The Glass Menagerie
Tennessee Williams
1. Williams has written of his own sister’s collection of glass animals:
“By poetic association they came to represent, in my memory, all the softest emotions
that belong to recollection of things past. They stood for all the small and tender things
that relieve the austere pattern of life and make it endurable to the sensitive.”
– Tennessee Williams
Think about the symbolism of the glass menagerie in relation to Laura. How, for
example, does Laura resemble the glass animals? What does the unicorn represent at first,
and what does it represent once the horn has been broken?
2. Think about how Williams uses the following motifs or props in the play as symbols.
What does each represent? How do they relate to the play’s theme?
a. the movies
b. the Paradise Dance Hall
c. the fire escape
d. the father’s portrait
e. Laura’s leg brace
f. the gentleman caller
g. Jim’s giant shadow
3. Why do you think Williams chose the line from Cummings’ poem to open his play?
4. As you know, the climax of a play is the high point of the story – its most intensely
emotional moment. What scene do you think marks the climax of The Glass Menagerie?
5. In any story, complexity makes for interesting characters. In good drama, we rarely find a
“good guy” pitted against a “bad guy”; the best drama often occurs when both people in a
conflict are right. Do you sympathize with Amanda, even though she causes her children
to suffer? Do you think Tom and Laura are both wrong and right? Explain your answer.
6. One critic has said that The Glass Menagerie shows us a series of contrasts between (a)
the dreamer and the doer, (b) the past and the present, (c) fantasy and reality, (d)
psychological and physical handicaps, and (e) the desire for escape and the awareness of
responsibilities.
7. We never learn what happens to Laura and Amanda after Tom leaves. The Wingfield
household has been barely managing on Tom’s meager salary. Write a letter that Laura
might have written to Tom two years after her brother’s departure.
8. The Glass Menagerie touches on the conflict between and individual’s “right to be
happy” and the individual’s responsibility to others – a very real and frequent personal
conflict. Which should come first – happiness or responsibility? Under what
circumstances would your opinion change? Do you think Tom was right or wrong in
leaving home?