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The Glass Menagerie Research Paper

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Recommended: The glass menagerie strengths and weaknesses of the characters

In The Glass Menagerie, Tennessee portrays Laura Wingfield as a spineless young woman. Laura lives in a fictional world; a world created by her weak, undetermined, and unmotivated state-of-mind. Living in a fictitious world can prevent one from seeing the reality of life, this prevents Laura from being a true Romantic. Throughout the course of this research paper, readers will learn that Romanticism and symbolism, specifically the illusion of a glass soundproof wall; are depicted in The Glass Menagerie by Williams Tennessee, to describe why Laura is not a true Romantic—she is the epitome of a lost soul.
What is Romanticism? “It is an international artistic and philosophical movement that redefined the fundamental ways in which people in Western …show more content…

Louis. (Cardullo 76). “This physically, as well as emotionally, fragile woman of almost twenty-four escapes from her mid-twentieth-century urban predicament in St. Louis as someone of Romantic temperament would, through art and music.” (Cardullo 76). After reading The Glass Menagerie, the readers are able to argue that Laura’s fantasy world consists of her running away from the “real world.” Cardullo mentions that “the beauty of her glass menagerie and of the records she plays on her Victrola,” prevent her from waking up to the life and its reality. Therefore, readers are able to realize that Cardullo is attempting to inform the readers that Laura Wingfield is not a true Romantic—she is barely considered to be one. Cardullo also informs the readers that Laura loves nature; “a nature that is artfully memorized in her collection of little animals made out of glass…” (76). Laura’s collection of glass animals is a world that Laura chooses to live in, a world with not reality nor education. For instance, instead of attending Rubicam’s Business College, Laura “went daily to the art museum and the bird houses at the zoo.” (Cardullo 76). Cardullo is informing readers that Laura fragile state-of-mind traps her in her fictional world—preventing her from obtaining a higher

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In her memoir, The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls describes her unique childhood through motifs, complex symbolism, and progressive tones in order to demonstrate how one’s past positively influences their future. Throughout her writing, Jeannette implements the rhetorical device of a motif in order to demonstrate to her audience how the recurring themes affected her future. Beginning when Jeannette was only three years old and continuing into her time as an adult, the Walls family used the phrase, “doing the skedaddle” (10) to represent their need to move. Seeing as most children and families do not move as frequently as the Walls did, “doing the skedaddle” was their way of turning a normally tragic thing into something lighthearted, if not almost humorous.

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