Glass menagerie performance content. Analysis of Tennessee Williams' play "The Glass Menagerie"
Location: An alleyway in St. Louis.
Part One: Waiting for a visitor.
Part Two: The visitor comes.
TIME: Now and in the past.
CHARACTERS
Amanda Wingfield (mother)
A small woman of enormous but erratic vitality, clinging furiously to another time and place. Her role must be carefully crafted, not copied from an established pattern. She's not paranoid, but her life is full of paranoia. There is much to admire in her; she is funny in many ways, but she can be loved and pitied. Of course, her stamina is akin to heroism, and although sometimes her stupidity unwittingly makes her cruel, tenderness is always visible in her weak soul.
Laura Wingfield (her daughter)
While Amanda, unable to find contact with reality, continues to live in the world of her illusions, Laura's situation is even more difficult. As a result of an illness in childhood, she was left crippled, one of her legs was somewhat shorter than the other, and she was wearing a bracelet. On the stage, it is enough to outline this defect only. As a result, Laura's aloofness reaches the point where she, like the piece of glass in her collection, becomes too fragile to live off the shelf.
Tom Wingfield (her son)
Also the narrator of the play. A poet who works in a store. By nature, he is not insensitive, but in order to get out of the trap, he is forced to act without pity.
Jim O'Connor (visitor)
An ordinary pleasant young man.
REMARKS FOR THE SETTING
Being a "memory play", The Glass Menagerie can be presented with a wide freedom of performance. Situational sketches and subtleties of direction play a particularly important role because of the extreme delicacy and insignificance of the narrative content itself. Expressionism and all other non-traditional dramatic devices have as their only goal an approximation to the truth. The use of unconventional devices in a play does not yet, or at least should not mean, an attempt to free oneself from the obligations of dealing with reality or interpreting experience. Rather, it is, or should be, an effort to find a closer approach, a more penetrating and living expression of things themselves. The play is uncomplicatedly realistic, with authentic Frigideir and real ice, characters who speak exactly as the audience speaks, fits the academic landscape, and has the same merit as a photograph. In our time, everyone must understand the unprincipledness of the photographic in art: that life, truth or reality are organic concepts that the poetic imagination can reproduce or offer in its essence only through transformation, through transformation into other forms different from those found in the phenomenon .
These remarks were not prepared as a preface only to this particular play. They concern the notion of a new plastic theater that should replace the exhausted theater of realistic traditions, if, of course, the theater should regain its vitality as part of our culture.
Screen device. There is only one significant difference between the original and staged versions of the play. This is the absence in the latest device, which I included as an experiment in the primary text. The device consisted of a screen onto which slides with images or titles were projected. I have no regrets that this device was removed from the original Broadway production. The extraordinary power of performance, characteristic of Miss Taylor, made it possible to simplify the material content of the play to the limit. But I think that some readers will be interested to know how this device was conceived. That is why I am attaching these comments to the published text. Images and writing projected onto the screen from behind fell on the section of wall between the front room and the dining area, which was little different from other rooms when not in use.
Their purpose is quite obvious - to emphasize certain values in each scene. In each scene, some thought (or thoughts) is structurally the most significant. The basic structure or thread of the story can easily escape the attention of the audience in an episodic play such as this one; the content may appear fragmented with a lack of architectural integrity. However, this is not so much a shortcoming of the play itself, but rather an insufficiently attentive perception by the viewer. The inscription or image that appears on the screen should reinforce the content that is already implicitly present in the text, and make it easier and easier to highlight the main idea than if the entire semantic load lay only on the characters' replicas. In addition to its structural purpose, the screen, I think, will introduce a positive emotional element, which is difficult to define, but whose role is no less important.
An imaginative producer or director can always find other uses for this device than those mentioned in this article. In fact, the possibilities of the device itself are much more extensive than the possibilities of its application in this particular play.
MUSIC. Another non-literary accent device in the play is music. The only recurring melody, "Glass Menagerie", appears at certain points in the play for emotional reinforcement. Like the music of a street circus, it appears in the distance, when you, being away from the passing orchestra, are most likely thinking of something else. In such an environment, it seems that it continues almost continuously, now intertwining, now disappearing from the absorbed consciousness; it is the lightest and most tender music in the world and perhaps the saddest. It reflects the superficial brightness of life, but with a touch of unchanging and inexpressible sadness underlying it. When you look at a delicate piece of glass, two things come to mind: how beautiful it is and how easily it can break. Both of these ideas must be woven into a recurring melody that comes and goes from the piece, as if carried by a fickle wind. This is the connecting thread and relationship between the narrator with his separate place in time and space, and the characters of his story. She appears between episodes as a return to emotional experiences and nostalgia - the defining conditions of the whole play. This is mainly Laura's music, and therefore the melody comes out most distinctly when attention is focused on it and on the beautiful fragility of glass, its prototype.
