to walk only slowly and with great effort, and emotionally she is terribly fragile. The contrast between the vivacious and talkative Amanda and her timid, soft-spoken daughter could not be stronger. Tom has a tender relationship with Laura; when Tom expresses frustration at the start of Amanda's story about her gentlemen callers, it is Laura who persuades Tom to humour their mother. The relationship between Tom and Amanda is tense; in this scene, he seems to be struggling to tolerate her, and while Amanda is loving she is also demanding beyond reason. Her insistence that Laura stay put while Amanda plays "the darky" shows her extremely provincial Southern upbringing. In her youth she was wealthy enough to have

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  • Level: GCSE
  • Subject: English
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Creative writing - Becca.

Becca: We have a place, all of us, in a long story; a story we continue, but whose end we will not see. It is the story of a new world that became a friend and liberator of the old. The story of a slave-holding society that became a servant of freedom. The story of a power that went into the world to protect but not possess, to defend but not to conquer. Main points of story * Will has knife but throws it away * Amanda and Jacob come on stage with Becca, (possibly with camera) * Becca: This is Inspectors etc etc on the scene of a knife incident * Becca is videotaping this and it is being projected onto a white sheet at the back * Becca turns her back and turns video off * Amanda and Jacob torture Will * Becca comes back and they're all looking for the knife * Becca puts camera down and joins in torture * Police get out knife and show it to will * You seen one of these etc * Will is stabbed * Press conference * Conference is being and its been projected onto sheet at back * Becca: This story of a power that went into the world to protect but not possess, to defend but not to conquer. It is the American story; a story of flawed and fallible people, united across the generations by grand and enduring ideals. Becca is centre stage with dim general cover. Becca: We have a place, all of us, in a long story; a story we continue, but whose end we will not see. It

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  • Level: GCSE
  • Subject: English
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The Glass Menagerie is one of Tennessee Williams' most eminent works and no doubt qualifies as a classic of the modern theatre.

The Glass Menagerie is one of Tennessee Williams' most eminent works and no doubt qualifies as a classic of the modern theatre. Often referred to as a 'memory play', both the style and content of The Glass Menagerie are shaped and inspired by the memory of the play's narrator, Tom Wingfield. According to Tom, due to the play's origins in memory, 'it is sentimental, it is not realistic' and may be presented with unusual freedom from convention. Consequently, the play is subject to numerous peculiarities, such as dim lighting, frequent use of music and symbolism. Most fictional works are products of the imagination, which attempt to convince the audience of its realism, through realistic conflict, drama and setting. The Glass Menagerie, however, although drawn from memory, is not 'attempting to escape its responsibility of dealing with reality', but rather, is drawn from real experience and does not need to be constrained by the conventions of realism to convey truth. The Glass Menagerie is essentially reality presented in an unrealistic way, through memory. In order to evaluate the degree to which the play is realistic rather than memory or vice versa, and how the two interact in the ultimate aim of 'interpreting experience', we must examine the various realistic aspects of the play, such as the characters, the setting, and the situation presented to us, as well as the memory

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  • Level: GCSE
  • Subject: English
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Escape There was no time. The only way out was the window. He ran to it, hotly persued by a thick dust cloud

Imaginative Writing Coursework - Seth Stahl Escape There was no time. The only way out was the window. He ran to it, hotly persued by a thick dust cloud. It was a long drop, too long. There was an explosion behind him. Craig knew he couldn't survive and thoughts of himself being another number on the death toll, began to flash through his mind. He fell back, feeling dizzy as the drop began to look further and further away. He knew that what he was going to do was suicide, but there was no other choice. He began to think soothing thoughts of his family back at home. But, forcing a decision, the floor that seemed so stable began to crack, as the aftershocks began. Craig's bones jolted and shuddered as the piece of floor he was now sat on crashed through each floor of the building with ease. He caught glimpses of what he thought were bodies, crushed under the joists and strange pieces of wire, that were twisted in unbelievable ways; heavy framework that he didn't know existed inside the walls that now jutted out at awkward angles. The chaos came to a sudden stop. Craig's body tried to carry on, forcing his head into what was left of the piece of floor that was now ceiling. He rubbed his neck as he looked up at the four floors that he had fallen through, amazed that he was still alive. He worked out that he was on the ground floor. He looked again at the piece of floor that had

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  • Level: GCSE
  • Subject: English
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The Glass Menagerie - How Far Do You Agree That The Father Is The Most Important Character In The Play?

