FREE ESSAY ON READING REPORT: THE GLASS MENAGERIE

READING REPORT: THE GLASS MENAGERIE

If ever there were one literary work most strongly depicting the miseries of human life,
Tennessee Williams's The Glass Menagerie would be it. Throughout the entire story are
thoughts/feelings encountered by people in real life . . . although the play
script-turned-novel presents those emotions to the audience surreptitiously. The story is
of three not unusual characters - Amanda, Tom, and Laura - in a family. Amanda, the
mother, is now without a husband trying to look after her children. The curious part is
about how she treats them: she wants them to go out into the world and ensure their
prosperous future lives . . . but also wants to have complete dominance over any and all
aspects of their current lives. Much of the story revolves around this contradiction -
especially between Tom - now a grown man in his middle-20s - and Amanda. Amanda is
relentlessly trying to get him to subject to her, but Tom desires, like his father, to go
out into the world and seek his fortune (which is why Amanda's husband wandered out
constantly at night and then abruptly disappeared and never came back). Doubtlessly,
Amanda fears Tom to do the same and therefore gets carried away in trying to prevent him
from doing so. On the other hand, Amanda also has to fret over Laura, Tom's elder by
several years. Laura, having been influenced heavily from early childhood by a genetic
birth defect, is now crippled also by having an inferiority complex, a disease of the
mind that makes the person affected think very low of his/herself. The audience, however,
does not get informed of this till near the end of the story. Anyways, Tom and Amanda
argue for much of the story (mainly because of Tom's endless exploits at night; saying he
goes out to the movies but going gambling and getting involved in gang activities
instead), but Amanda finally wins over Tom and forces him into her control again. Once
she has, Amanda demands Tom go to the warehouse where he works and find some "fine young
man who doesn't drink" for Laura. Tom does, but . . . well, if the answer was revealed,
the end of the story would be known, and that would be the ruin of this report. Laura
finds herself reunited with a high school classmate by the name of Jim when Tom does
bring him. Of course, she is reluctant to meet Jim and pretends to be sick for most of
the dinner that Tom has invited Jim to. Amanda, Tom, and Jim talk things out and have a
very pleasant conversation, and then Amanda asks Jim to go talk with Laura while she and
Tom talk alone in the kitchen. Unknowingly to Amanda, Tom already has big plans for the
future that would involve doing the same thing his father did. Jim walks in, and Laura
admits to knowing him previously. And any further and there would be no more of the novel
to have the fun of reading. Tennessee Williams's play, The Glass Menagerie, although a
sad work, turned out to be the turning point of his career when it was accepted without
question into Chicago, and later American, theater. The play was a dramatization -
although not fully - of Williams's own troubled childhood.