Tennessee Williams
glass menagerie
The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams (1944)
Characters
Amanda Wingfield - mother. This little woman has a great zest for life, but does not know how to live and desperately clings to the past and the distant. An actress must carefully create a character, and not be content with a ready-made type. She is by no means paranoid, but her life is full of paranoia. Amanda has a lot of attractive and a lot of funny, you can love and feel sorry for her. Long-suffering is undoubtedly characteristic of her, she is even capable of a kind of heroism, and although she is sometimes cruel out of thoughtlessness, tenderness lives in her soul.
Laura Wingfield - daughter. Having failed to establish contact with reality, Amanda holds on to illusions all the more. Laura's situation is much more serious. She suffered a serious illness in her childhood: one of her legs is slightly shorter than the other and requires special shoes - on stage this shortcoming should be barely noticeable. Hence her growing isolation, so that in the end she herself becomes like a glass figurine in her collection and cannot, due to excessive fragility, leave the shelf.
Tom Wingfield - Amanda's son and lead in the play. A poet who works in a shop. His conscience gnaws at him, but he is forced to act ruthlessly - otherwise he will not escape from the trap.
Jim O'Connor - guest. A sweet and humble young man.
Scene - street in St. Louis.
Time of action - Now and Then.
I have never seen such thin hands even in the rain ...
E. E. Cummings
The Glass Menagerie is a memory play, so it can be staged with a significant degree of rim in relation to accepted methods. Its thin, fragile material certainly presupposes skillful directing and the creation of an appropriate atmosphere. Expressionism and other conventional techniques in drama have one and only goal - to come as close as possible to the truth. When a playwright uses a conventional technique, he does not at all try, at least he should not do this, to relieve himself of the obligation to deal with reality, to explain human experience; on the contrary, he strives or should strive to find a way to express life as it is as truthfully, penetratingly and vividly as possible. A traditional realistic play with a real refrigerator and pieces of ice, with characters who express themselves in the same way as the viewer speaks, is the same as the landscape in academic painting, and has the same dubious merit - photographic similarity. By now, perhaps, everyone already knows that photographic similarity does not play an important role in art, that truth, life - in a word, reality - are a single whole, and poetic imagination can show this reality or capture its essential features only by transforming the external the shape of things.
These notes are not just a preface to this play. They put forward the concept of a new, plastic theatre, which must replace the exhausted means of external credibility, if we want the theater, as a part of our culture, to regain vitality.
Screen. There is only one essential difference between the original text of the play and its stage version: the latter does not have what I did experimentally in the original. I mean a screen onto which an image and inscriptions are projected with the help of a magic lantern. I do not regret that the screen is not being used in the current production on Broadway. Miss Taylor's amazing skill allowed the performance to be limited to the simplest accessories. However, I think some readers will be interested to know how the idea for the screen came about. Therefore, I restore this technique in the published text. The image and inscriptions are projected from the magic lantern, located backstage, onto the part of the partition between the front room and the dining room: at other times, this part should not stand out in any way.
The purpose of using the screen, I believe, is obvious - to emphasize the significance of this or that episode. In every scene there is a moment or moments that are most compositionally important. In a play that consists of separate episodes, in particular in The Glass Menagerie, the composition or story line can sometimes escape the audience, and then the impression of fragmentation, rather than strict architectonics, will appear. Moreover, the matter may not be so much in the play itself, but in the lack of attention from the audience. The inscription or image on the screen will strengthen the hint in the text, help to convey the desired idea contained in the remarks in an accessible, easy way. I think that in addition to the compositional function of the screen, its emotional impact is also important. Any imaginative director can find convenient moments to use the screen on their own, and not be limited to instructions in the text. It seems to me that the possibilities of this stage device are much wider than those used in this play.
