A Dysfunctional Family Essay

Families argon supposed to be in that location for to each one other and what have you. The families of straighta expression are more or less normal, but in the oblige The glass in Menagerie by Tennes ascertain Williams the Wingfield family is very dysfunctional. What makes this family dysfunctional are the fractions of it, such(prenominal) as Amanda, tomcat, and Laura. Amanda was a very talkative mother. Amanda Wingfield was how the book c eached her, A mid allot in woman of great but confused vitality clinging frantically to other time and place. (p. 5). This is very true on top of that Amanda was loquacious and forever bragging about how many gentleman callers she had. By doing this Amanda made her missy Laura pure tone bad. An example of such is One Sunday afternoon in Blue Mountain- your mother received seventeen gentleman callers Why, sometimes there werent chairs enough to accommodate them all. ( i, p. 26). turkey cock on the other fleet took care of his famil y. gobbler Wingfield was the man of the house because his founder had fallen in love with longsighted distance and he was caring for the girls. When Amanda gets in the way or tries to make things even more difficult for Tom he decides to go out to the movies or rather drinking. Tom finally flipped at Amanda one day and told her how he felt about her and the warehouse.He said, You intend Im in love with the Continental Shoemakers? You think I want to spend fifty-five years down there in that celotex interior With fluorescent tubes Look Id rather someone picked up a crowbar and battered out my brains than go derriere mornings I go Every time you come in yelling that Goddamn Rise and Shine Rise and Shine I hypothesize to myself How lucky dead people are But I get up. I go ( iii, p. 41). Laura coffin nailt truely handle all that much. Laura Wingfield is Amandas daughter. She is a very shy girl who does not take a well to meeting new people. Lauras problem is she has A chil dhood illness that has left her crippled, one leg slightly shorter than the other, and held in a brace. (p. 5). Laura was attending Rubicams Business College.Her mother had went to the business college to see how Laura was doing and to her surprise the teacher had told Amanda, Laura was not attending anymore. She told her mother she had gotten sick in front of all her classmates and couldnt go back so shes been All sorts of places mostly in the park. ( ii, p. 32). The Wingfield family just doesnt seemnormal. In conclusion, the Wingfield family is very dysfunctional in many ways. Each person in that family makes it that way too. Amanda notwithstanding living in the past, Tom always button to the movies, and Laura being crippled and shy. Some things heap be dealt with and some things cant. Everyone has their problems and the Wingfields are just more open about it.The core of The Glass Menagerie rests on the dysfunctional relationship of the Wingfield family and the distinctive qui rks that plague them. The matriarch, Amanda, is ineffective to move past the days of old with her memories of southern hospitality and perfect youth. Laura, the peculiar daughter, has such an extreme case of companionable anxiety that she rarely ventures from the house, mostly retreating into another realm with her glass collection. Tom is the more social son who also serves as narrator of the bring in. He prefers to use harshness and indifference to separate himself from the needy women in his liveness while utilise nighttime outings as a physical escape from the doldrums of look. Tom and Amanda, the two more domineering personalities, each have a uncommon way of reacting to their view of reality, and the subsequent effect of entrapment, and each attitude takes its possessor in a different direction. Tom is the seemingly normal member of the highly dysfunctional Wingfield clan.He holds down a decent though boring job to care for his mother and sister since their father h as been long gone. But Tom longs for a much more adventurous career than the one he presently occupies. His reality is one of obligation and frustration. When Tom tells his mother I give up all that I trance of doing and being ever it is orgasm from the remorse he feels over the family his life has taken (Williams 13). He views the reality of his father leaving as his own coming into the head of the household position and that road is not easily taken. Toms fathers absence traps Tom with a family who need him even though he longs to be anyplace but home. Once he has spoken these words, however, he promises to devalue the narrative by accomplishing new goals that will hopefully release him from his mothers grip. Toms opinion Ive got no thing no single thing in my life here that I can call my own shows that he feels out of control of his own life (Williams 25).The feeling that nothing is his leads him to use escapes like the movies, dance hall, and alcohol to work up his spirit s by temporarily making choices by himself forhimself. The movies represent a major escape Tom uses out front going it alone in the gentlemans gentleman. Viewing his life as an uncontrollable force causes him to attend a movie almost nightly and not return home until the proto(prenominal) hours of the morning. He believes he is getting a glimpse into the exciting real world that he wishes to be a part of but ultimately gets sick of all those glamorous people-having adventures-hogging it all, gobbling the whole thing up and makes the finding to move on from his demanding family into a life of journeys and exploration of the world (Williams 60). other means of escape for Tom that pushes him to leave the Wingfield apartment is the fact that he feels not one person understands him. He tells his family Theres so much in my heart that I cant let on to you (Williams 55).The pain Tom feels in not being able to verbally articulate his thoughts flows onto paper through poetry and other writing. In doing so he is able to alleviate some pressure but still comes to the decision to move on from his family. Tom reacts to the reality of a unappeasable mother, dull surroundings, and frustrating situations with escapes that take him out of the present and into a world filled with illusions. Amanda physically lives in the year 1937 but prefers to immerse herself in the memories from a seemingly pre-Civil War era. The abandonment of her husband years before continues to manifest itself into self-misery for Amanda and harsh actions onto her children. Even though she uses her nostalgia as a refutation mechanism it seems to only bring about bitterness about a life unlived especially when she exclaims, I could have been Mrs. Duncan J. Fitzhugh, mind you But I-I-picked your father (Williams 6). She prefers to relive her past as an escape from the present reality because it is so unbecoming to her.Amanda usually uses her runaway husband as an excuse to be a recluse into the pa st with remarks comparing her former suitors to her current match but instead of these statements jolting her into a realization about the low state of her life they simply continue to trap her in a cycle of unhappiness. This unhappiness causes her to then become impatient with her children, Tom and Laura a perfect example being a time when Amanda tells Laura she has so abash the family that she wanted to find a hole in the ground and report herself (Williams 45). These are harsh words for a daughter with little egoism and a son with even less motivation for life. It seems the only feelings she knows how to feel are ones of resentment and animosity which clearly rub offon both her children, although it different ways with Laura becoming emotionally weaker and Tom mentally distant. Amandas past life is not only visible in her mental state but also appears physically as well.When Laura sees her coming to the door from a womens meeting, She has on one of those cheap or imitation v elvety-looking cloth coats with imitation for collar. Her hat is five or sextuplet years old and she is clutching an enormous black patent-leather pocketbook with nickel clasps and initials (Williams 46). Although its unclear what is the fashionable style for the time period, the tone in which the transit is set clearly suggests Amanda being quite behind the times. Amandas straightforward wish is for a less stressful life than the one she antecedently occupies but her way of escaping her entrapment through daydreams and past experiences holds her back from ever achieving anything worthy or moving forward with her golden years.Every action taken by an individual incites a reaction from either themselves or another. Tennessee Williams play The Glass Menagerie is, therefore, realistic in the way it displays the struggles of its characters, Tom and Amanda. Although each person suffers from entrapment in their daily lives, they both handle themselves in drastically different ways. Re acting to the reality they believe exists causes each characters life to take a different turn. Tom prefers to drive himself to leave his family so as to escape his frustration while Amanda favors reliving the past to subdue the present