The Glass Menagerie

Themes and symbols in The Glass Menagerie The Glass Menagerie is written by Tennessee Williams and it is an incredible play where symbolism plays a very important role. Many different symbols are used in the play and almost all of them can be connected to what according to me is the biggest theme of the play, escape. Tennessee Williams describes in The Glass Menagerie the three main characters, their dreams and their escapes, from reality and from the family. The play takes place in the apartment of the Wingfield family, an apartment where none of the members of the family really wants to live. Poverty is what is keeping them there. However on the other hand they can escape reality through staying at home, but they cannot escape their own family within the apartment. Tom Wingfield is the narrator of the play, but also the son of the family. Tom hates the apartment, his mother and the fact that he is the one who has to work at the warehouse to take care of the family since his father left. Tom's escapes from the family can be related to the fire escape, the movies, and last but not least Tom's expected departure. The other two main characters of the play are Tom's sister Laura and their mother, Amanda. Laura is both physically and emotionally crippled and the only one in the play who never does anything to hurt anyone else. Her physically and emotionally state makes her as

  • Word count: 613
  • Level: GCSE
  • Subject: English
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The Glass Menagerie By Tennessee Williams.

The Glass Menagerie By Tennessee Williams The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams, set in St. Louis, America during the depression of the 1930s is an influential and stirring play. The play is formed with four characters. Amanda, Tom, Laura and Mr.Wingfield. Amanda is the mother of Tom and Laura, Amanda's son and daughter. Amanda is also the widow of Mr. Wingfield because Mr. Winfield left her sixteen years ago with Tom and Laura. Tom is a poet with a hunger for adventure and has a great desire to escape from the prison environment his mother has created for him at her home. Laura cannot be well described in the passage as she only has one line to say in the script provided. This script can show many key points about the characters and their relationship with one another. Amanda in this passage is seen as a person who wants total domination, total control over things that happen in and around her household. She can also be seen as a person who is frustrated and is angered by people who try to stand up to her and fail to comply with her demands. Her name Amanda means "worthy of being loved" conversely it can also mean that if she is deprived of loving regard that she can be a totally evils person, a witch as in Tom's words. For Example" You will hear more, you-", "I'm not through talking to you" the first quote has the word "will" written in italics suggesting that it is

  • Word count: 940
  • Level: GCSE
  • Subject: English
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Laura Ashley

Laura Ashley Global organisation Laura Ashley Holdings plc has suffered differing fortunes since it was founded in the 1950s by Bernard and Laura Ashley. It has been involved in the designing, manufacturing, distribution and selling of garments, accessories, perfume, gift items, fabric, wallcoverings, bedding, lighting, and furniture. Famed for its floral prints, the chain was highly successful during the early and mid 1980s but things changed in the early 1990s when various management and structural problems as well as those relating to growth, distribution, and various external influences such as global recession surfacedcogd gdr segdgdw orgd gdk ingd fogd gd. Laura Ashley herself died in 1985. There is a notable difference in the organisation up to and after this year. Up to 1985, it was a simply structured, steadily expanding organisation operating in a non-complex environment (complexity arises when there are numerous complicated environmental influences [Johnson and Scholes, 1989]). In the months and years after, many changes took place. Laura Ashley went public in flotation, acquired other companies involved in areas such as knitwear and perfume, made heavier investments in manufacturing and information technology (IT), moved towards segmentation with Mother and Child shops, exclusively home furnishing shops and unit shops (franchise operations). The organisation

  • Word count: 4184
  • Level: GCSE
  • Subject: English
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Tennessee Williams The Glass Menagerie

Tennessee Williams The Glass Menagerie1 features three characters, Amanda, Laura and Tom Wingfield, all misfits in the society in which they find themselves. In order to cope with their problems, the Wingfields each create a unique illusory world to help them escape from their reality. In doing so, each character makes flawed decisions about themselves and their family, ultimately causing irreparable damage: Amanda living vicariously through the past; Laura lives in an imaginary world of glass and fantasy, hiding from the world and Tom's desire for greater things and escaping the present through movies and alcohol. ` The extent of the role illusion features in The Glass Menagerie is clearly demonstrated by Amanda, who clings to a deluded re-interpretation of her youth and hope for the future even under the most trying of circumstances. Amanda is the archetypal southern belle, one of Williams' signature characters2. Amanda was born into a life of comfort however she falls victim to an irresponsible husband and Amanda is left to raise the children in St. Louis during the Depression era. Not at all suited to her new surroundings and the changing nature of society Amanda attempts to evade contemporary society, and thus chooses to re-live her past and constantly remind those around her of the better days. This is exemplified when Amanda relates to Jim, the gentleman caller

  • Word count: 1504
  • Level: GCSE
  • Subject: English
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