The glass menagerie scene 5 Rating:
5,2/10
716
reviews
The Glass Menagerie
In Streetcar, paradise or Elysian Fields is tied up with sexuality and death; a dance hall is a dreaded place, where Blanche discovered her husband's homosexuality; and colored lights are used as a metaphor for sexual pleasure. Through the conventions of the stage, however, the dance hall is always just out of reach. Frightened her so it made her sick at the stomach. Tom asks Amanda not to expect too much of Laura, saying that Tom and Amanda see Laura's beauty because they know her and love her. Then he slowly sets the cup down and awkwardly and hesitantly rises from the chair.
Amanda urges Tom to stay until Laura has someone to take care of her. But for the characters living through the action of the play, the Paradise Dance Hall symbolizes hope. Amanda, for her part, is wearing a girlish dress kept from her youth. When I was a girl in Blue Mountain and it was suspected that a young man drank, the girl whose attentions he had been receiving, if any girl was, would sometimes speak to the minister of his church, or rather her father would if her father was living, and sort of feel him out on the young man's character. Tom blows on his coffee, glancing sidewise at his mother. Tom announces that there will be a gentleman caller: he has asked a nice young man from the warehouse to dinner.
It would be impossible to imagine either Tom or Laura dedicating themselves to a task with such complete zeal as does Amanda. Laura and Jim continue to converse, and are getting along stunningly. Self, self, self is all that you ever think of! Lawrence that she took back to the library because she refuses to have such a hideous book in her house. They reminisce a little, and the subject Laura's leg braces comes up. Amanda is thrilled, but Tom also tells her that the gentleman caller is arriving tomorrow evening. She believes that if Tom applies himself he will succeed; the idea of her children's success is an exhilarating one for her, and she becomes breathless just speaking about it. Amanda also asks Tom to promise that he will never be a drunkard.
More and more you remind me of your father! Tom explains that even though he left his family, his family never left him, and that he is haunted by their memory. Amanda is furious, and accuses Tom of knowing all along and playing a cruel joke on the family. Tom insists that he has been at the movies all night. The magician's most impressive trick becomes a symbol for what Tom wishes he could do - to make a clean, easy escape, without destroying the coffin or removing any nails. I didn't let on that we had dark ulterior motives. On a personal level, Paradise Dance Hall might symbolize more specific loss that Tom has experienced. And she knows that Amanda constantly worries about her.
They were waiting around the corner for all these kids. Further support for the argument that Tom is gay can be found by retrofitting Williams' later associations with these symbols into the earlier play. Tom tries to tell her that he doesn't hate her and that he understands her feelings. The magician's most impressive trick was to escape from a coffin without removing a single nail. It's her that started not speaking. The dress spurs memories of her youth, during which she spent all of her time going to parties and dancing.
Only animals have to satisfy instincts! There was a big stage show! Louis, but for now he can only escape through the illusions offered by the movie house and the stage magician. Amanda tells Jim that she should go spend time with Laura in the living room. Summary: As the church bell strikes five am, a drunken Tom stumbles home. Suspended in the mist over Berchtesgaden, caught in the folds of Chamberlain's umbrella. Tom finally warns Amanda that Mr. Amanda is pleased that Tom as finally found someone, but worried that she wont be able to make the apartment presentable in time. This and the unsteadiness of his advance make it evident that he has been drinking.
After each solemn boom of the bell in the tower, he shakes a little noise-maker or rattle as if to express the tiny spasm of man in contrast to the sustained power and dignity of the Almighty. Tom then prepares to leave to go to the movies. Well, I won't tell mine either. Analysis The first part of the scene uses the time setting to reinforce a sense of tension and expectation. Thus if Amanda is the type to look upon the novels of D. He smiled - the world was enchanted! Remembers she isn't speaking and returns to other room.
He's covered with freckles and hasn't too much of a now. We have to wear something, don't we? She refuses to allow Tom to refer to Laura as crippled. He works as a shipping clerk at the warehouse for eighty-five dollars a month twenty dollars more than Tom's monthly salary. I think that I've made that suggestion more than once. Adventure and change were imminent in this year.
The audience can also see Laura lying on a sofa in the living room trying not to cry. Williams' stage directions indicate that Amanda has done an excellent job making the little apartment ready for the big event. Any young man who studies public speaking is aiming to have an executive job some day! He gives her a rainbow colored scarf as a souvenir from the magic show. Tom recalls how the other works at the warehouse hadn't initially liked him because he was aloof and odd, but that Jim had helped the other men accept him. Amanda, overcome with emotion, tells her to wish for happiness and good fortune. He tells her that he is a shipping clerk at the warehouse who makes 20 more dollars a month than Tom himself. Tom turns to the audience and tells about the Paradise Dance Hall across the alley and how adventure was to be found in other parts of the world.
Make up with her, apologize, speak to her! When Laura expresses doubt that her brother could really have been at the movies all this time, Tom tells her about the length of the program and the magician that he went to see. There's so many things in my heart that I cannot describe to you! If you hadn't spoken I would have spoken to you. This news does not matter to Amanda, who is sure that Laura will dazzle Jim. When the sixth seen opens Tom is again addressing the audience. Tom delivers a speech to the audience about Paradise Dance Hall, across the alley from the Wingfield apartment.
