Tennessee Williams uses several techniques to express social criticism in his play ‚The Glass Menagerie'. The genre of epic drama gives an appropriate foundation for the author to apply other and different techniques, which will be demonstrated with some examples in the following sections. They will be discussed in an order of how they could appear to the reader or spectator.
             In an epic drama the spectator is supposed to be an observer and not to identify him- or herself with any characters in the play. The purpose is to show a world view, therefore T.W.'s 'Glass Menagerie' is not to be seen as a family drama, but as the Wingfield family representing America in the 1930's.
             Tom Wingfield as epic narrator plays a very important role for this purpose, as he explicitly comments on the social situation.
             The epic narrator – Tom Wingfield
             Tom steps on stage and gives an introduction to the audience. But this introduction is not only about the setting of the play, but also contains criticism on american society in the time of the Great Depression already in his first few lines:
             I reverse it [time] to that quaint period, the thirties, when the huge middle class of America was matriculating in a school for the blind. Their eyes had failed them, or they had failed their eyes, and so they were having their fingers pressed forcibly down on the fiery Braille alphabet of a dissolving economy. (T.W., 234)
             In scene 5, page 265, narrator Tom again adresses the audience and gives a psychological explanation for America's craving for adventure.
             In this monologue, Tom tells about the behaviour of Americans who spend their nights at the Paradise Dance Hall. Who dance to music of 'slow and sensuous rhythm' and 'go outside to kiss':
             This was the compensation for lives that passed like mine, without any change or adventure. [...]
             But here there was only hot swing music and ...