The Glass Menagerie

Tom is frustrated in his job and distressed at home by the mental withdrawal from life of his crippled sister Laura. His energetic but misguided mother clings frantically to the idea that Laura can lead a normal life while Laura lives for her glass figures--'the small and tender things that make life endurable'. This edition contains notes and activities to enhance your understanding and enjoyment of the play.

A classic of modern drama about three confused family members living in their own world of illusions.

Presents a collection of critical essays on the play that analyze its structure, characters, and themes.

New Directions Edition; Among our greatest dramatic works that also makes for great student reading.

THE STORY: Amanda Wingfield is a faded, tragic remnant of Southern gentility who lives in poverty in a dingy St. Louis apartment with her son, Tom, and her daughter, Laura. Amanda strives to give meaning and direction to her life and the lives of h

Delma E. Presley's 'The Glass Menagerie: An American Memory' offers a cogent and thorough analysis of Tennessee William's masterpiece. The study addresses such issues as characterization, structure, and the visual and dramatic devices used to create this compelling 'memory play.'

Essays discuss different productions of the play, identify literary influences, examine the characters, and analyzes Williams' dramatic technique.

A guide to reading "The Glass Menagerie" and "A Streetcar Named Desire" with a critical and appreciative mind encouraging analysis of plot, style, form, and structure. Also includes background on the author's life and times, sample tests, term paper sugge

This edition of The Glass Menagerie has been adapted specifically to help prepare students for CXC examinations.

A Student Handbook to the Plays of Tennessee Williams provides the essential guide to Williams' most studied and revived dramas. Authored by a team of leading scholars, it offers students a clear analysis and detailed commentary on four of Williams' plays: The Glass Menagerie, A Streetcar Named Desire, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Sweet Bird of Youth. A consistent framework of analysis ensures that whether readers are wanting a summary of the play, a commentary on the themes or characters, or a discussion of the work in performance, they can readily find what they need to develop their understanding and aid their appreciation of Williams' artistry. A chronology of the writer's life and work helps to situate all his works in context and the introduction reinforces this by providing a clear overview of Williams' writing, its recurrent themes and concerns and how these are intertwined with his life and times. For each play the author provides a summary of the plot, followed by commentary on: * The context * Themes * Characters * Structure and language * The play in production (both on stage and screen adaptations) Questions for study, and notes on words and phrases in the text are also supplied to aid the reader. The wealth of authoritative and clear commentary on each play, together with further questions that encourage comparison across Williams' work and related plays by other leading writers, ensures that this is the clearest and fullest guide to Williams' greatest plays.

A comprehensive study guide to Tennessee Williams's The glass menagerie.

Tennessee Williams' 1944 play The Glass Menagerie centers around a family of three, Tom, Laura, and Amanda Wingfield, exploring what it means to share a household with people whose individual psychological eccentricities threaten to overwhelm the whole. Told retroactively in the format of a memory play, the protagonist, Tom, an aspiring poet by night and warehouse worker by night, introduces the audience to the conditions which led him to abandon his family in pursuit of his independence. This informative edition explores the themes of family dysfunction in Tennessee Williams's The Glass Menagerie, providing readers with a critical look at the intersection of literature and sociology. The book includes an examination of Williams' life and influences and takes a hard look at key ideas related to the play, such as the role of guilt in family relationships and the breakdown of the American dream. Readers are also offered contemporary perspectives on family dysfunction through the discussion of toxic or overbearing parents and the effects of alcoholism on families.

This is a collection of thirteen original essays from a team of leading scholars in the field. In this wide-ranging volume, the contributors cover a healthy sampling of Williams's works, from the early apprenticeship years in the 1930s through to his last play before his death in 1983, Something Cloudy, Something Clear. In addition to essays on such major plays as The Glass Menagerie, A Streetcar Named Desire, and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, among others, the contributors also consider selected minor plays, short stories, poems, and biographical concerns. The Companion also features a chapter on selected key productions as well as a bibliographic essay surveying the major critical statements on Williams.

Seminar paper from the year 2007 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 1,0, http: //www.uni-jena.de/ (Institut fur Anglistik/Amerikanistik), course: Classics of Modern American Drama, 18 entries in the bibliography, language: English, comment: This seminar paper deals with the Character of Amanda in the play and influences on the depiction of it., abstract: Of particular interest for this paper is the juxtaposition of conflicting traits in Amanda's character. On the one hand, she is characterized by critics as the good mother and perpetuator. On the other hand, she is the terrible, cruel mother and perpetrator. These different characteristics seem to be directly connected to Amanda's relationship to her children. For her daughter she is the good mother, trying everything to ensure her daughter's security in the future. Her son experiences his mother's treatment as suffocating and restricting for his dreams and ambitions. Yet, both of these different attitudes seem to be motivated by the same disposition in Amanda: the love and devotion of a mother for her children. Consequently, there must be other reasons that motivate Amanda's behavior. This paper is going to consider the social and economical situation in the USA at the time of the play, Amanda's glorification of her own past and the fact that the play is Tom's memory for a combination of these three points seem to be the reason why Amanda is portrait as such an ambiguous character in the drama. To begin with, the relevant social and economic circumstances in the USA during the time of the play are going to be analyzed. Amanda's glorification of her past is then discussed followed by the analysis of the influence of Tom's memory on the portrayal of Amanda in the play. Finally, the results of the analysis of the three factors are applied to the relationship of Amanda and her children."