The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of The Glass Menagerie
Book Review: Broken Minds
Summary: 3 Stars
I must say that I've already read better novels. The whole story has too little action for my desires. That kind of review story didn't animate me to read the novel at once. Because you often have to stop and think about what you have read, about the different character and their acting.I normally don't hate, yes I even like, to philosophy but not urgently about these kind of things. Here you HAVE to read the review to understand just the main meaning. I can really imagine that there are a lot of fans of "The Glass Menagerie " who just adore this special kind of play.Book Review: Classic Williams
Summary: 5 Stars
This is one of the greatest Broadway plays, it's pure Tennessee Williams. The mother Amanda, is classic, she imbodies the faded Southern Belle who can't quite come to grips with where life has left her. I find Tom very easy to relate to, his wanted to get out, just to go anywhere, but the guilt of leaving his mother and sister is overwhelming. It is said that Tennessee Williams based this play loosely on his life and it shows in the writing, you really feel like the dialog is stream of conscience. This play will touch every reader on some level and if it does not it probably means the reader has either lived a very charmed life or is too young to relate. I highly recommend it.Book Review: Disturbing, realistic, intriguing.
Summary: 5 Stars
"The Glass Menagerie" is an excellent play but also disturbing. It opens ones eyes to how pathetic we are, and some people may have a hard time dealing with that - also known as denial. It's been a long time since I've wanted to scream at the character's to change, and this play broke the drought. I saw a little of myself in each character, and although it made me sad, I think it took guts for Williams to fully inject himself into a play. I recommend.Book Review: Fabulous Play!
Summary: 5 Stars
I am very impressed with this play and Tennessee Williams in general. His plays are filled with emotion, depth, and integrity while at the same time the play is not cryptic, but easy to understand. His characters are complex and compelling, especially Amanda and Laura in this play. Also, the play is set in my hometown of St. Louis, and thus I have a personal appeal for the novel. In terms of the book itself, the text is nice and big and the characters' lines, stage directions, and descriptions are easily distinguished from one another. There is also a nicely written introduction and a bonus essay by Mr. Williams himself entitled "The Catastrophe of Success." Also included are passages preceeding the play that describe the characters and location.Book Review: From the Golden Age of American Drama
Summary: 5 Stars
THE GLASS MENAGERIE, written in 1944, is a painfully poignant drama about a crippled girl, Laura Wingfield, who is so shy and insecure that she spends her days in her mother's house, playing old phonograph records left by her father, who deserted the family long ago, and caring for her collection of glass figurines ("the glass menagerie"). Laura's mother, Amanda, is an old-fashioned "southern belle," charming but emotionally weak; though she finds fault with Laura and her shyness, Amanda lives in her own world of illusions. She dreams of a business career for Laura; when this fails, she dreams that Laura will find a handsome "gentleman" to marry. Aside from the "gentleman caller," the other character in the play is Laura's brother, Tom, who also dreams - of being an artist, another "Shakespeare." Tom is both a character in the drama and its narrator; in this way, THE GLASS MENAGERIE is a "memory play": its action is RECOUNTED by a narrator, Tom.
The similarities between this play and both A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE and Arthur Miller's DEATH OF A SALESMAN are striking. All three of these works deal with the contrast between illusion - dreams -and reality. In STREETCAR, Blanche du Bois is a delicate, refined "southern belle," who prefers to live in a dream-world; in this way she is like both Laura and Amanda Wingfield. But I find the parallels with SALESMAN even more interesting. These begin with the opening stage directions, which describe the set of the Wingfield's house as having transparent walls (so that Tom can narrate, then walk through the walls into "the past" to become a character in the play) and as being located in an overcrowded section of town. In SALESMAN, the Lomans' home has transparent walls for the very same purpose - so that the characters can exist both in the present and in the past - and is at the same time shown to be "boxed in" with many other houses, showing the desperation and helplessness of the family's situation. Like Willy Loman, Amanda has great but unrealistic hopes for her children. And like Biff Loman, Tom Wingfield is bored with his menial job and dreams of being free to create and to go where he likes. Jim, the gentleman caller, also resembles Biff in that he was a success in high school but now, six years later, is only a shipping clerk - yet he believes in the myth that a winning personality will eventually make him a success. That MENAGERIE and the later SALESMAN resemble each other in so many respects means that Miller must have admired and learned from Williams. Indeed, the twentieth century was extremely fortunate to have had these two great dramatists writing practically simultaneously. THE GLASS MENAGERIE is certainly one of the jewels from that golden age -- the 1910's to the 1950's -- of American drama.