What makes such a simple story a work of theatrical work of art is the way in which it’s told as a memory play. The bulk of the story is a very simple one in which Amanda finds out that Laura secretly dropped out of business school and convinces Tom to invite a “gentleman caller” to come to dinner to meet Laura and, hopefully, become her husband someday. In fact, the patriarch appears only in memory format, as a photograph on the wall, and not in real life. Tom Wingfield is her twentysomething brother, a poet who dreams of a life of adventure but works in a factory to support his family, a painful reminder of the father who abandoned them.She walks with a limp and is extremely shy and naive. Laura Wingfield is a twentysomething high school dropout, who hasn’t done much of anything since but play with her collection of glass animal trinkets, listen to old records, and recall the high school crush she once had.She believes marriage is the key to happiness for her daughter, Laura. A former Southern belle, she is disillusioned and trapped in ideas of the past, when men called on her. Louis apartment in the 1930s, it offers a window into a few relatively inconsequential moments in the lives of the Wingfield family to show the stronghold that memory has had on their happiness: First, memory is subjective and, second, memory is overpowering. Catapulting Tennessee Williams to fame, this 1944 play, instead, relies on style and content about memory to convey its meaning.
The Glass Menagerie was a 5-star read for me. I’m more of a fan of musical theater than non-musical theater, so it especially struck me how deeply The Glass Menagerie resonated with me, particularly because not much action occurs in the play.
I read The Glass Menagerie as part of my Rory Gilmore reading challenge, in which we read books referenced on the tv show Gilmore Girls.
0 kommentar(er)
