Symbolism in The Glass Menagerie Essay -- essays research papers

Symbolism in The Glass Menagerie     From the beginning, the figure of the narrator shows that Williams play will non follow the conventions of realistic theater. The narrator breaks the conceptual "fourth wall" of naturalistic drama by addressing the audience directly. turkey cock also tells us that he is going away to give the audience truth disguised as illusion, making the audience conscious of the illusory quality of theater. By playing with the theme of memory and its distortions, Williams is muster out to use music, monologues, and projected see to its to haunting effect. Tom, as narrator, tells the audience that the gentleman caller is a real personmore real, in many ways, than any another(prenominal) characterbut he also tells the audience that the gentleman is a symbol for the "expected something that we live for," the thing for which we are always waiting and hoping. This identification of a character as both real entity and symbo l is characteristic of Williams work both of these aspects of the gentleman caller are strategic to the overall collision of the Play. The allusion to Guernica and the turmoil in Spain, juxtaposed to the uneasy counterinsurgency in America, establishes a tense atmosphere as the plays background.      There is symmetry between the uneasy peace of the time period and the uneasy peace in the Wingfield house. Just as America stirs restlessly with the uneasy peace before the Second World War, Tom seethes with the need to escape his home and set out into the worldas his father did before him. The fire escape, a visually prominent part of the set, is an important symbol for the imprisonment that Tom feels and the possibility of a way out. In his stage directions, Williams characteristically imbues the fire escape with symbolic weight, saying that the buildings are electrocution with the "implacable fires of human desperation." Tom addresses the audience from the fire escape, and his positioning there, standing alone between the outside world and the space of the apartment, points to the painful choice he makes later in the play. In order to escape, he must escape alone and leave his mother and sister stub.      This is the first scene where the audience sees Laura taking care of her glass menagerie. The glass menagerie is the most important symbol for Laura and her fragility. H... ... is also, in many ways, the surrogate for Williams sisterwhose name was Rose. Williams uses the rose as a motif for Laura to emphasize her delicateness and her beauty, as well as her worth. The fantastic blue color of the flower shows, however, that Laura is not a being of this world     Toms closing terminology is a great moment. The descending fourth wall puts a powerful but permeable barrier between Tom and his family. They are behind him, behind him in time and in the physical space of the stage, and they are inaudible. Yet he cannot seem to shake the memory of them, and they are clearly visible to the audience. Although he has never explicitly spoken of one of the plays most important themesthe conflict between responsibility and the need to live his own lifeit is clear that he has not been able to fully shake the guilt from the decision that he made. The cost of escape has been the burden of memory. For Tom and the audience, it is difficult to forget the final image of frail Laura, illuminated by candlelight on a darkened stage, while the world outside of the apartment faces the beginnings of a great storm.