Glass Menagerie the Autobiographical Pretenses Essay

Open, View, and/or
Download this Document

Total Length: 1023 words ( 3 double-spaced pages)

Total Sources: 2

Page 1 of 3

In The Glass Menagerie, the self-induced isolation of Laura stands in parallel to the mostly perceived isolation of Tom. These siblings suffer from symbiotic emotional illnesses that, if we are to understand Williams' works taken together, are indicative of a home itself shrouded in an unhealthy blanket of stunted relationships and the chilling void of empathy.

The Glass Menagerie would be the first of his plays to achieve widespread critical and popular success, with a series of Pulitzer Prize and Drama Critic Circle recognitions distinguishing his period of greatest literary achievement. Ultimately though, the text seems through the actions of a character such as Tom, to function as a statement of resistance against the ordinary confines which his family life seemed to have thrust upon Williams. In The Glass Menagerie Williams provides a narrative that is deeply tied to the static moments defining the despairingly mundane lives of its primary characters. Its approach to the family of three, whose broken home would itself be indicative of its social context, renders a unit of individuals insulated within their respective psychic conflicts. Laura's crippling insecurity, Amanda's pitiable illusions of refinement and Tom's genuine detachment from his family conspire to form a brutal picture of the fractured family unit. This is perhaps best contended by the notation in Pagan's text, that "at the end of The Glass Menagerie, Tom cannot help thinking of the life that he left behind as 'the cities swept about [him] like dead leaves, leaves that were brightly colored but torn away from the branches.

Stuck Writing Your "Glass Menagerie the Autobiographical Pretenses" Essay?

View All Our Example Glass Menagerie the Autobiographical Pretenses Essay

Have A Custom Example Essay Written

" (Pagan, 53) Here, Pagan seemes to reinforce the idea that Williams, through a character like Tom, is willfully separating himself from his family but remains driven by a sense of awareness, perhaps even guilt, related to his inextricable attachment to this family history.

Essentially, we find that there is a purpose to this outlook on American family life which echoes the guiding tenet of realism, to peer inside the individuals and families whose experiences might otherwise be forcibly homogenized by cultural pressure and neglected by society. For Williams, whose own family life would be a direct influence on the emotional sicknesses described in his work, the relationship between society's ills and the individual's faults would be inextricable. It would be in this manner that the author's work would be a bridge, linking the preceding realist movement to his naturalist work. Where the former discipline centered its investigation of the human experience upon the archetypal individual and his internal crisis, we have already discussed briefly the manner in which Williams would contextualize the realist probing of the individual's psyche as an elemental piece of evidence pointing to society's malice.

Works.....

Show More ⇣

     Open the full completed essay and source list


OR

     Order a one-of-a-kind custom essay on this topic


sample essay writing service

Cite This Resource:

Latest APA Format (6th edition)

Copy Reference
"Glass Menagerie The Autobiographical Pretenses" (2009, April 27) Retrieved May 14, 2024, from
https://www.aceyourpaper.com/essays/glass-menagerie-autobiographical-pretenses-22451

Latest MLA Format (8th edition)

Copy Reference
"Glass Menagerie The Autobiographical Pretenses" 27 April 2009. Web.14 May. 2024. <
https://www.aceyourpaper.com/essays/glass-menagerie-autobiographical-pretenses-22451>

Latest Chicago Format (16th edition)

Copy Reference
"Glass Menagerie The Autobiographical Pretenses", 27 April 2009, Accessed.14 May. 2024,
https://www.aceyourpaper.com/essays/glass-menagerie-autobiographical-pretenses-22451
   

Open, View, and/or
Download this Document
order custom essay example