Music. Another non-literary medium that is used in the play is music. The simple through melody of The Glass Menagerie emotionally emphasizes the corresponding episodes. You will hear such a melody in the circus, but not in the arena, not during the solemn march of the artists, but in the distance and when you think about something else. Then it seems endless, then it disappears, then it sounds again in the head, occupied with some thoughts, - the most cheerful, most tender and, perhaps, the saddest melody in the world. It expresses the apparent lightness of life, but it also contains a note of inescapable, inexpressible sadness. When you look at a bauble made of thin glass, you think how lovely it is and how easy it is to break. So it is with this endless melody - it either appears in the play, then subsides again, as if it is carried by a changeable breeze. She is like a thread that connects the presenter - he lives his life in time and space - and his story. It arises between scenes as a memory, as a regret about the past, without which there is no play. This melody belongs mainly to Laura and therefore sounds especially clear when the action focuses on her and on the graceful fragile figures that, as it were, embody her.
Lighting. The lighting in the play is conditional. The scene is seen as if in a haze of memories. A ray of light suddenly falls on the actor or on some object, leaving in the shadow what seems to be the center of the action. For example, Laura is not involved in Tom's quarrel with Amanda, but it is she who is flooded with clear light at this moment. The same applies to the dinner scene, when the silent figure of Laura on the sofa should remain the focus of the viewer's attention. The light falling on Laura is distinguished by a special chaste purity and resembles the light on ancient icons or on images of Madonnas. In general, in a play one can make extensive use of such lighting as we find in religious painting - for example, El Greco, where the figures seem to glow against a relatively foggy background. (This will also allow for more efficient use of the screen.) The free, imaginative use of light is very valuable, it can give static pieces movement and plasticity.
Picture one
The Wingfields live in one of those gigantic, multicellular hives that grow like growths in overcrowded urban areas populated by poor "middle class" people, and which characterize the desire of this largest and in fact the most indentured section of American society to avoid fluidity, differentiation and preserve the appearance and customs of a homogeneous mechanical mass. They enter the apartment from the alley, through the fire escape - there is some symbolic truth in the name itself, because these huge buildings are constantly engulfed in the slow flame of unquenchable human despair. The fire passage, that is, the platform itself and the stairs down, is part of the scenery.
The action of the play is the memories of a person, and therefore the setting is unrealistic. Memory is self-willed, like poetry. She does not care about some details, but others appear especially prominently. It all depends on what kind of emotional echo the event or object that the memory touches causes; the past is kept in the heart. That is why the interior is seen in a foggy poetic haze.
When the curtain rises, the viewer will see the dreary back wall of the building where the Wingfields live. On both sides of the building, which is located parallel to the ramp, are the gorges of two narrow dark alleys; they go deeper, lost among the tangled clotheslines, dustbins and ominous lattice heaps of adjacent stairs. It is through these alleys that the actors enter the stage or leave it during the action. By the end of Tom's introductory monologue, the interior of the Wingfields' apartment on the first floor will gradually begin to shine through the dark wall of the building.
It is, in essence, a memory. Tom Wingfield talks about the time - between the two wars - when he lived in St. Louis with his mother Amanda Wingfield - a woman endowed with great zest for life, but unable to adapt to the present and desperately clinging to the past, and her sister Laura - a dreamer who moved into childhood, a serious illness - one leg she remained slightly shorter than the other. Tom himself, a poet at heart, then served in a shoe store and suffered painfully, doing a hated business, and in the evenings he listened to endless stories of his mother about her life in the South, about the fans left there and other real and imaginary victories ...
Amanda eagerly awaits the children's success: Tom's promotion and Laura's favorable marriage. She does not want to see how her son hates his work and how timid and unsociable her daughter is. The mother's attempt to arrange Laura for typing courses fails - the girl's hands are shaking so much from fear and nervous tension that she cannot hit the right key. She is only happy at home, when she is fiddling with her collection of glass animals. After the failure of the courses, Amanda becomes even more obsessed with Laura's marriage. At the same time, she tries to influence her son - she tries to control his reading: she is convinced that the novels of Lawrence - her son's favorite writer - are too dirty. Amanda also finds Tom's habit of spending almost all his free evenings at the movies strange. For him, these trips are a way to escape from the monotonous everyday life, the only outlet is like a glass menagerie for his sister.
