INTERNATIONAL ISLAMIC UNIVERSITY MALAYSIA

DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE LITERATURE

ENGL 4360 AMERICAN LITERATURE II

First Assignment

Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie:

a Descriptive Analysis on The Most Significant Character

By Bambang Trisno Adi

9620371

For Dr. Jalaluddin Khan

Friday, 14 April 2000

All of us may share a common experience when we begin to discuss The Glass Menagerie. Sooner or later we will face the question "Whose play is it?". We will come across the question for it happens to be a very good one. Besides, it can allow us to get more insight into the play by figuring out the character who plays the most significant role in it. Discussing the matter leads one to speculate not only about the author's point of view but also about the meaning of the play itself (Presley 23). For this purpose, one may decide to analyse each and every character in the play, comparing one another to know who is the most significant one among them, without which the whole story will collapse. It is along this line that the writer develops this essay, assuming Tom Wingfield as the one who functions most significantly in the play.

First of all, relating the title of the play, The Glass Menagerie, to one of characters in it, expecting that it might be a kind of symbolic reference, one might consider Laura as the one to whom the play belongs. It is simply because Tom's narrative memory deals with his sister and her delicate collection of glass as well as how she is portrayed as psychologically too fragile as if she were those delicate animals who live in the state of confining inferiority complex.

On the other hand, one might, argue that the play belongs to Jim O'Connor, the gentleman caller, the character who momentarily transforms the Wingfield's apartment into a cheerful-looking place. He is the one who once brings light and sense of hope to "[r]ise and [s]hine", into the house that may be considered as metaphorically handicapped for the family has to survive and stand against difficulties in life in spite of irresponsible abundance of the father (Barriger 356).

However, the writer would not regard either one of the two characters as the most significant one in the play. So far as Laura as concerned, she is the one who is spoken of throughout the play without any active involvement from within herself. She is always the object of her mother's planned instruction. This is reasonable for she is physically and psychologically handicapped. In other words, she is of the passive characters. While the gentleman caller, Jim O'Connor, he may be considered as the minor character in the play. Though his presence is of significant elements in the play so far as the continuation of the plot is concerned, the minor action he performs would not suffice him being considered as the most significant character in the play.

Apart from that, more often than not, the answer comes swiftly: the play belongs to Amanda. This is because, perhaps, she seems to exercise her controlling power over her children even to the extent that one might consider her as authoritarian. And this is reasonable for early in the first scene she begins to give direction to both Tom and Laura as regard his eating behaviour and her performance to remain gracefully looking as her only lady:

AMANDA (calling): Tom?

TOM: Yes, Mother.

AMANDA: We can't say grace until you come to the table!

TOM: Coming, Mother.

AMANDA (to her son): Honey, don't push with your fingers…. And chew - chew! …. Eat food leisurely, son, and really enjoy it…. So chew your food and give your salivary glands a chance to function!….

AMANDA (rising): No, sister, no sister - you be the lady this time and I'll be the darky.

LAURA: I'm already up.

AMANDA: Resume your seat, little sister - I want you to stay fresh and pretty - for gentleman caller! (Barringer 350)

In addition, she may be considered to function as the instigator of action in the play. The role is obvious for it is Amanda who sends Laura to college to learn a marketable skill and to be exposed to active participation in social activities as well. Once the plan fails, she begins preparing for a gentleman caller - a potential husband - for Laura. It is Amanda who sends Tom off to work each day because his job is necessary for the family's economic survival, and thus he is the source of family income to which it depends on, at least until Laura is married. And finally it is Amanda Who badgers Tom throughout the play until he angrily "descend[s] the steps of [the] fire escape for a last time" (Barringer 384). Viewed form this perspective, Amanda has a menagerie comprising two children, one of whom manages to escape. Although she is a dominant personality, in this particular play one can make a case that another character plays the most significant role. Following this assumption, the writer proposes Tom as the most reasonable alternative as far as the most significant role played in the play is concerned.

