Glass Menagerie Flashcards
Para text on Amanda
She is not paranoic, but her life is paranoia
Clinging frantically to another place and time
Para text on Laura
Defect need not be more than suggested
Like a piece of her own glass collection, too exquisitely fragile to move form the shelf
Para text on Tom
A poet with a job in a warehouse
And the narrator of the play
The Wingfield Apartment
Pg3 Hive like conglomeration of cellular living units that flower as warty growth
Pg3 flanked on both sides by dark narrow alley
Stage commentary on US populace and apartments
Pg3 Exist and function as one interfused mass of automatism
Pg3 Burning with the slow and implacable fires of human desperation
Appearance of Jim O’Connor as defined by paratext and Tom
Pg5 Most realistic…an emissry from a world of reality
A nice, ordinary, young man
Tom’s father
Pg5 Larger-than-life size photograph
Pg5 Hello-Goodbye
The play’s point of attack ON STAGE
Pg5 “eating…indicated by gestures without food or utensils
In ultima res
Tom and Amanda clash at the dinner table
Pg6 hawklike attention to every bite I take
Pg8 She addresses Tom as though he were seated in the vacant chair…he plays the scene as though reading from a script
Amanda recalls her gentlemen callers
Pg8 Tom motions for music and a spot of light on Amanda
Pg7 One Sunday afternoon in Blue Mountain
Pg8 prominent young planters…Sons of planters
Pg8 drowned in Moon Lake…shot it out on the floor of Moon Lake Casino
Pg9 He had the Midas touch
Laura’s presentation when Amanda come back from DRA
Pg10 “screen is lighted with the image of blue roses”
Pg10 seated in the delicate ivory chair at the small clawfoot table
Stage direction when Laura and Amanda confront each other
Pg10 Amanda appears on the fire-escape steps
Pg 11 Laura [shakily] [faintly]
pg11Laura: Why are you —
Why? Why?
Laura’s wagging activities
Pg13 “walking…in the park…art museum…bird house at the Zoo…glass house where they raise tropical flowers
Motif of victrola
Pg13 [She crosses to the victrola and winds it up]
A: What are you doing?
L: Oh! [Sbe releases the handel and returns to her seat]
pg52 Upon Jims arrival”Laura turn on the victrola”
Motif of fire escape
Pg17 Tom speaks from the fire escape landing
A fire escape is a poor excuse for a porch
The second description of Jim by Tom himself
Pg17 archetype of the universal unconscious, the image of the gentleman caller haunted our small apartment
Pg17 this image, this spectre, this hope
Pg17 Screen image: a young man at the door of a house with flowers
Amanda’s mentioning of Gone With the Wind
It’s the Gone with the Wind of the post-World-War
Tom complaining about his factory life when arguing with Amanda
Pg21 I give up all that I dream of doing and being ever
Pg21 if self is what I thought of I’d be where he is - GONE!
Tom and Amanda arguing
Pg20 A: You come right back in —
T: Out, out, out! Because I’m—
A: Come back here —
Motif of artificial light surrounding Tom
Pg21 in that coltex interior! With - fluorescent- tubes
Tom’s isolation from his labour
Pg21 You think I’m crazy about the warehouse? You think I’m in love with the Continental Shoemakers?…coltex interor
Pg21 Yes, opium dens, dens of vice and criminal’s hangouts
Tom returns home
[slips from his fingers] one crack and it falls through
bell “tolling the hour of five”
Tom talks to Laura about his night outside
[pg 23-24] TOM: “There was a Garbo picture and a Mickey Mouse and a travelog and a news reel and …”
[pg 24] “turned to wine” (John 2:1-11), “shimmering rainbow coloured scarf” (Joseph’s coat: Genesis 38:1-11), resurrection of Jesus in the “nailed up coffin” trick
Portrait of father lights up.