Having chosen the right moment, Amanda snatches a promise from Tom to bring into the house and introduce some decent young man to Laura. Some time later, Tom invites his colleague Jim O'Connor to dinner, the only person in the store with whom he is on friendly footing. Laura and Jim went to the same school, but Jim is surprised that she is Tom's sister. Laura, still a schoolgirl, was in love with Jim, who was always in the center of everyone's attention - he shone in basketball, led a debating club, sang in school productions. For Laura to see this prince of her girlish dreams again is a real shock. While shaking his hand, she nearly passes out and quickly disappears into her room. Soon, under a plausible pretext, Amanda sends Jim to her. The young man does not recognize Laura, and she herself has to reveal to him that they have known each other for a long time. Jim has a hard time remembering the girl he nicknamed Blue Rose at school. This nice, benevolent young man did not succeed in life as much as he promised in his school years. True, he does not lose hope and continues to make plans. Laura gradually calms down - with his sincere, interested tone, Jim relieves her nervous tension, and she gradually begins to talk to him like an old friend.
Jim cannot help but see the girl's terrible insecurities. He tries to help, convinces her that her lameness is not at all conspicuous - no one at school even noticed that she was wearing special shoes. People are not evil at all, he tries to explain to Laura, especially when you get to know them better. Almost everyone has something that doesn’t go well - it’s not good to consider yourself the worst of everyone. In his opinion, Laura's main problem lies in the fact that she drove it into her head: only she is doing badly ...
Laura asks about a girl Jim dated at school who was said to be engaged. Upon learning that there was no wedding and Jim has not seen her for a long time, Laura blossoms all over. It is felt that a timid hope arose in her soul. She shows Jim her collection of glass figurines, the ultimate sign of trust. Among the little animals, a unicorn stands out - an extinct animal, unlike anyone else. Jim notices him immediately. Tom, probably, is it boring to stand on the same shelf with ordinary animals like glass horses?
Through the open window from the restaurant opposite, the sounds of a waltz are heard. Jim invites Laura to dance, she refuses - she is afraid that she will crush his leg. “But I'm not made of glass,” Jim says with a laugh. In the dance, they nevertheless run into the table, and the unicorn, forgotten there, falls. Now he is the same as everyone else: his horn has broken off.
Jim tells Laura with feeling that she is an extraordinary girl, unlike anyone else - just like her unicorn. She is beautiful, She has a sense of humor. People like her are one in a thousand. In a word, Blue Rose. Jim kisses Laura - enlightened and frightened, she sits on the sofa. However, she misinterpreted this movement of the young man's soul: the kiss is just a sign of Jim's tender participation in the fate of the girl, and also an attempt to make her believe in herself.
However, after seeing Laura's reaction, Jim gets scared and rushes to reveal that he has a fiancée. But Laura must believe that everything will be fine with her too. You just need to overcome your complexes. Jim continues to utter typical American platitudes like “man is the master of his own destiny”, etc., not noticing that an expression of infinite sadness appears on Laura's face, which had just radiated a divine radiance. She hands Jim the unicorn as a memento of the evening and her.
The appearance of Amanda in the room looks like a clear dissonance to everything that is happening here: she is playing playfully and is almost sure that the groom is on the hook. However, Jim quickly clarifies and, having said that he must hurry - he still needs to meet his bride at the station, he bows and leaves. Before the door closes behind him, Amanda explodes and makes a scene for her son: what was this dinner and all the expenses for if the young man is busy? For Tom, this scandal is the last straw. Having quit his job, he leaves home and embarks on a journey.
In the epilogue, Tom says that he will never be able to forget his sister: "I did not know that I was so devoted to you that I could not betray." In his imagination, a beautiful image of Laura appears, blowing out a candle before going to bed. "Goodbye, Laura," Tom says sadly.
retold
Tennessee Williams
glass menagerie
The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams (1944)
Characters
Amanda Wingfield - mother. This little woman has a great zest for life, but does not know how to live and desperately clings to the past and the distant. An actress must carefully create a character, and not be content with a ready-made type. She is by no means paranoid, but her life is full of paranoia. Amanda has a lot of attractive and a lot of funny, you can love and feel sorry for her. Long-suffering is undoubtedly characteristic of her, she is even capable of a kind of heroism, and although she is sometimes cruel out of thoughtlessness, tenderness lives in her soul.
Laura Wingfield - daughter. Having failed to establish contact with reality, Amanda holds on to illusions all the more. Laura's situation is much more serious. She suffered a serious illness in her childhood: one of her legs is slightly shorter than the other and requires special shoes - on stage this shortcoming should be barely noticeable. Hence her growing isolation, so that in the end she herself becomes like a glass figurine in her collection and cannot, due to excessive fragility, leave the shelf.
