The Glass Menagerie By Tennessee Williams A look
“The Glass Menagerie” By: Tennessee Williams A look at the beginning of the play.
Setting up the Stage “The Wingfield apartment is…one of those vast hive-like conglomerations of cellular living units that flower as warty growths in overcrowded urban centers…and are symptomatic…of this largest and fundamentally enslaved section of American society…{they} exist and function as one interfused mass of automatism. ” • Why use scientific jargon to describe apartment buildings? • What is the tone? Why?
Setting up the apartment: • The living room doubles as Laura’s bedroom. What does this reveal to the audience without having to say it? • “A blown up photograph of the father hangs on the wall of the living room…it is the face of a very handsome young man…he is gallantly smiling, ineluctable smiling, as if to say ‘I will be smiling forever. ’” • The father abandoned the family. Why keep his picture hanging in a prominent place? What about the smile on his face? What is its significance?
Screens: • Imagine a screen in the background; at key moments, pictures and/or phrases come on to the screen that enhance the action of the moment. • “Ou sont les neiges d’antan? ” • This is French for “Where are the snows of yesteryear? ” It comes from the “Ballad of Ladies of Times Past, ” a poem by French poet Francois Villon. When people use it, they are comparing the smallness of the present to the greatness of the past. • Why does this fit when Amanda is recounting for her children her 17 beaux?
Dream-like Quality of Play is established in stage directions: • “Memory takes a lot of poetic license. It omits some details; others are exaggerated, according to the emotional value of the article it touches, for memory is seated predominately in the heart. ” • “Eating is indicated by gestures without food or utensils…Tom deliberately lays his imaginary fork down…” • “A shaft of very clear light is thrown on her face against the faded tapestry of the curtains. ” • “Her eyes lift, her face glows, her voice becomes rich and elegiac. ” • “There is a pause. A whisper of strings is heard. ”
HRL Connections • Scene 1: – Blindness: “Their eyes had failed them, or they had failed their eyes…”-Tom, pg. 5 – Flights of Fancy: • “It’s you that make me rush through meals with your hawklike attention…” –Tom, pg. 6 • “little birdlike women without any nest…” – Amanda, pg. 16 • “I went to the art museum and the bird houses at the zoo…” –Laura, pg. 15
HRL Connections – Seasons: “Walking? In winter? ” – Amanda, pg. 14 – Greek allusion: “He had the Midas touch, whatever he touch turned to gold” –Amanda, pg. 9 – Marked for Greatness: Amanda about Laura’s handicap: “Why, you’re not crippled, you just have a little defect-hardly noticeable, even!”
Symbols: Glass Menagerie and Victrola • When the audience sees Laura on stage, she is either playing with her glass figurines or with the victrola (plays music). • How are the glass figurines symbolic of Laura’s character? • Tom says in his opening speech: “In memory everything seems to happen to music. ” The Victrola was a relic from Laura’s father. When she is playing with her figurines or the victrola, what is Laura really doing?
Glass figurines
Victrola
Picasso Painting: Guernica (1937)
- Slides: 21