Looking at “The Glass Menagerie”, I will show you the emotional instability of characters in this play as true expressions of conflict in the Williams' family.
Life In The Shadow of Mendacity
“The Glass Menagerie”, the first successful play by Tennessee Williams, is about a young girl named Laura who is fragile and secluded. She walks with a slight limp, and as a result she shys away from the rest of society. She lives with her mother, Amanda, and her brother, Tom. The father was a traveling salesman who left them when Tom and Laura were children; as a result Tom has become the main financial support of the family. Over time Tom has grown very close to his sister and finds it very hard to leave home to experience the world because his sister has always depended on his love and support.
Analyzing “The Glass Menagerie”, we will show the emotional instability of characters in this play as true expressions of conflict in the Williams' family.
Conflict
Conflict takes place from the very beginning of the play. The very absence of the father as the head of the home provides an internal conflict. The mother, Amanda, is mentally unstable, always nagging about peevish matters concerning her children while continuously making negative remarks about her husband. The conflict seems to heavily weigh down on the lives of her children as a result of her own mental anguish, which all originally started from the father leaving the family while the kids were young. The spiritual foundation was ripped out of the family socket causing heartache, mental anguish, and spiritual death. Love was present in the home but in the absence of nurturing, caring, and compassion. The family also was missing order in the home when the father left. The father represented a source for solid support and comfort. A provider and balance for emotional growth and stability of the children. Take that divine surge of power and authority away; you have lack of confidence, instability, and a bleak model for true commitment.
Although the characters lived together, they turned inward and closed off communication with one another in reaction to the agonizing grip of mother and her negative thoughts of the past in which she chose to waddle. We see a good example of this when Tom comes to the dinner table and as he begins to eat; his mother begins to fuss and complain about how he is eating like an animal. As he ignores her and continues to eat, she plants a gross image of salivating animals in this mind. She continues and Tom finally has enough and tells his mother how he disapproves of her constant pecking at how he is eating. This was a good example of how Tennessee did not have a very close relationship with his mother. He could never satisfy her moods. She was always fussing and complaining at Tom and his sister. The underlying issue in much of this conflict is that Tom's mother is deeply hurt by his father leaving her and the kids with the mom having an extra weight of responsibility that she was not ready for. As a result, Tom's mother acts out the pain and sorrow she has hold close to her heart for so long. Even though Tom and Laura are adults, the mother continued to talk to them as if they were still toddlers. She often put them down and made them to experience and face much of the pain and rejection she felt. As a result, Tom and Laura became very close, creating a unique bond of love and support for each other.
The play did an excellent job in expressing the personality of Laura. She avoided conflict by often hiding in her room. Laura also was very meek and had a gentle spirit, which we can see by her quiet nature and passive response to conflict. Laura was also very self conscious which was expressed her limp. She knew this was not the norm; as a result, she selfishly closed off to the rest of the world around her, depriving it of the true essence of who she is.
If one carefully analyzes the very nature and character of Laura, they could see that she was not crazy. The problem of outburst she later experienced may have been caused by separating herself from the rest of society as a result of being overly self-conscious of her limp. It may have also been a result of her mother's treating her with little patience and lack of unconditional love. Laura, which is the character that portrayed Tennessee's real sister, had her heart embedded in the only truly unconditional relationship and love she ever had, her relationship with Tom.
When Tom finally left home, a part of his sister went with him. Without the presence of her brother Tom in her daily life, she could not live a functionally normal life. Tom was her source of strength and stability that she could rely on. Laura had not friends because she always stayed home, and when Tom left, the only friend she ever really knew walked out of her life. She then became like a lonely tulip left to rot as the waters of life finally eroded away her soil of life, leaving no more support base and nutrients of which she could continue to sprout. The mom in the shadow of the absence of the father was the erosion and Tom symbolized the soil.
Atmosphere
The atmosphere of the play is very weighty. It is as if there was a lot of dead weight in the home like old clothes draped on a clothes line in a misty rain representing the vivid and dreary memoirs of the father's inability to provide a strong structural foundation of support and peace in the home. The mother continuously reflects on the past and how their father left them. Her voice and comments are like the continuous crunching of glass against clanging symbols, irritating and provoking in nature, as a result of the pain and resentment she felt for being fooled into a blue lagoon called, “love”, by the father. But, all along the seemingly silent and peaceful atmosphere portrayed by Laura was simply a masking for the constant inner turmoil she sought to suppress by enveloping herself into the magical setting of the glass menagerie.
Setting
The setting of “The Glass Menagerie”, takes place in an alley apartment of St. Louis. The mood of the place is very quiet without the slightest hint of neighboring families. The building in which the family lives is very old and rugged as if to give off an appearance of desolation and seclusion from the rest of society.
Conclusion
Thriving mendacity in a family unit is like a burning fire that never ceases but only spreads to the surrounding brush in its path.