Tom Wingfield - Amanda's son and lead in the play. A poet who works in a shop. His conscience gnaws at him, but he is forced to act ruthlessly - otherwise he will not escape from the trap.
Jim O'Connor - guest. A sweet and humble young man.
Scene - street in St. Louis.
Time of action - Now and Then.
I have never seen such thin hands even in the rain ...
E. E. Cummings
The Glass Menagerie is a memory play, so it can be staged with a significant degree of rim in relation to accepted methods. Its thin, fragile material certainly presupposes skillful directing and the creation of an appropriate atmosphere. Expressionism and other conventional techniques in drama have one and only goal - to come as close as possible to the truth. When a playwright uses a conventional technique, he does not at all try, at least he should not do this, to relieve himself of the obligation to deal with reality, to explain human experience; on the contrary, he strives or should strive to find a way to express life as it is as truthfully, penetratingly and vividly as possible. A traditional realistic play with a real refrigerator and pieces of ice, with characters who express themselves in the same way as the viewer speaks, is the same as the landscape in academic painting, and has the same dubious merit - photographic similarity. By now, perhaps, everyone already knows that photographic similarity does not play an important role in art, that truth, life - in a word, reality - are a single whole, and poetic imagination can show this reality or capture its essential features only by transforming the external the shape of things.
These notes are not just a preface to this play. They put forward the concept of a new, plastic theatre, which must replace the exhausted means of external credibility, if we want the theater, as a part of our culture, to regain vitality.
Screen. There is only one essential difference between the original text of the play and its stage version: the latter does not have what I did experimentally in the original. I mean a screen onto which an image and inscriptions are projected with the help of a magic lantern. I do not regret that the screen is not being used in the current production on Broadway. Miss Taylor's amazing skill allowed the performance to be limited to the simplest accessories. However, I think some readers will be interested to know how the idea for the screen came about. Therefore, I restore this technique in the published text. The image and inscriptions are projected from the magic lantern, located backstage, onto the part of the partition between the front room and the dining room: at other times, this part should not stand out in any way.
The purpose of using the screen, I believe, is obvious - to emphasize the significance of this or that episode. In every scene there is a moment or moments that are most compositionally important. In a play that consists of separate episodes, in particular in The Glass Menagerie, the composition or story line can sometimes escape the audience, and then the impression of fragmentation, rather than strict architectonics, will appear. Moreover, the matter may not be so much in the play itself, but in the lack of attention from the audience. The inscription or image on the screen will strengthen the hint in the text, help to convey the desired idea contained in the remarks in an accessible, easy way. I think that in addition to the compositional function of the screen, its emotional impact is also important. Any imaginative director can find convenient moments to use the screen on their own, and not be limited to instructions in the text. It seems to me that the possibilities of this stage device are much wider than those used in this play.
Music. Another non-literary medium that is used in the play is music. The simple through melody of The Glass Menagerie emotionally emphasizes the corresponding episodes. You will hear such a melody in the circus, but not in the arena, not during the solemn march of the artists, but in the distance and when you think about something else. Then it seems endless, then it disappears, then it sounds again in the head, occupied with some thoughts, - the most cheerful, most tender and, perhaps, the saddest melody in the world. It expresses the apparent lightness of life, but it also contains a note of inescapable, inexpressible sadness. When you look at a bauble made of thin glass, you think how lovely it is and how easy it is to break. So it is with this endless melody - it either appears in the play, then subsides again, as if it is carried by a changeable breeze. She is like a thread that connects the presenter - he lives his life in time and space - and his story. It arises between scenes as a memory, as a regret about the past, without which there is no play. This melody belongs mainly to Laura and therefore sounds especially clear when the action focuses on her and on the graceful fragile figures that, as it were, embody her.
Lighting. The lighting in the play is conditional. The scene is seen as if in a haze of memories. A ray of light suddenly falls on the actor or on some object, leaving in the shadow what seems to be the center of the action. For example, Laura is not involved in Tom's quarrel with Amanda, but it is she who is flooded with clear light at this moment. The same applies to the dinner scene, when the silent figure of Laura on the sofa should remain the focus of the viewer's attention. The light falling on Laura is distinguished by a special chaste purity and resembles the light on ancient icons or on images of Madonnas. In general, in a play one can make extensive use of such lighting as we find in religious painting - for example, El Greco, where the figures seem to glow against a relatively foggy background. (This will also allow for more efficient use of the screen.) The free, imaginative use of light is very valuable, it can give static pieces movement and plasticity.
