The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams玻璃动物园由田纳西·威廉姆斯.pptVIP

The Glass Menagerieby Tennessee Williams Tennessee Williams (1911-1983) Thomas Lanier Williams grew up in Columbus, Mississippi. He and his older sister Rose were raised in his maternal grandparents’ home (his grandfather was an Episcopalian clergyman) in a supportive, bookish atmosphere. When his father, an extroverted traveling shoe salesman, took a desk job in St. Louis, the family was uprooted from its sheltered, genteel existence and transplanted to a cheerless, backstreet apartment. Looking back on the traumatic move (an expulsion from a Southern Eden that became a motif in his plays), Williams observed, “We suddenly discovered that there were two kinds of people, the rich and the poor, and we belonged more to the latter.” The Glass Menagerie opened on Broadway in 1945 and established Williams as a major dramatic talent. The play introduced several motifs that run throughout the works: the vulnerable and anguished woman who lives in a fragile fantasy world; the family hobbled by emotional or physical poverty; the domineering and manipulative parent; and the haunting sense of the old South as a romantic bygone era. The Memory Play: Tennessee Williams claimed that all his major plays fit into the “memory play” format he described in the production notes for this play. The memory play is a three-part structure: 1. A character experiences something profound. 2. That experience causes what Williams terms “an arrest of time,” a situation in which time literally loops upon itself. 3. The character must relive that profound experience (in that loop of time) until he or she makes sense of it. Symbols and Analysis Fire escape Glass menagerie Unicorn Blue Roses Thunder Paradise Dance Hall Father’s portrait Phonograph/ records Rose lampshade The coffin trick American Dream/Nightmare: This concept focuses on the unattainable American Dream due to socio-economic circumstances. Dreams of wealth, success, and happiness are crushed by the grim realities of the lo