Glass Menagerie, Glass Menagerie

1930s

Action of play takes place in:

Amanda's religious beliefs and Old Southern roots identify her as a/n

Baptist

The fragility of the family is metaphorically represented by the

Glass menagerie

Amanda's obsession with Blue Mountain and her gentleman callers, who were "planters and sons of planters," reinforces two Southern literature themes:

Haunted Past and Necessary Earth- southerners no social mobility

both want to be socialites and have mood disorders

How are the real-life Edwina and Amanda alike?

both had some sort of physical/mental disability

How are the real-life Rose and Laura alike?

the classes terrified her to the point of becoming physically ill

Laura dropped out because

Rubicam's Business College

Laura dropped out of

bad leg

Laura has a

animals

Laura keeps a collection of tiny glass

What is the allegorical significance of the fact that the unicorn's horn falls off while Laura dances with Jim?

Laura represents the south. Unicorn represents Laura. Laura breaks off the horn which makes her like everyone else. Laura represents the south which she represents being re-embraced to North. Jim betrays her the same way the North betrayed the South. South surrenders to North like when Laura gave the horn back to him. Johnson punishes south.

wandering around in parks and museums

Laura spends her time

a unicorn

Laura's favorite glass animal

Tom represents the

New South for most of the play.

In "It All Comes Together Outside a Restroom in Hogansville," who is the "woman [singing in Detroit" and how does her inclusion in the poem help to identify its New Southern bias?

New Southern poem and is about the South changing in the 1960's and hears on the car radio and hear it playing Aretha Franklin. Aretha franklin being playing in Georgia station in 1960s is evidence that integration is occurring in the Deep South and the New south has won. Highway to Atlanta was wide open because Atlanta only industrial center in South and mostly African American. He means that he wants something new so he drives to Atlanta listen to Aretha and does not want to be farmer for the rest of his life. Atlanta was new Southern part of Georgia. Proves how movement away from Old South.

Amanda represents the

Old South

What is the significance of William's allusion to actor Clark Gable?

Clark Gable was a star in Gone with the Wind, which is about the civil war.

Jeriel Howard said that virtually every work of southern literature written between 1865 and 1965 is a/n

allegory for the reconstruction era

Tom

autobiographical version of Tennessee Williams

Irish

Origin of Jim's family

Laura walks with a brace as a result of

Polio

In Wendell Berry's "Where," what paradox does he fail to resolve about the return of the Old Southern agrarian tradition?

Reconstruction had destroyed agrarian tradition. He sees more of a barn roof because the soil is eroding and the carpetbaggers does not want to replenish the soil, but instead make profit off any soil they can get. Corporatization of farming destroyed the soil because overused. Wendell Berry is a old southerner. He mentions "scars" and makes oblique references. The paradox that he never resolves is re-establishing the agrarian tradition, but not re-establishing slavery.

As such, Tom would be associated with a group of Southerners called

Scalawag

Laura withdraws from Rubicam's Business College because

She was too nervous

Tom

Tennessee Williams' real first name is:

Tom's

The Glass Menagerie is a "memory play." From whose memory is it taken from?

The Great Depression

The action of the play takes place during:

The metaphor for Tom's unhappiness with his home life and for his allegorical function is his preoccupation with

The metaphor is movies, and it represents Tom's escape. In the allegorical way, movies represent the north because movies are technology

unicorn

This is a symbol of Laura in the play

calls possible subscribers to The Homemaker's Companion

To make extra money, Amanda

On one of his late night adventures, Tom assists a magician named Malvolio, whom he admires for escaping from a casket.

Tom had ill will toward family, the south, working in factories. Compensates for ill by going to movies and writes poems on shoebox and is given the name Shakespeare. Magician does magic tricks in between shows and Malvolio incorporates all the things Tom try to do to escape and wants to escape because he is an aesthete, he is too sensitive, artistic and too New south to be happy in that environment.

poetry

Tom likes to write __________________.

going to the movies

Tom spends his time

the movies

Tom spends many of his nights at

shoe warehouse

Tom works at a

Laura is represented metaphorically by the

Unicorn

In addition to her glass collection, Laura constantly plays records on an

Victrola, a symbol of a bygone era that no longer exists.

telephone company

Where did Tom's father work?

Wingfields

family featured in play

As such, each character in the play is a/n

motif that serves as a representative sample of southern philosophical positions.

Tom

narrator of play

Amanda

resembles Tennessee Williams' mother, Edwina

Laura

resembles Tennessee Williams' sister Rose

St. Louis

setting of play

What is the historical antecedent of Amanda's blaming Tom for the "gentleman caller" fiasco?

