One of the major themes I got from The Glass Menagerie is failed dreams. The mother Amanda is living in a failed dream. She constantly is talking about how she had many gentleman callers back when she was young yet the dream of having a wealthy loving husband is gone. She is single living with her two children in St. Louis and her husband has left them on their own. Many times the best of intentions in real life are failed. There are so many marriages that have ended in divorce that it is common place. According to http://www.divorcestatistics.org/ there is a 45-50 percent divorce rate on first marriages and even higher for second or third marriages.
Laura is another example of failed dreams. She seems to live in her own little world. She has such low self esteem she cannot even go to a typing class. But when the opportunity for a husband and future arises she is crushed. Jim, the man of her dreams, dances with her and even gives her a slight kiss and Laura thinks she is going to finally have a relationship, but her dream is crushed when Jim tells her he is engaged. Everyone experiences crushed dreams especially when we are young. Constantly as youth we are told we can be anything we want to be by adults. My cousin and I were certain we were going to become professional baseball players together for the Cleveland Indians and move our whole family to Hawaii. Eventually this reality and our dream was broken and we realized that was not realistic at all. Most of the time dreams are perceptions of reality that allow us to think certain things are possible, that’s why as a child you have many outlandish dreams and perceptions of reality that change. You believe in Santa Clause and the Tooth Fairy but someday you realize they are not real and for some kids that is a very sad day, their perception of reality has been truly altered. Just like Laura’s glass figurines symbolize the fragile alternate reality that Laura seems to live in and when Jim breaks her unicorn by accident it seems that Laura’s reality has been disturbed and she is jolted back into real life when Jim says she cannot have a relationship with her. She even says “ now it’s like all the other horses,” pg 86 line 8 this symbolizes to me Laura’s jolt back to reality because her reality is just like everyone else’s and her dream of marrying Jim is crushed.
I looked up the word menagerie since I had no idea what it meant and it was important since it was on the title and according to http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/menagerie menagerie means “a place where animals are kept and trained especially for exhibition.” I see the glass menagerie applying to the story because I see all the characters as different animals or “personalities” living together very fragilely and when things were shaken up with the Jim situation and all the different personalities clashed together the fragile glass holding them together shattered and Tom leaves and they are no longer live together.
The Catastrophe of Success I read as a one sided the grass is greener on the other side. Everyone wants to be successful but Tennesse Williams says success is awful. He says he became very depressed upon reaching success on page 100. In order to enjoy life there must be challenges contrary to popular belief. If you just sit around in a suite all day there is no fun in it. I agree with this because long breaks from school get very boring and sleeping in and going out at night just becomes ho hum. Although if I am at school doing lots of work just to stay slightly ahead of the curb working my butt off the weekends are amazing I like going out ten times as much and sleeping in seems all the more glorious. At the end of the writing Williams talks about how sick he is of bell hops maids and other lowly jobs just because he does not like that they are lower than him. I do not agree with him, what makes our nation so great is the Darwinism that takes place in it. The best will survive, you have to be successful, you have to work your way up and that’s motivation in itself for advancement. If everyone is the same what is going to motivate me to even get out of bed, what is the point of working when I will always be the same status as everyone else and I never work my way up in the world?
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This was a very good blog. The fact that you researched the divorce rate in America was pretty cool. I liked how you related Laura's glass menagarie into the fact that everyone in the story has different personalities and "fragile". I also liked how you talked about motivation and to work hard and how you disagreed with Tenessee Williams.
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