Research Paper on:
Memory Play Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie

Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
by Tennessee Williams serves to remind the audience of many things that are important to them. Throughout the play the feeling of escape is strong, and it is for good  reason. This story is primarily Toms story, his memories, his perspective, and his escape. As such, then, The Glass Menagerie can be called a memory play. A memory play is  one where the remembered events by one character or a set of characters serve as the framework for the rest of the play. But what is interesting is while Toms  memories are foremost, the memories that all of the characters possess come into the storyline as well. Toms mother remembers a time when she was somebody and Laura remembers a  time when she had a job and prospects. The play, in a nutshell tells the story of a man who is hopelessly trapped between a feeling of responsibility to  his family and who he knows/feels he may become. The family consists of Tom(who is the main narrator in the play), his sister, Laura, and their mother, Amanda. Their father  has abandoned them some many years before, and so it has fallen to Tom to become the central breadwinner for the family. Each family member is terribly dysfunctional and one  decides rather early on that each of them would be better off without the other to feed, fuel and nurture the dysfunction of their personalities. Tom Wingfield is a poet  by nature, but a cog in a wheel, so to speak, at a local factory. He works for the Continental Shoe Warehouse. Tom feels stifled because he cannot pursue his  desire of becoming a full time poet. After seeing Malvolio the Magician escape from a coffin without removing a nail, Tom is very impressed, and he believes it parallels his