Tom And Laura example essay topic

Tennessee Williams Thomas (Tennessee) Lanier Williams born March 26, 1911 in Columbus, Mississippi. The second of three kids. His father a shoe salesman and his mother the daughter of a preacher. Williams lived a family life of turmoil. His family often engaged in violent arguments during his youth.

Williams got his first taste of fame in 1929 when he took third place in a national essay contest. Williams started college at the University of Missouri until his father forced him to quit and go to work for his fathers shoe factory. Later Williams returned to college in 1937 and where he resumed the writing of plays. Williams had two of his plays, Candles to the Sun and The Fugitive Kind, produced by Mummers of St. Louis, and in 1938. Williams graduated from the University of Iowa. Williams then went to Chicago in search of work, failing, he then moved to New Orleans and changed his name from Tom to Tennessee which was the state of his father's birth.

In 1939, the young playwright received a $1,000 Rockefeller Grant. In 1944, what many consider to be his best play, The Glass Menagerie, had a very successful run in Chicago, and a year later worked its way onto Broadway. People think that Williams used his own family relationships as plots for the play. The Glass Menagerie won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for best play of the season. Williams followed up his first major critical success with several other Broadway hits including such plays as A Streetcar Named Desire, Summer and Smoke, A Rose Tattoo, and Camino Real. He received his first Pulitzer Prize in 1948 for A Streetcar Named Desire, and reached an even larger world-wide audience in 1950 and 1951 when The Glass Menagerie and A Streetcar Named Desire were made into major motion pictures.

Late plays which were also made into motion pictures include Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, which he earned a second Pulitzer Prize in 1955. Williams struggled with depression throughout most of his life. For much of his life, he battled addictions to prescription drugs and alcohol. February 24, 1983, Tennessee Williams choked to death on a bottle cap at his New York City residence at the Hotel Elysee. He is buried in St. Louis, Missouri. Williams play, The Glass Menagerie, is about the Wingfeild family, the mother Amanda and here two children Tom and Laura.

Amanda has a life that is centered around finding a gentleman friend for her daughter Laura, a husband. Tom works in a shoe warehouse. Laura is crippled, she has one leg shorter than the other and lives a very insecure life and is afraid people will make fun of her. Laura has a collection of glass figures that she uses for an escape from reality, and also listens to the phonograph.

Laura quit college and didnt tell her mother for weeks because she was afraid that her mother would be upset, which she was. Laura went as far as to walk around St. Louis for eight hours a day, rather than admit to her mother she dropped out of Business College. Amanda criticizes Tom from everything from eating to how to wear his hair. Toms mother constantly is nagging at him to ask a gentleman caller to visit from the warehouse he works. Tom finally agrees to bring home a gentleman caller. Jim, the gentleman caller, is a man who went to high school with both Tom and Laura.

Laura had a crush on Jim long ago because he was nice to her back in high school. When Jim comes calling, Amanda is very persistent that Laura answers the door. Laura is very insecure with herself and doesnt want to go to the door, Laura pleads with her mother not to make her answer the door. At first Laura is still shy and gets sick before dinner, but later on her and Jim actually get to visiting some. They talk about when Jim called Laura Blue Roses back in high school. Jim listens to Laura memories of him from high school and uses those memories to give Laura the feeling that he thinks she needs.

Even though Laura is still a bit uneasy about the evening, Jim does begin to help her to build up her confidence about herself a little bit. When the horn breaks off of the unicorn while Jim and Laura are dancing, Laura picks it up and says Its just like all the others now. Jim explains that just because a thing or person looks a little different that it doesnt mean that every one actually sees it. Laura ends up giving the glass unicorn to Jim. Laura is feeling more confident about herself, because before the unicorn was her most valued piece of glass because it was different from all the others, and in this way reminded her of herself. Jim tells Amanda and Laura that he is engaged to be married.

Amanda seems to be more upset about the news of the engagement than Laura. She blames Tom for setting up a sick joke. Amanda calls Tom a selfish traitor, as always, Tom gets the blame for everything from his mother. Tom finally walks down the fire escape for the last time, to follow in his fathers footsteps. Each character in this play uses something to ease the pains of their lives. Amanda uses her children, or lives her life through them.

Amanda maybe wanted the gentleman caller more for herself more than for Laura. As she realizes that her husband had left her long ago and needed to have a man in her life to fill an empty gap. Tom uses the movies for his escape from his mother and the dreaded life his mother puts him through all the time. Amanda always blamed Tom for everything that seemed to go wrong. Amanda wanted Tom to feel guilty for having his own dreams of his own life.

Tom was made to feel responsible for Laura and was told that he couldnt leave until his sister had found a man and had a secure life of her own. Laura, with her glass collection, and her phonograph lived in a world of her own. She would hold and look through the glass unicorn rather than face the real world, she lived in a world of fantasy. Amanda husband, only just an image on the wall in the background evidently did escape into the world to be who he wanted to be. The entire play The Glass Menagerie was about people and how they dreamed. Each person with a different dream of their own, just as our own lives, looking for that great escape and running with it at the right time.

The play brought out every type of feeling a person could have. The hatred that Amanda seemed to pass out. Pity, because Laura was crippled and was so withdrawn because of it. The feeling of courage when Tom stood up to his mother and told her how he felt. Suspense when we knew a gentleman caller was about to arrive, who was he, what was he like Disappointment and disgust when Laura seemed to like Jim and felt comfortable around him and then to find out that he was engaged. Hope, that Tom could escape his mothers madness and that Laura would find a man so it would free Tom of the responsibilities his mother had put upon him.