1. “The Glass Menagerie” By: Tennessee Williams A look at the beginning of the play.

2. Setting up the Stage “The Wingfield apartment is…one of those vast hive-like conglomerations of cellular living units that flower as warty growths in overcrowded urban centers…and are symptomatic…of this largest and fundamentally enslaved section of American society…{they} exist and function as one interfused mass of automatism.” Why use scientific jargon to describe apartment buildings? What is the tone? Why?

4. Setting up the apartment: The living room doubles as Laura’s bedroom. What does this reveal to the audience without having to say it? “A blown up photograph of the father hangs on the wall of the living room…it is the face of a very handsome young man…he is gallantly smiling, ineluctable smiling, as if to say ‘I will be smiling forever.’” The father abandoned the family. Why keep his picture hanging in a prominent place? What about the smile on his face? What is its significance?

7. Screens: Imagine a screen in the background; at key moments, pictures and/or phrases come on to the screen that enhance the action of the moment. “Ou sont les neiges d’antan?” This is French for “Where are the snows of yesteryear?” It comes from the “Ballad of Ladies of Times Past,” a poem by French poet Francois Villon. When people use it, they are comparing the smallness of the present to the greatness of the past. Why does this fit when Amanda is recounting for her children her 17 beaux?

14. Dream-like Quality of Play is established in stage directions: “Memory takes a lot of poetic license. It omits some details; others are exaggerated, according to the emotional value of the article it touches, for memory is seated predominately in the heart.” “Eating is indicated by gestures without food or utensils…Tom deliberately lays his imaginary fork down…” “A shaft of very clear light is thrown on her face against the faded tapestry of the curtains.” “Her eyes lift, her face glows, her voice becomes rich and elegiac.” “There is a pause. A whisper of strings is heard.”

16. HRL Connections Scene 1: – Blindness: “Their eyes had failed them, or they had failed their eyes…”-Tom, pg. 5 – Flights of Fancy: “It’s you that make me rush through meals with your hawklike attention…” –Tom, pg. 6 “little birdlike women without any nest…” – Amanda, pg. 16 “I went to the art museum and the bird houses at the zoo…” –Laura, pg. 15

17. HRL Connections – Seasons: “Walking? Walking? In winter?” – Amanda, pg. 14 – Greek allusion: “He had the Midas touch, whatever he touch turned to gold” –Amanda, pg. 9 – Marked for Greatness: Amanda about Laura’s handicap: “Why, you’re not crippled, you just have a little defect-hardly noticeable, even!”

18. Symbols: Glass Menagerie and Victrola When the audience sees Laura on stage, she is either playing with her glass figurines or with the victrola (plays music). How are the glass figurines symbolic of Laura’s character? Tom says in his opening speech: “In memory everything seems to happen to music.” The Victrola was a relic from Laura’s father. When she is playing with her figurines or the victrola, what is Laura really doing?

19. Glass figurines

20. Victrola

21. Picasso Painting: Guernica (1937)