Color, elegance, lightness, skilful change of mise-en-scenes, quick interaction of living people, whimsical, like a pattern of lightning in clouds - this is what makes up the play ... I am a romantic, an incorrigible romantic.
T. Williams
Tennessee Williams is the greatest playwright of the post-war era, one of the brightest figures not only in the American but also in the world stage of the second half of the last century. An artist of an original style, an innovator, he is a theorist and practitioner of what has been called plastic theatre.
Start: "Clash of Angels"
The real name of the playwright is Thomas Lanier. He took the pseudonym Tennessee, apparently changing the name of the English Victorian poet Alfred Tennyson. Williams was born (1911 - 1983) in the small town of Columbus in southern Mississippi. The writer's family was proud of their aristocratic (mother was an aristocratic) "southern" roots, but became impoverished. Nostalgic sentiments about the former greatness of the South were strong in the family. Later the motive unfulfilled illusions, unfulfilled dreams , contrasting with rough prosaic reality, will largely determine the atmosphere of the theater of T. Williams, an artist consonant with the style southern school.
T. Williams showed his literary inclinations early: the first attempt at writing was at the age of 14. He wrote poetry and prose. But fame came to Williams when he was already over thirty.
In 1929, he began studying at the University of Missouri, then his studies were interrupted at the request of his father by serving as a petty clerk in a shoe company. After a hateful job, he devoted his evening and night hours to writing. The playwright's debut was the play "Battle of the Angels" "(1940), which was not successful. But he did not leave the dream of the theater. For several years, the novice writer was forced to roam around the country, visited Chicago, New Orleans, New York, San Francisco.
"Glass menagerie": a play-memory
Fame began with a triumphal procession through the stages of the world of Williams' drama " Glass Menagerie" (1944), awarded a series of prestigious awards. It marked a shift in the emphasis of American dramaturgy: in contrast to the plays of the "Red Decade" with their attention to social issues, T. Williams immerses the viewer in the area of subtle spiritual movements, purely family problems.
The playwright called her memory play. It is built on nuances, hints, and this is achieved by special design, use of the screen, music and lighting. Her uncomplicated plot: an episode from the life of an ordinary, average American family Whitfields. Her theme: a mother's failed attempt to find the groom's daughter. family of three: mother amanda, son Volume and daughter Laura live in a modest home in St. Louis. The events are built like a chain of memories of Tom, the hero-narrator. The mother is worried about her daughter's disorder: Laura has been limping since childhood and wears a prosthesis. The father left the family a long time ago.
In the description of Amanda, Williams combined psychologism with the grotesque, subtle humor. Amanda lives in a world of illusions. She is all in the past, immersed in that unforgettable time when her youth passed in the South. There she was surrounded by "real" ladies and gentlemen, fans, who in fact are the fruit of her imagination. An incorrigible dreamer, she believed in worthy prospects for her children.
Tom is also from the breed of visionaries. He works at a shoe company, bored with mediocre work. He tries to write, spends evenings in cinema halls, cherishes the dream of becoming a sailor.
The main event in the play is a visit to the house Jim O'Connor friend and colleague of Tom. His arrival is an occasion for Amanda to dream about Laura's matrimonial prospects. Burdened with physical inferiority, the daughter also indulges in hope. She collects glass animals. They are the main artistic symbol of the play: fragile figures of human loneliness and the ephemeral nature of life's illusions. It turns out that Laura knew Jim in high school and that he is the object of her secret hopes. Jim is politely friendly. Inspired by his graciousness, Laura shows him her "menagerie" and her favorite toy, a unicorn figurine. When Jim tries to teach Laura how to dance, they awkwardly hit a piece of glass. She falls to the floor and breaks. Jim, wanting to cheer up Laura, recalls that at school she was called the Blue Rose for being different from others. He calls her sweet and even tries to kiss her, but then, afraid of his own impulse, he hurries to leave the Wingfield house. Jim explains that he won't be able to come anymore because he has a girlfriend. He is engaged and is going to marry her.
Amanda's matrimonial plan fails. Mother brings down reproaches on Tom, who invited a "not free" man as a guest. After a harsh explanation with his mother, Tom leaves the house.
"The Glass Menagerie" is a play about human loneliness, about "runaway" people and the unrealizability of illusions colliding with reality. Revealing the touching defenselessness of the characters, Williams is filled with sympathy for them.
