The Glass
Menagerie
By: Tennessee Williams
Presented By:
Cindy Prom, Victoria Keith,
Carlos Tovar, Carly Millard
Table of Contents
• I) The Summarizer: Plot Pyramid – By: Carlos Tovar
• II)The Historian - By: Carly Millard
– S.1: Biography
– S.1: Continued
– S.2: Time Period
– S.3: Media Incarnations
• III) The Stylist - By: Victoria Keith
– S.1: Writing Style
– S.2: Stylistic Elements
– S.3: Literary Devices
– S.4: Passages
• IV) Comparison to Hamlet: Venn Diagram – By: Cindy Prom
• V) Performance
The Summarizer
Plot Pyramid
• Tom doesn’t pay the electric bill. He’s ready to leave.
• Jim breaks Laura’s unicorn and tells her he’s engaged.
• Amanda loses her hope that Laura’s future will be
secured both socially and financially.
Crisis: Jim comes over for 2dinner and is introduced to Laura. She faints at the
dinning table. He kisses her.
• Amanda asks Tom to find her a caller from work. He invites Jim
O’Connor over to dinner.
• Tom brings up his tediousness at the shoe company.
• Amanda finds out that Laura dropped out of
school. She becomes obsessed to find a caller
for her daughter.
• Laura has no gentlemen callers. She
speaks about Jim to Amanda.
• Tom rises from the dinning
table.
Exposition
• Physical setting: The Wingfield apartment in St. Louis.
• Temporal setting: the present and the 1930s.
• Characters: Tom Wingfield (protagonist), Amanda Wingfield (Tom's
mother), Laura Wingfield (Tom's sister), Jim O’Connor (gentleman caller)
• Background: The Great Depression in the U.S. (labor crisis, a dissolving
economy), and The Revolution in Spain (the massacre of Guernica)
Climax
• Laure gives the broken
unicorn to Jim.
• Amanda accuses
Tom of fooling her
and Laura. As
usual, they fight
dreadfully.
Tom leaves his
family, but is
unable to cut
his emotional
attachment to
Laura.
Resolution
The Historian
S.1: Biography
TENNESSEE WILLIAMS
1911 - 1983
The Historian S.1: Biography Continued
Williams Vs. Wingfields
Mother: Edwina Williams
• aggressive, obsessed with
Southern living, spoiled,
loving but smothering
woman.
Father: Cornelius Williams
• shoe salesman, emotionally
absent, abusive, and
distant.
Sister: Rose
• emotional and mental
imbalance, emotionally
disturbed, had a lobotomy in
1936.
Brother: Dakin
• was repeatedly favored over
older siblings.
•
•
Mother: Amanda Wingfield
• her life is paranoia, her
foolishness makes her
unwittingly cruel, there’s as
much to love and pity as there
is to laugh at.
Father: Mr. Wingfield
• remains nameless,
abandoned his family.
Sister: Laura Wingfield
failed to establish contact with
reality, crippled, fragile:
considered part of her own
glass collection, and has
deteriorated mental health.
Brother: N/A
perhaps bitter about Dakin
and Cornelius’s relationship.
The Historian
S.2: Time Period
THE GREAT DEPRESSION
- Worldwide economic downturn
- 1929 - 1930s
- Originated in the United States
- Historians most often use as a starting date the stock market
crash on October 29, 1929, known as Black Tuesday.
The Historian
S.3: Media Incarnations
Media Incarnations
The Stylist
S.1: Writing Style
- Writing style classified as Modified Realism & Southern Gothic
- Tennessee’s protagonists are out of tune with accepted norms,
generally use something like drugs, alcohol, sex-to escape an
unfriendly present or recover a dead past
- Tennessee's plays use Aristotelian terminology
- Never dull/emotional
- Protagonists are usually lonely dreamers
-Memory play
• 3 part structure
• character experiences something profound, time loops upon
itself, character relives profound experience and makes sense of it
The Stylist
S.2: Stylistic Elements
• Symbols in the play:
– Glass: Laura’s Glass Menagerie/transparent to society
– Fire Escape: Tom’s need for freedom
– Blue Roses: A happier time and place for Laura in school with Jim
– Jonquils: a reminder of Amanda’s glorious past
– Gentlemen caller (Jim)
– Unicorn: Laura’s uniqueness
– Scarf: Toms attempt to share his magic and desire for escape with
Laura
• Images on the screen:
– Pictures set the mood
– Blue roses when Laura is talking about Jim
– sailing vessel to showcase Tom’s longing to escape for his life
– Music as Laura loves to play her fathers old records
– Amanda as a young girl to show her privileged past
The Stylist
•
•
•
•
•
S.3: Literary Devices
Connotation
– scene six page 81 Amanda Wingfield is having a conversation with Jim
O’Connor where she is trying to impress him with her Southern accent
– she says: “fo this time of year,” “an light food,” “weather calls fo”and “it takes
a while fo’ us to adjust ou’selves”.
Foreshadowing
– “the fire escape is part of what we see-that is, the landing of it and steps
descending from it”
- Tom as narrator, gives a sense that Tom wants to escape from where he
lives
Simile
– ”Mother, when you’re disappointed, you get that awful suffering look on your
face, like the picture of Jesus’ mother in the museum “ – Laura
Hyperbole – exaggeration
– ”Not one gentleman caller? It can’t be true! There must be a flood, there
must be a tornado!” – Amanda
Exposition and Metaphor
– Shows they have limited financial income and compares home and kids to
nest and birds
”Late that winter and in early spring-realizing that extra money would
needed to properly feather the nest and plume the bird-she conducted a
vigorous campaign on the telephone” (S3.P37)
The Stylist
S.4: Passages
• “TOM: Listen! You think I’m crazy about the
warehouse? …” scene three pg 41
• This passage portrays Tennessee William’s writing
style because he writes about characters
who are conflicted /confused/not happy with his life
• He gave American theatergoers unforgettable
characters, an incredible vision of life in the South,
and a series of powerful portraits of the human
condition. He was deeply interested in something he
called "poetic realism," namely the use of everyday
objects which, seen repeatedly and in the right
contexts, become imbued with symbolic meaning.
Comparison to Hamlet
The Glass Menagerie
Hamlet