Laura gets ready to leave and wakes Tom up
[pg 25] TOM: “I’ll rise - but I won’t shine”
[pg 25]Laura is wearing a coat of “Amanda’s, inaccurately made over, the sleeves too short”
Amanda and Tom talk about working and going out to movies
Adventure is something I don’t’ have much of at work”
“A sailing vessel with the Jolly Roger”
[pg 30] TOM: “Man is by instinct a lover, a hunter, a fighter, and none of those instincts are given much play in the warehouse”
Opening scene
[pg 34] ‘Annunciation’
‘Dusk’
Tom talks about the the Paradise Dance Hall
[pg 35] “Paradise Dance Hall” - seek “compensation for lives… without any change or adventure”
‘Open doors’ and ‘music [that] came outdoors’ ‘glass sphere’
“Deceptive rainbow” - it is “brief”
In Spain there is Guernica
Amanda prepares for arrival of Jim upon hearing the news
[pg 38] “wedding silver….polished”, “monogrammed table linen… to be laundered”
Amanda discusses Laura and Tom’s future with Tom
[pg 41] “ignores the fact that the future becomes the present, the present the past, and the past turns into everlasting regret if you don’t plan for it!”
anadiplosis
Amanda and Laura wish on the “silver slipped of the moon”
Tom describes Jim’s past and the nature of their job
[pg 45] Tom was a “star in basketball, captain of the debating club, president of the senior class”
“always running or bounding, never just walking”…. “Shooting with such velocity…nothing short of the White House”
“He seemed to move in a continual spotlight”
valuable to him as someone who could remember his former glory”
Amanda tells Laura to look nice for Jim
[pg 47] LAURA: “You make it seem like we are setting a trap”
AMANDA: “All pretty girls are a trap, a pretty trap”
Amanda reminisces her past
[pg 48] Amanda “wears a girlish frock
“Something I’ve resurrected from that old trunk.
[pg 49] AMANDA: “So lovely, that country in May … flooded with jonquils!”
AMANDA “switches on the rose-coloured lamp”
Jim arrives to Wingfield home
[pg 50] “The Opening of a Door!”
[pg 51] JIM: “I think we just beat the rain”
Jim and Tom discusses the future for their life
[pg 53] JIM: “Brains? - No! - Ability? - No!”
[pg 54] “it amounts to - social poise!
[pg 54] “committing myself to a future that doesn’t include the warehouse, or Mr Mendoza”
JIM: “you’re going to be out of a job if you don’t wake up”
TOM: “I am waking up -
“Bastard son of a bastard”
Tom talks about his movies to Jim
[pg 55] TOM: “People go to the movies instead of moving!”
[pg 55-56] TOM: “Whenever I pick up a shoe, I shudder a little thinking how short life is and what I am doing! Whatever that means, I know it doesn’t mean shoes - except as something to wear on a traveler’s feet!”
Amanda talks to Jim about her life before dinner starts
[pg 58] AMANDA: “A telephone man who - fell in love with long-distance!”
AMANDA to Laura: “We can’t say grace until you come to the table!”
Origin of Laura’s blue roses nickname and comforts Laura
[pg 67] “pleurosis” “Blue Roses”
pg 68 And everyone has problems, not just you, but practically everybody has got some problems”
JIM: “Look how big my shadow is when I stretch!”
Jim talks to Laura about his future
Jim “unconsciously glances at himself in the mirror”
Jim “believe in the future of television!”
JIM: “Knowledge - Zzzzzp! Money - Zzzzzzp! - Power!”
Laura shows Jim her glass collection
[pg 74] LAURA: “Oh, be careful - if you breathe, it breaks!”
LAURA: “he loves the light! You see how the light shines through him?”
Jim breaks Laura’s glass unicorn accidentally
LAURA: “Maybe it’s a blessing in disguise”
LAURA: “The horn was removed to make him feel less - freakish!
LAURA: “Now he will feel more at home with the other horses
Laura feels sad from Jim’s reaction to kiss
[pg 80] Jim “met [Betty] last summer on a moonlight boat trip up the river”.
[pg 81] The holy candles on the altar of Laura’s face have been snuffed out
Laura “carefully places the unicorn in the palm of his hand, then pushes his fingers closed upon it”
Amanda reprimands Tom for not knowing about Jim’s engagement and his selfishness
[pg 85] AMANDA to TOM: “You live in a dream; you manufacture illusions!”
AMANDA: “your selfish pleasure” “you selfish dreamer”
Stage direction following Tom’s departure
[Tom smashes his glass on the floor…The moon breaks through the storm clouds, illuminating his face.]
Legends on screen ‘And so, goodbye.’]
Laura blows out the candles
The play’s closing remarks
Perhaps it was a familiar bit of music, perhaps it was only a piece of transparent glass
For nowadays the world is lit by lightning!
