Symbolism in "The Glass Menagerie"
Uploaded by srheric on Apr 23, 2007
Symbolism in "The Glass Menagerie"
Tennessee Williams is an extraordinary playwright. His excellence lies in the way he writes symbolism through his poetic prose. Tennessee also uses a variety of expressionism. Expressionism is a theatrical style that attempts to reveal the truth beyond superficial facts. It uses symbols, lighting, music, signs, sounds, movements, costumes, and setting to emphasize certain characteristics. In his play The Glass Menagerie, Laura Wingfield exemplifies his use of this technique of expressionism.
The physically and emotionally crippled Laura displays a pure compassion that stands in stark contrast to the selfishness and grudging sacrifices that characterize the Wingfield household. Laura also has the fewest lines in the play. Yet she is the axis around which the plot turns, and the most prominent symbols all represent her, in some sense. Laura, though, is trapped in a fantasy world. The symbol that represents this is the glass menagerie itself. . Laura's collection of glass animal figurines represents a number of facets of her personality. Like the figurines, Laura is delicate, fanciful, and somehow old-fashioned. Glass is transparent, but, when light is shone upon it correctly, it refracts an entire rainbow of colors. Similarly, Laura, though quiet and bland around strangers, is a source of strange, multifaceted delight to those who choose to look at her in the right light. The menagerie also represents the imaginative world to which Laura devotes herself. Her world is colorful and enticing but is based on fragile illusions. The unicorn is one figurine in Laura's collection, singled out because it represents well another trait of Laura's: her peculiarity. As Jim points out, unicorns are "extinct" in modern times and are lonesome as a result of being different from other horses. Laura, too, is unusual, lonely, and ill adapted to existence in the world she lives in. The fate of the unicorn is also a smaller- scale version of what happens to Laura in scene seven. When Jim dances with and then kisses Laura, the unicorn's horn breaks off, and it becomes just another horse. Jim's advances endow Laura with a new normalcy, making her seem more like just another girl, but the violence with which that normalcy is thrust upon her means that Laura cannot become normal without somehow shattering. Eventually, Laura gives Jim the unicorn as a "souvenir." Without its horn, the unicorn is more appropriate for him than for her, and the broken...