Subsequently, the reason of considering Tom's role as the most significant in the play is simply because of its dual nature. In other words, it is because he is both the narrator and a major character at the same time. However, in spite of this dual role, remarkably Tom-as-narrator carefully maintains his distance from Tom-as-character. And therefore, if Tom were a character alone, there would be greater possibility to consider Amanda as playing the most significant role in the play. And because Tom functions as narrator, he establishes a relationship with his audience. He invites us into his memory of a past that is peculiar to him, a memory inhabited by characters named Amanda, Laura, Tom and Jim. These characters function in a world of imagery and meaning peculiar to Tom's imagination (Presley 25, Roudané 37).

As regard Tom's invitation, it is a clever one. Describing himself as a magician, he pricks the audience's imagination saying:

"Yes, I have tricks in my pocket, I have things in my sleeve. But I am the opposite of a stage magician. He gives you illusion that has appearance of truth. I give you truth in the pleasant disguise of illusion." (Barringer 349)

Immediately, we are forced to accept Tom's central role. He is our guide to life in lower middle-class St. Louis during the Great Depression. He even provides us with the necessary introductory description of the play as being a memory, and thus sentimental and non-realistic. Besides, prior to commencing the first scene, he tells us about the social and historical background of the play and a brief description of the characters in it as well as his dual role as the narrator and the character (Roudané 35). It is Tom's perspective as narrator that allows him to introduce and interpret the characters. For example, in the play, Tom's friend as the warehouse, Jim O'Connar, provides him with a way of keeping an agreement he made with his mother. But in his narration Tom explains how Jim, in spite of his own difficulties along the road of success, functions as a symbol of hope for the Wingfields. It is this same perspective that allows Tom to control his own self-protrayal. As narrator Tom makes Amanda the object of some clever lines. But the character Tom does not possess that sense of detachment. For example, at the end of the third scene, his ironic touch gives way to a heavy in a vicious argument with him mother, prompted by her refusal to believe that in fact goes to the movies as often as he claims:

"I'm going to opium dens! Yes, opium dens, dens of vice and criminal's hang-outs, Mother. I've joined the Hogan gang, I'm hired assassin, I carry a tommy-gun in violin case! I run a string of cat-houses in the Valley! They call me Killer, Killer Wingfield, I'm leading a double-life, a simple, honest warehouse worker by day, by night a dynamic czar of the underworld, Mother…. Oh I could tell you things to make you sleepless! My enemies plan to dynamite this place. They are going to blow us all sky-highsome night! I'll be glad, very happy, and so will you! You'll go up on a broomstick, over Blue Mountain with seventeen gentlemen callers! You ugly - babbling old - witch." (Barringer 357)

As if to underscore Tom's loss of control, Williams has him struggle to put on his overcoat and to hurl it in frustration against the shelf containing Laura's glass menagerie. The scene ends shortly after the mother's wounded comment saying: "I won't speak to you - until you apologize!"….(Barringer 357). Therefore, judging from this dual role played by Tom, one may alternatively consider him as the most significant character in the play.

Finally, having observed each character in the play, the writer would assert Tom as the one who plays the most significant role. Besides being a major character, he is also a narrator. It is Tom who stands between the audience and the action. It is Tom who provides a perspective that allows him to transcend limitations imposed by events onstage. Yet he is never completely detached. He shares with us a memory of his life that time cannot erase. Addressing his audience at perfectly timed moments, he deliberately reveals that his sleight of hand id no mere illusion. At the play's conclusion we realise that Tom has turned his memory into our own.

REFERENCE

Barringer, Milly S. Understanding Plays. 2nd ed. Boston: Allyn and Beacon, 1994.

Presley, Delma E. The Glass Menagerie: an American Memory. Boston: Twayne Pubblisher1990.

Roudané, Matthew C. ed. The Cambridge Companion to Tennessee Williams. Cambridge: Cambridge U.P. 1997.