The glass menagerie - Research Paper Example

This is because, in the rest of the characters, Williams finds an intersection between the themes he wishes to convey and the characters, though this point of intersection is highest in the person of Tom Wingfield. The Principal Characters of the Play Just as there are very many reasons to indicate that the main characters of the play are Amanda, Tom and Laura, so are there several reasons behind Williams' choice of them. Laura features in the play as the daughter of the Wingfields and Tom Wingfield's older sister as one of the principal characters.

The aspect of Laura being a key figure in the play is underscored by the fact that it is her glass figurines that give the play its name and theme. The sufferings and setbacks that Laura has encountered culminate into her making a collection of glass figurines, as a way of creating a world of her own (Williams, Scene 1). Laura is introduced to suffering right from a nascent stage of life. A bout of childhood sickness strikes her, but because of the family's inability to afford timely quality medical services, she is left with a limp that eats into her personality and self-esteem.

This low self-esteem causes her to become more isolated from the outside world. By disassociating her with the outside world, the same low self-esteem is definitely bound to eat into her exploits and potential. The author chooses the character of Laura Wingfield because she is the person who brings out explicitly, the consequences that accost the girl child, in light of absentee fatherhood. Secondly, she helps compound the theme of the difficulty in accepting reality the most. Reality has the weakest grasp on her, of all the Wingfields.

She builds private world populated by glass animals. These objects, like Laura's inner life, are considerably fanciful but perilously delicate. In the person of Laura, the playwright finds the character in whom he can divulge on the psychological consequences of absentee parenthood and the sufferings it brings, on the child. Another character who features prominently in the play is Amanda Wingfield, the mother to Tom and Laura. A beautiful Southern lady who has been abandoned by her husband Mr.

Wingfield, Amanda is Wingfield is trying to raise her children under dire financial situation. She longs for the comfort of her youth and for her children to have these comforts, but her inability to secure them turns her to hate them. The reason behind the playwright's choice of Amanda as a chief character of the play is that her experience and predicament set her to serve as the most express specimen of the psychological distress that single mothers bear. In the play, the disparity between her wishes for the comfort of her youth and their actual attainment of them is wide and persistent enough to aptly depict the harshness of life's reality and to inculcate bitterness upon Amanda.

Thus, in the character of Amanda, the playwright is able to demonstrate the extent to which suffering can rob one of her personal aspirations and desires. Through the character of Amanda, Williams presents the complicated relationship that financially distressed and troubled single mothers have with reality. Amanda is partial to the values of the real world enough to maintain aspirations such as financial and social success. However, it is her firm attachment to these values that prevents her from coming to terms with life's