FREE ESSAY ON GLASS MENAGERIE

GLASS MENAGERIE

For centuries, men and women from all over the world have seen in America a place where
they could realize their dreams. We each dream our own American Dream. For some it is a
vision of material prosperity, for others it can be a feeling of secure and safe. It can
be the dream of setting goals. It can be about social justice, as Martin Luther King Jr.
gave the speech of ??I have a dream??, says ??In spite of the difficulties and
frustrations of the moment, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the
American Dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the
true meaning of its creed: ??We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are
created equal.????
We believe in the American Dream because it does not fit with any temporary
contentedness, rather it brings us the power for improvement and equality. However, why
does the American Dream still fall? The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, is
considered as the representative of the decline of the American Dream, can give us some
ideas of what it is about.
The Great Gatsby describes the failure of American Dream, from the point of view that
American political ideas conflict with actual conditions that exist. For whereas American
democracy is based on the idea of equality among people, the truth is that social
discrimination still exists and divisions among the classes cannot be overcome. Myrtle
Wilson??s attempt to break into the Buchanans fails at last. She struggles herself to fit
into an upper social group, pretends to be rich and scorns people from her own class. She
does all these because she wants to find a place for herself in Tom Buchanan??s class but
she does not succeed in doing so.
Nearly all the characters in the story are materialistic and this included Fitzgerald
himself. Fitzgerald mirrored his nation??s new attitude toward money: he was considerably
more interested in making and spending it than in accumulating it. This is exactly what
Tom and Daisy Buchanans are behaving. The roaring twenties is immortalized as a time of
entertainment ?V a glamorous movie stars and singers, high fashion, leisure activities,
numerous radio shows and parties. In ??Highlight of American Literature??, Dean Curry
writes: ??The Great Gatsby reflects Fitzgerald??s deeper knowledge, his recognition that
wanting to be happy does not insure one??s being so and that pursuit of entertainment may
only cover a lot of pain.??(182) Popular culture thrived in this decade because of the
need to escape. People wanted fun and absorbing kinds of things to take their minds off
the bleak world they saw around them. Basically, this dream world for most people, is to
get lost when problems are getting too big to handle. Fantasies serve a foundation for
all those who do not want to face the pressures of living in a modern world. 
Benjamin Franklin believed that the only way to true wealth was through hard work. He
also believed very strongly, that all people were created equal and had the same
opportunities available to them to achieve the American Dream. However, for our central
character, Jay Gatsby, this is not quite true. Gatsby tries very hard to transform
himself from James Gatz to Jay Gatsby, ??an Oxford man??. He wants to erase his history
but in the other side, he wants to ??repeat the past??. He attempts to delete his past
record because he does not want to involve in poverty anymore. However, on the other hand
he longs for the past because in the past, he had a love affair with Daisy. He knows that
he could not marry her because they are of different social class. He leaves her and
achieves his American Dream. Once he becomes rich, he moves to the opposite bay to
Daisy??s house just want to be near to Daisy. He holds extravagant parties, hoping he
could see her one day. He, himself, does not attend his parties but watches them from a
distance. Gatsby??s American Dream is not material possession. He only comes into riches
so that he can fulfil his true American Dream, Daisy. However, he fails to make his dream
to come true in the end. 
The failure of the American Dream is unavoidable, for reality cannot keep up with ideals,
but also because the ideals are in any case usually too fantastic to be realized. The
American Dream also criticizes that it is also time for idealists to wake up to reality.
When the crash of October 1929 ended the biggest speculative binge in the nation??s
history, it brought the roaring twenties to a close. The thirties, remembered as the
decade of economic depression, poverty and unemployment, is also the time our story ??The
Glass Menagerie?? by Tennessee Williams takes place. .
Williams presents us a story in The Glass Menagerie with four characters who seem to
avoid reality more than facing it. The four Wingfields, including the father, who
abandoned his family to join the merchant marine years before, are all mashed by poverty
and personal problems. Amanda has had to bring up two children alone. Tom's
shoe-warehouse job supports the whole family. Laura has been so perplexed by a leg-brace
throughout high school that she can neither endure secretarial school nor flirt with
boys. And she is truly terrified by the world outside that she believes it can never
include her. 
The play deals with issues and emotions that practically everyone has had to face:
Freedom towards the burden of responsibility; love to the family towards the need to live
your own life. Tom longs to leave home and make his own adventures. He hates his job in
the warehouse and spends most of his time working on poetry and escapes into movies. Tom
and Laura have a close relationship. He cannot leave like his father without regrets
because he is too devoted to Laura, who has been crippled both by physical disfigurement
and her own extreme shyness.
Laura is very shy and does not want to be involved with the world outside of their
apartment. She collects tiny glass animals, and she treasures them more than actually
participating in daily contact with the public. She is like a wounded animal, mirrors her
own fears of failure. Amanda, an erstwhile Southern belle, clings to the past, as she
constantly reminds Tom and Laura of her ??seventeen gentlemen callers??. Though Amanda
often retreats to memories of her past, she worries of the present situation. She insists
Tom should find Laura a husband before he abandons them, fearing that Laura will wind up
to be an ??old maid??. Although her own marriage brought her nothing but poverty, still
she believes a husband can be salvable for Laura.
In the story, we can see that the American Dream does not exist - Jim tries but the
Wingfields have almost given up on their lives. They avoid reality and are so involved in
their illusory world that they have no time to work on their goals. In the end, it
appears that Laura is finally overcoming her shyness, but as she knows Jim is engaged,
she returns back to her Victrola which is also the symbol of her fantasy world. Tom
determines to leave but he sticks too much to the past memory, especially his memories
with Laura. Jim is the only one in the story that faces reality. He believes in himself.
He knows that as he works hard, one day he will achieve great success. He said, Being
disappointed is one thing and being discouraged is another. I am disappointed but I'm not
discouraged. (116).
The Glass Menagerie is simple on its surface ?V it tells a single incident in the life of
a small family. It has no heroic characters like what we see in The Great Gatsby. The
poorly born characters in The Great Gatsby, such as James Gatz and Myrtle Wilson desire
to change and to go away from the ??valley of ashes??. Gatsby??s dream comes from his
past and he will sacrifice everything just for the accomplishment of his goals, while
Amanda, Laura and Tom are just too obsessed to their past events. 
Maybe we can conclude the decline of the American Dream by what Fitzgerald said in his
late life, ??France was a land, England a people, but America, having about it still the
quality of that idea, was harder to utter ?V it was the graves at Shiloh and the tired,
drawn, nervous faces of its great men, and the country boys dying in the Argonne for a
phrase that was empty before their bodies withered. It was a willingness of the heart.??