NOTES: THE GLASS MENAGERIE
1) Analyze Tom's role as narrator. If Tom's role as narrator didn't exist, how would the play be different? What is Williams trying to accomplish through this unrealistic device?
2) Who/what represents the poetic--transcendent forces in the play?
3) Who what represents the practical goal-oriented forces?
4)Provide a psychological portrait of Amanda.
5) Provide a psychological portrait of Laura.
6)Provide a psychological portrait of Tom.
7) Amanda refers to her religious unbringing several times. Comment on the religious symbolism in the play.
8) How does Laura's glass menagerie function as a perfect symbol and title for the play?
9) Why does Williams choose the Unicorn as the most important figurine in Laura's collection?
10) What is the significance of the Unicorn being shattered?
11) How does the Gentleman Caller scene -- when Laura and he are alone -- end up very differently from its beginning? How do the lights and music contribute to the meaning of this important scene?
12) Compare and contrast Menagerie to A Raisin in the Sun as "domestic family dramas."
13) What is Tom's dream and how is it shattered?
14) What is Amanda's dream and how is it shattered.
15) What is Laura's dream and how is it shattered?
16) Show how the play is a series of expectations followed by disappointments.
17) Mr. Wingfield - the absent father - is an important off-stage character. What function does he serve?
18) How are the Gentleman Caller and the Father similar?
19) What has Laura learned from her "date" with Jim? How has she grown up? Lost her innocence?
20) Amanda is a witch-like figure, a shrew. Defend her.
21) Tom leaves. In his conflict between responsibility and escape he chooses the latter. Assess his guilt/innocence at the end of the play? How harshly should he be judged? Did he make the right choice? The only choice?
22) Amanda lives in the past. Tom longs for the future. Laura escapes the present, and all the action is filtered through Tom's memory. What is the function of time in this play? Where does hope reside -- in the past, present or future? What comment is Williams suggesting about the passage of time?
23) Describe Jim as a Prince Charming failed.
24) Describe Jim as a emissary from the real world, a destroyer of fantasy, the knight/hunter who slays the unicorn.
25) Is Jim just an insensitive clod and a dupe? Both his actions and his words suggest as much.
26) What's the significance of Jim's night-school training in television, public speaking and electronics?
27) Mitch functions as a gentleman caller to Blance in Streetcar. Compare and contrast Mitch and Jim? How are they similar? Different?
28) Compare and contrast Streetcar and Menagerie thematically.
29) Provide a pessimistic reading for the end of the play.
30) Provide an optimistic reading?