How Far Do You Agree That The Father Is The Most Important Character In The Play? In "The Glass Menagerie" by Tennessee Williams the father is not a proper character, he is instead, portrayed by a ' larger-than-life-size photograph over the mantel' in the Wingfield household. Even though he is not a real character, he still has an influence on the other characters in the play because of the actions he had taken in the past. He is mentioned very little in the play yet his presence can still be felt in the actions and words of some characters. The play is a memory play and memory is an imaginative tool, which can be used to express the truth. Things in this play, may be exaggerated in order to put the message across. In the beginning of the play, Williams shows Amanda as being bitter about the fathers abandonment when she says 'I could have been Mrs. Duncan J. Fitzhugh, mind you! But-I picked your father!' this also shows that Amanda's character is stuck in the past and she regrets choosing the father in the first place because she believes that she could have done better. She also doesn't seem to want to talk about Mr Wingfield much because every reference she does make to him is punctuated by an exclamation mark - 'One thing your father had plenty of - was charm!' - or trails off - 'And then I - (she stops in front of the picture) met your father! Malaria fever and

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  • Level: GCSE
  • Subject: English
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Tom's closing speech in The Glass Menagerie

Tom's closing speech in The Glass Menagerie is very emotional and ironic. However, this monologue is somewhat ambiguous and doesn't implicitly state whether Tom found the adventure he sought. It seems as though he never returned to St. Louis, and spent the remainder of his life wandering from place to place. This is inferred when he says," I didn't go to the moon, I went much further-for time is the longest distance between two places..." Throughout the play, the fire escape has been a symbol of Tom's entrance and exit into both his reality and his dream world. He tells us that his departure marked the last time he "descended the steps of this fire-escape", thus permanently embarking on his journey of solitude into what was once only a part of his dream world. From the statement, "(I) followed, from then on, in my father's footsteps.." the reader can see that Tom acknowledges that he has chosen a path which is very similar to that of his father's. In recognising this fact, Tom also admits that he abandoned his family just like Mr. Wingfield did. Tom's journey does not seem to bring the escape and excitement that he had always longed for. He says, "The cities swept about me like dead leaves.." This description does not sound as though it comes from a traveller who is ecstatic about visiting different parts of the world. Cities are anything but dead; on the contrary, they

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  • Level: GCSE
  • Subject: English
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The Charles Hamilton story - creative writing.

Chapter 1 Joy Ferguson 11B Charles Hamilton sat in his office chair gazing out his office chair window. A dull blanket of grey covered the sky. He looked out at all the different people scurrying like mice to get to work in time for 9am. His eyes no longer sparkled, his blonde locks no longer shined. Charles himself had never been home the previous night. His fiancée had been calling him but he ignored the buzzing sound that had been giving him a headache for the last twelve hours. It was four weeks before the wedding to the woman he didn't even love. Charles walked out of his office, head high in the air. He couldn't let his colleagues see he was upset. He reached the coffee machine. He poured himself a large cup. He was wondering what to tell his fiancée, when he dropped his cup. The coffee went everywhere. He was about to go and get one of those cleaners he always seen walking around: - face caked with orange make up, fag hanging out of their mouth, wandering around pretending to work. Then he noticed a small frail blonde woman already cleaning his spilt coffee. He reached down to help her, his hand brushed against her knee and she glanced up at him with her bright blue eyes. He looked at her wondering whether she had one of those name tag things but she didn't.

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  • Level: GCSE
  • Subject: English
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What is the effect of the images and phrases that appear on screen throughout the play,

What is the effect of the images and phrases that appear on screen throughout the play? The effect of the images and phrases that appear on screen throughout the play was primarily to make the play more suitable to "being a memory play". This was the most prominent characteristic the play "the glass menagerie" had which was different from many other plays. Also other effects such as drawing audience's attention to Laura and having "an emotional appeal" were achieved by using these images and phrases throughout the play. The images and phrases highlighted the fact that "the glass menagerie" was a "memory play". The audience were informed from the beginning that "the play is memory" by the narrator, Tom. The images, which come up on the screen, helped the audience to realize that it was a "memory play". When Amanda babbled about her glorious memory of living in "Blue Mountain" the image on the screen showed "Amanda as a girl on a porch, greeting callers." This would have helped the audience to visualize what Amanda's life was like in the "Blue Mountain" thus helping the audience to connect with Amanda easily as they could see what she had experienced in the past. Also when Laura told Amanda about a boy she liked in high school the image on the screen showed "Jim as high school hero bearing a silver cup." Once again showing someone's dazzling past memory. The audience saw Jim

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  • Level: GCSE
  • Subject: English
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Two books I have chosen to compare are "The Woman in White", by Wilkie Collins and "The Woman in Black", by Susan Hill.

Anna Booth 11 L English Wider Reading Coursework- 2nd Draft 23.11.01 The two books I have chosen to compare are "The Woman in White", by Wilkie Collins and "The Woman in Black", by Susan Hill. The book "The Woman in White" is a story about a man who tries to deceive the Farlie family and inherit their fortune. The basic plot is this; Walter goes to work at a mansion where he falls in love with Laura who is betrothed to Sir Percival Glyde. Percival is not really a "sir" as his parents never married. Anne Catherick bears a striking resemblance to Laura but Percival has her put in an asylum as she knows the truth about his identity. Percival marries Laura against her will but he wants her out the way so he can inherit her fortune. As Anne is ill, he decides to free her from the asylum but put Laura in there instead. Anne dies and he inherits Laura's fortune as everyone believes that Anne is still in the asyum. Percival dies in a fire whilst trying to write his parent's marriage in the registry book. Walter discoves the truth and rescues Laura from the asylum. They marry and she gets her inheritance back. The book "The Woman in Black" is about a solicitor who is sorting out the papers of an old woman who died. Whilst at the house he has ghostly visions and hears the sound of a crying child. He discovers that a woman and child

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  • Level: GCSE
  • Subject: English
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