Amanda blaming Tom is like the old south blaming the New south for allowing the carpetbaggers to step foot in the south during reconstruction.

a drunk

Amanda is concerned that Tom's friend, Laura's gentleman caller, is a __________.

find Laura a husband

Amanda is determined to

the South

Amanda is from

What cultural stereotypes does Amanda employ that reinforce the Southern Literature sub-theme of race/class distinction?

Amanda represents racism because she talks about Turks and Irish in a derogatory way. She calls Turkish people the bottom of the ladder and they work really hard but, can not make it far because they are immigrants. She calls Irish people assumes him to be an alcoholic and also a Catholic so she plans fish for dinner on Friday. She made an assumption that all Turkish people are poverty and work harder to survive. The allegorical function with this is that the old south is generally more racist towards any other groups besides whites.

What is revealed by the fact J. Duncan Fitzhugh is the only one of Amanda's gentleman callers who survives?

Amanda sees her other potential marriages as lost opportunities. He became rich and known as the "wolf of wall street" and she says everything he touched turned into gold and she missed out on being rich.

The fifth "character" in the play is

Amanda's Husband (Mr. Wingfield) : ex-patriot

abandoned the family sixteen years before the action of the play

Amanda's husband, Tom's and Laura's father, is absent because

not paying the electric bill

How does Tom plunge the family into darkness?

abandoned their families in some sense

How is Tennessee Williams' father like Tom's father?

How does Laura represent the "generic" post-Reconstruction South?

In the beginning of the book she has lots of problems Polio Pleurosis Jim (carpetbagger) seduces her and makes her feel normal He breaks the unicorn glass and makes her as feel like the north Jim betrays her by saying he has a girlfriend Carpet baggers take everything the south has to offer and destroys their whole agrarian economy and makes it industrial economy

gentlemen callers

In the first scene, Amanda tells the story of a Sunday afternoon in Blue Mountain when she received seventeen

Blue Roses

Jim used to call Laura _________ in high school.

Shakespeare

Jim's nickname for Tom

What does Tom's closing soliloquy suggest about expatriate Southerners?

Southern expatriates or new southerns have left the south, but still have southern elements vested in them. This causes them to always have ties to the south despite being a new southerner, and trying to abandon the south.

Jim and Tom have a symbiotic relationship. Tom reminds Jim of his glory days of high school, and Jim is apparently Tom's only friend. If one considers their respective archetypal function, how is their relationship central to the allegory?

Their relationship at the warehouse is symbiotic. Jim is Tom's only friend and Tom is reminder to Jim of his bygone success which he no longer has. So they feed off of each other and there are like parasites because they each offer something they both need, friendship and reminiscence of glory. New south was dependent on industrialized north to revitalize the South. Plantation system was dead and could have died without the North. Carpetbaggers needed scalawags to provide them an introduction and sympathetic southerners for them to allow the carpetbaggers to come in. Carpetbaggers were interested in profit and not fixing it. Carpetbaggers could not impose themselves without scalawags. Scalawags were not successful without carpetbaggers. Jim is a carpetbagger and Tom is a scalawag.

fire-escape landing

What do the Wingfields have instead of a porch?

radio engineering and public speaking

What is Jim taking night courses in?

a speakeasy, or dance club

What is across the alley from the Wingfields' apartment?

a lover, a hunter, a fighter

What is man, according to Tom, by instinct?

. What is the significance of Amanda's change in speech pattern (fo') while speaking to Jim?

When Jim comes to the house, in addition to find a gentlemen caller, Jim's presence is as much for her and recaptures her own past through Laura. Laura and lost her accent because she lived in St. Louis for a while. Local color is usage of language that shows someone is from particularly region or ethnicity. Williams start changing spelling of words to show Laura has lapsed into Southern accent. She is recapturing her youth on blue mountain when she had many gentleman callers.

he is engaged

Why will Jim not call again on Laura?

Why does Willams make a pointed reference to Guernica early in the play?

Williams makes a reference to Guernica early in the play to establish when the play is taking place and what is happening in that time period (Spanish civil war)

Given that the Wingfield family is loosely based on Williams's own, what is the significance of the fact that Tom cannot "blow out [Laura's] candles"?

Williams was an expatriate and left the South born in Mississippi and lived in St. Louis. He went from old south to new south. He is Tom and the book is based on his family so very autobiographical. This means that Tom can't leave Laura behind. Laura represents South and he can not completely leave her behind and very one of his plays are about the South. Expatriates can leave the south but the south will never leave them.