second draft TGM essay

Ivan Kapkov

IB Literature & Performance

Ms. Guarino

                                                           Literature as the core of Culture.

The Glass Menagerie is a memory play written by Tennessee Williams in 1944 as his second biggest success, and its action is drawn from the memories of the narrator, Tom Wingfield. Tom is a character in the play, which is set in St. Louis in 1937. His dream job is to be a poet who travels around the world and try new thing and new perspectives, but in the real world, he toils in a shoe warehouse to financially support his mother, Amanda, and sister, Laura. Mr Wingfield, Tom’s and Laura’s father, ran away years ago and, except for one postcard, has not been heard from since. The major problem in the family is the conflicts between Tom and his mother Amanda, fights created by them produce consequences that output influence on family members. Tom decided to leave his family like his dad did. Years later, though he travels far, he finds that he is unable to leave behind guilty memories of his sister Laura.

   

The scene that I chose to enact is act I scene III, the climax that starts with a conflict between Tom and his mother Amanda, conflict based on the argument about freedom that Tom is so thirsty to have but Amanda doesn't let him have it, the second argument is based on a book by D. H. Lawrence that Amanda took back to the library because she refuses to have  "BUT I WON'T ALLOW SUCH FILTH BROUGHT INTO MY HOUSE ! NO, no, no, no, no !". Tom reminds her that he is the one who works and pays the rent on the house. Tom then prepares to leave to go to the movies. Amanda screams at him that he can't stay out late at night and still do a good day's work. Tom reminds her how much he hates his job and being there. When Amanda accuses Tom of doing something he is ashamed of every night and accuses him of lying about going to the movies every night “ I don't believe that you go every night to the movies. Nobody goes to the movies night after night. Nobody in their right mind goes to the movies as often as you pretend to. Come in stumbling. Muttering to yourself like a maniac!”, Tom becomes infuriated and tells his mother a fantastic tale and ends by calling her an "ugly — babbling — witch." the scene Tom tries to get his coat on and in his rapid struggle to leave, he throws his coat against the wall and shatters some of Laura's glass menagerie, Amanda aggressive tells him that she won’t talk to him until he apologises. The scenes end with Tom coming back to the house after a long night and having a conversation with his sister Laura.

  

The main theme of this play is the relationship between family members that constantly gets on the way between Tom and Amanda shown a fight between Tom and Amanda. Tom hates his job in a shoe warehouse “ You think I want to spend fifty-five years down there. I'd rather somebody battered out my brains out! ”, he doesn't have any interests in that except he must support his mother, and his sister financially. Amanda doesn’t realise that Tom doesn't want to spend all his life working in the warehouse and living in the same house together for the rest of his life. Tom’s dream is to be a poet as well as travel around the world learning new things and observing the real world. On the other hand, it’s hard for him to leave the family because of his sister Laura that he loves so much and does everything, helping her physically as well as mentally. Eventually, Tom must leave the house by making his mother Amanda mad and breaking one of Laura's managers as a resolution of Amanda and Toms fight.

Amanda's dialogue “ rise and shine, straighten your back and here’s your coffee. Would you like anything else” creates the scene conflict. Constantly repeating this sentence Amanda aroused the anger inside Tom that he has been holding for a long time, what produces another fight. “ Rise and shine, straighten your back and here’s your coffee. Would you like anything else” this two sentence couldn’t make him angry, what made him get into argument with Amanda was the anger that was inside of him. This fight was the last fight for Tom when he understood he has to leave in order to continue following his dream and create his own life. Throughout the play we can see the little arguments that Amanda and Tom get to, eventually, it will affect them emotionally and mentally. The reason Tom left at the end wasn’t his mom or job it was him and his mental condition, Tom couldn't stand his home, conflicts with his mother, and other obstacles on his way.

The major and interesting fact about this scene is the literary devices and keywords that embrace the structure of the play that author uses to highlight the conflict that eventually causes the broken feelings of Laura and Tom. Amanda's sentence “ Come in stumbling. Muttering to yourself like a maniac! You get three hours' of sleep and then go to work. Oh, I can picture the way you're doing down there. “ this combination of sentences reveals her responsibility to make Tom stop going to bars and clubs. Tom’s killing sentence “ And You'll go up, upon a broomstick, over Blue Mountain with seventeen gentlemen callers! You ugly - babbling old - witch.  “ embraced the emotions and anger that he has been holding inside of him for a long time. The literary devices and keywords in this scene help reader to understand and feel the emotion that characters create and express.

My character Amanda Laura's and Tom's mother, a person with big heart and big vocabulary storage. Amanda is a mother who really cares about her kids and wants them to succeed and have financial stability by making her son Tom work in a warehouse, what eventually creates most of the conflicts because it's something that he is not passionate about. Amanda also looks into the future, making what she calls "plans and provisions," trying to make decisions for her children. She refuses to accept the fact that Tom has a different personality from her and that he acts more like his father, and someday he will leave in search of adventures. Amanda’s biggest dream is to find the man of colours for Laura who is old enough to get married. The main problem that Amanda refuses to acknowledge that Laura is crippled and instead refers to her injury as only a slight physical defect. She doesn’t want to accept the fact that Laura is different and she can not stand the outside world and it’s difficult for her to communicate with people. It would be easy for me to blame Amanda for her ridiculously stereotyped projections of gender roles, and the way she forces certain plans of the future onto her children. But, honestly, she is a great woman who has a point. Both Laura and Tom needs a plan. Tom does need to support them or they will starve. Laura is old enough to understand what she has to do for her future life. Finally, Amanda was raised in the South in the early 1900s, so we can’t blame her for her habits.

 This project introduced me to that hard work that constantly requires changes in the script and getting confused with your lines, being nerves before, after, and during the performance. Another lesson that I've learned from my unfortunately unsuccessful performance is how hard it is to be on the stage and perform in front of the audience. It was really hard to show the audience that you’re a part of the character that you are playing, and that you can manage to connect to the scene. After this experience of performing in front of my class that contains only ten people and struggling with doing that, I can not imagine how a professional  actor can be so confident and calm  where you’re constantly judged, critiqued, however, you want to classify and manage to perform at the top level; this example made me judge myself for the mistakes that I did during the performance, in fact, it showed me how desperate you must be to make a successful performance that will show the true work that you put in during the rehearsals.

During this project, I and my teammates spend a lot of time reviewing the scene and adding new material to what we already had. During the rehearsals, we were practising our lines as a group as well as an individual. From the beginning of the project, I knew this will take a lot of time to memorize as well as practise facial expressions and body movements. In my opinion, the final performance did not reflect on my progress, because of the poor performance that I presented. The final outcome would've been interesting to watch for the audience and to experience for me and my team but we did not produce the final piece the way we expected. This project showed me the hard work that you have to put in any projects in order to succeed, it was a great experience that I will constantly remember in order to improve my future projects.

The best way to bring up the theme of this scene is by looking at the characteristics of Tom and Amanda's performance. Each of them had a tait itself delivered theme to the audience. Amanda's lack of acceptance towards the circumstances shown by her behaviour and dialogues symbolises her willingness to confront reality. On the other hand, Tom’s emotions and sudden break down symbolizes his moment of selfishness. By expressing their emotions in tone and body movements, Amanda and Tom were able to show the audience the theme.