The Glass Menagerie: Parent Siblings Relationships
The relationship between the single parent Amanda Wingfield and her two children is one of the central concerns of The Glass Menagerie. The same importance is placed on the relationship between parents and children, starting with Henry and Lila Wingo and their three children, but also spreading to the parent-siblings relationships that generally affects everyone's personal life without any possibility of escaping positive or negative effects. The relationship between Amanda, once a Southern belle who was extremely courted by "gentlemen callers" as she refers to them, is now a single parent with two grown children, who appear to be the main cause of her general disappointment. On a closer look however, the two socially inapt and extremely sensitive children, Tom and Laura, are the result of the tyranny of their mother. Thus, as it shall be seen, the narcissistic and egocentric Amanda is the one who has instilled the negative self-consciousness in her own children, by her constant preoccupation with herself and her own past. Amanda actually projects her own youthful image in Laura and that of her deserting husband in her son Tom. She lives incarcerated in her own self and her own past, and is only apparently preoccupied with the fut
But, the picture is shattered by the next phrase: "I do not know, however, when my mother and father began their long, dispiriting war against each other. He tells his daughter Lucy in all seriousness: "Don't listen to a thing your parents say. Amanda's behavior during the gentleman caller's visit is perhaps the most cogent example of how enclosed in her own identity she really is. It seems like the parent were not able to teach him this lesson neither by his father's toughness or love of justice nor by his mother's rich imagination and her teachings in the school offered by the generous natural environments in Melrose Island. in my father's footsteps, attempting to find in motion what was lost in space. !"2 At the end of the play however, Tom manages to escape (symbolically through the fire escape) and follow in the steps of his own father: "I left Saint Louis. The same way, a southern belle is living her imprint for ever on the personality of her three children, Pat Conroy's novel "The Prince of Tides,". The treatment is effective, the story teller assures us: "My father did not permit crimes against the land. "9 The almost idyllic image of Tom's family life from his childhood is too soon coming to an end. The succession of actions is destined to make the boy understand his guilt, suffer the consequences and be exposed to the public judgment.
Common topics in this essay:
Melrose Island,
O'Connor Amanda,
Tom Wingo,
Tom Laura,
Moelrose Island,
Selfishness Self,
Henry Wingo,
Saint Louis,
South Carolina,
Prince Tides,
own past,
family life,
melrose island,
glass menagerie,
gentlemen callers,
wingo family,
henry lila,
teach children,
preoccupation own,
southern belle,
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Acceptance Essays
