The Glass Menagerie Existentialist Responsibilities...

The story of a young Tennessee Williams is poetically portrayed through a 1945 Broadway Play, The Glass Menagerie. The main character, Tom Wingfield, lives in his family’s apartment with his mother, Amanda Wingfield, and sister, Laura Wingfield. Their father left the family, and he remains a silent character appearing as a portrait on the apartment wall. Throughout the seven scenes, the immaturity of each family member is revealed. In search of adventure, Tom has dreams of being a writer and wishes to leave his family and factory job, like his father, to join the Merchant Marines. Laura lets her disability, a braced leg, hinder her finding a job or a husband, while Amanda stays in denial of her children’s failure by living in the past†¦show more content†¦There are evident parallels made when comparing Williams’ life to his masterpiece. John Lahr describes Edwina, Williams mother, as, [...] a frigid hysteric, given to manipulative bouts of fainting , and a non-stop talker, whose barrage of chatter oppressed her mute and hapless children. Edwina was the head of her household yet she denied reality as she ignored the severity of things. She also kicked her husband out of her home, and took half of the finances. Rose, Tennessees sister, had one of the first lobotomies performed on her (Lahr). Although some aspects of Williams’ life were altered for the play, Amanda’s perturbing personality, Laura’s health problems-or disabilities, and the father’s absence all relate to his family’s characteristics. Existentialism, originally from the 1900s, is focused on the existence of humans and their pursuit of meaning (â€Å"Existentialism-A Philosophy†). Catharine Savage Brosman studied Jean Paul Sartre’s lecture L’Existentialisme est un humanisme and concluded: Existentialists believe a human nature does not exist and neither does God. There is no set meaning to life, and the only purpose is for Man to find his own meaning. She then explains the ethics behind this, â€Å"Sartre gives an example [†¦]: a young man during the Occupation trying to decide whether to stay home and take care of his unhappy mother or leave to fight with the Free French based in England.†