Contrasts within “The Glass Menagerie”

“The Glass Menagerie” is about an American home that strives for the American dream even though many conditions are set against them. Tom works at a warehouse in order to provide for his mother and sister because the father left them many years ago. Amanda is obsessed with her past and always has an inferiority complex because of it. Laura has pleurosis and is crippled because of it. This gives an inferiority complex as well and makes her a very shy girl. The play is set near The Great Depression so times are still hard. It is easy for the reader to see that the play is a big contrast representation. One critic listed many subjects that the play contrasted. Two of such examples were the dreamer and the doer, and fantasy and reality.
The play deals a lot with the concept of the dreamer and the doer. There were also all kinds of examples of both. In the play, the mother, Amanda, was stuck in a sort of dreamer state. It was like she wanted the world to be in a perfect state. She tried to make everyone else’s lives perfect by trying to manage them for them. The irony of this is that she was not making them perfect at all. Although Amanda may have thought that she was doing Tom and Laura a favor, she was actually making them worse. Tom had his own dreams while Laura had hers. It may have seemed like Amanda wanted certain things for her children, but in fact, she only did this because she regretted not having the things for herself. Amanda was obsessed with trying to find Laura a husband, but this obsession only existed because she was afraid that she would end up like herself-alone and depressed (an “old maid as she calls it”). She was also trying to force her will on her son as well. Tom worked at a factory making shoes all day. Obviously, this job would get old after a long period of time. Unfortunately, Tom did not have much of a choice since there was no one to take care of his mother and sister. So he often escaped his reality by going to the movies and watching how actors made their dreams come true. Tom also liked to drink. He did all these things just to get a break from life. Amanda thought that he was becoming more like his father which, once again, made her do silly things because she was obsessed with her past. Amanda was always just stuck on making things like they once were. Tom, on the other hand, was somewhat a combination of both a dreamer and a doer. He worked at a shoe factory to provide for his family. This is not exactly anybody’s idea of a dream. Tom was a dreamer in one sense; he always dreamed of joining the Union of Merchant Seamen. I believe that his way of living pushed him into not only dreaming of joining the Union, but also doing so. In the end, he somewhat ended up like his father and running away from his responsibilities.
There is also a lot of fantasy and reality tied into the play. Amanda attempts to live a fantasy by pretending to live like she did when her husband was still around. She tried so hard to make things like her fantasy that she sometimes ended up doing more harm than good. By pushing Laura to find a guy, she might have influenced Laura’s feelings of inferiority and timidness. Also her desire to keep her son around so he did not end up like his father might also have played a role in why Tom left in the first place. Tom even said in the story that her constant nagging is what makes him do the exact opposite just so he could get away from her. Maybe this is why the father left in the first place? Even after her husband left over fifteen years earlier, Amanda still could not learn that you cannot force people to obey your fantasy-that is just reality, which she could not get a grip on. Laura also lived in a fantasy. She was a cripple which made her very shy and also gave her a complex. She escaped her reality by taking refuge in her glass menagerie collection. When the unicorn’s horn broke off, I think it represented Laura’s desire to become just like everyone else. I think it also symbolized that Laura finally felt like a normal person now that she talked to her high school crush, Jim. I think that the fact that she gave the broken unicorn to Jim was a representation that he was the one who made her feel normal, just like the broken unicorn.
“The Glass Menagerie” is about the American dream and how it contrasted with reality; nobody was, is, or ever will be perfect. The play shows how the typical 1930’s family lived and what their lives were actually like. It showed how people wanted to be just how they wanted and how they dealt with it. Laura just wanted to be normal, Amanda wanted her old life back, and Tom wanted a new one. It all shows what people do and how they act to achieve dreams.