Flashcards for The Glass Menagerie

Amanda Wingfield

Amanda Wingfield is the overbearing yet desperately hopeful mother of the Wingfield family in Tennessee Williams's memory play The Glass Menagerie.

character

Jim O'Connor

Jim O'Connor is the "gentleman caller" whose long-anticipated visit in Scenes Six and Seven serves as the dramatic climax of Tennessee Williams's memory play.

character

Laura Wingfield

Laura Wingfield is the emotional heart of Tennessee Williams's memory play The Glass Menagerie.

character

Mr. Wingfield (The Father)

Mr. Wingfield is the absent father of the Wingfield family in Tennessee Williams's memory play The Glass Menagerie.

character

Tom Wingfield

Tom Wingfield serves as both the narrator and the main character in The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams.

character

“I give you truth in the pleasant disguise of illusion.”

This line is spoken by Tom Wingfield, who serves as both the narrator and a key character in Tennessee Williams's memory play The Glass Menagerie (1944).

Tom Wingfield (Narrator) · Scene 1

“I pay my respect to that. She's superior to me.”

This line is delivered by Jim O'Connor, the Gentleman Caller, during his crucial one-on-one interaction with Laura Wingfield in Scene Seven of Tennessee Williams's The Glass Menagerie.

Jim O'Connor

“I didn't go to the moon, I went much further—for time is the longest distance between two places.”

This haunting line comes from Tom Wingfield, the narrator and main character of Tennessee Williams's memory play The Glass Menagerie (1944), specifically in the final scene (Scene Seven / the Epilogue).

Tom Wingfield

“I'm like my father. The bastard son of a bastard!”

This line is spoken by Tom Wingfield in Tennessee Williams's semi-autobiographical memory play The Glass Menagerie (1944).

Tom Wingfield

“You are the only young man that I know of who 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!”

This line is spoken by Amanda Wingfield, the nostalgic and controlling matriarch, directed at her son Tom in Tennessee Williams's memory play The Glass Menagerie (1944).

Amanda Wingfield

“Nowadays the world is lit by lightning! Blow out your candles, Laura—and so goodbye.”

These lines are the closing words of The Glass Menagerie (1944) by Tennessee Williams, delivered by Tom Wingfield, the narrator and main character, as he addresses the audience directly.

Tom Wingfield

“Blue Roses! My name is Blue Roses.”

In Tennessee Williams's memory play The Glass Menagerie, Laura Wingfield recalls a tender moment with Jim O'Connor, the "gentleman caller," when she mentions a special nickname he gave her.

Laura Wingfield

“In memory everything seems to happen to music.”

This line is delivered by Tom Wingfield, who serves as both the narrator and protagonist in Tennessee Williams's The Glass Menagerie (1944), during his opening monologue in Scene 1.

Tom Wingfield

“I know your ambitions do not lie in the warehouse, Tom.”

This line is spoken by Amanda Wingfield to her son Tom in Tennessee Williams's memory play The Glass Menagerie (1944).

Amanda Wingfield

“Being disappointed is one thing and being discouraged is something else.”

This line is spoken by Amanda Wingfield, the nostalgic and often overbearing mother of the Wingfield family, in Tennessee Williams's memory play The Glass Menagerie (1944).

Amanda Wingfield

Blue Roses

In Tennessee Williams's The Glass Menagerie, Blue Roses represent Laura Wingfield's uniqueness and delicate beauty.

Candles and Candlelight

In Tennessee Williams's The Glass Menagerie, candles and their soft light symbolize the delicate, dreamlike refuge of memory and fantasy, standing in contrast to the harsh realities of modern life.

The Father's Photograph

In The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams, the father's photograph — a large, grinning portrait hanging in the Wingfield apartment — represents themes of escape, abandonment, and the alluring myth of freedom.

The Fire Escape

In Tennessee Williams's The Glass Menagerie, the fire escape acts as a boundary between the Wingfields' stifling apartment and the outside world.

The Glass Menagerie

In Tennessee Williams's The Glass Menagerie, Laura's collection of tiny glass animals reflects her vulnerability, her escape from reality, and the challenge of holding onto beauty in a harsh world.

The Unicorn

In Tennessee Williams's The Glass Menagerie, Laura's glass unicorn symbolizes her delicate and unique identity, as well as her painful separation from the ordinary world.

Symbolism

The glass animal collection that gives the play its title serves as the central symbolic system of the work.

Dramatic Monologue

Tom plays a dual role, serving both as a character in the action and as a retrospective narrator.

Extended Metaphor

Williams weaves a persistent metaphor of entrapment and escape throughout the play.

Imagery

Williams's stage directions read like prose poems, rich with visual and tactile imagery that a realistic set could never capture completely.

Motif

The theme of 'gentleman callers' appears repeatedly, connecting the past, present, and future.

Pathetic Fallacy

Williams uses the external environment to reflect the internal emotional states throughout the play.

Irony

The play is rich with layers of dramatic irony.

Allusion

Williams enriches the play with literary and cultural references that broaden its narrative beyond just one family's experience.

Apostrophe

Tom's closing speech shifts into an apostrophe as he addresses the absent Laura directly across time: "Blow out your candles, Laura — and so goodbye."

Juxtaposition

Williams builds the play by constantly contrasting illusion with reality, the past with the present, and confinement with escape.

Prose Poem

Williams's stage directions read like independent prose poems, separate from the dialogue.

Free Verse

Tom's narrations shift between prose and a rhythm that's so deliberate and imagery-rich that they nearly become free verse.

vitalities

Energies or life forces — the restless drives and passions that push a person to act, even when those drives pull in conflicting directions.

noun · Chapter 1

clinging

Holding on desperately and refusing to let go, here meaning Amanda refuses to accept that her glamorous Southern past is over.

verb · Chapter 1

gentleman callers

Young men who visited a young woman at her home with the social understanding that they were potential suitors or romantic prospects, a custom of the old American South.

phrase · Chapter 1

long distance

Long-distance telephone calls or the telephone network itself; here used figuratively to suggest the father's love of escape and far-off places rather than home.

noun · Chapter 1

menagerie

A collection of small glass animal figurines that Laura treasures; the word originally means a collection of live animals but here refers to her delicate miniature sculptures.

noun · Chapter 2

phonograph records

Flat vinyl or shellac discs played on a mechanical turntable to produce music; an older technology for listening to recorded sound before cassettes or CDs.

noun · Chapter 2

stenography

The skill of writing in shorthand — a fast, coded system of notation — used by office secretaries to take dictation; Amanda enrolled Laura in a class to learn this trade.

noun · Chapter 2

opium dens

Illegal establishments where people gathered to smoke opium, a powerful narcotic drug; Tom uses the phrase sarcastically to mock Amanda's suspicions about where he spends his evenings.

noun · Chapter 3

dens of vice

Hidden places where immoral or illegal activities — gambling, drinking, drug use — take place; used here by Tom in bitter, exaggerated mockery of his mother's accusations.

phrase · Chapter 3

hired assassin

A person paid to kill someone; Tom uses this absurd claim sarcastically to ridicule Amanda's fears, not as a literal statement of fact.

phrase · Chapter 3

tommy gun

A Thompson submachine gun — a rapid-fire weapon associated with 1920s–30s American gangsters; Tom mentions it as part of his sarcastic, over-the-top performance for Amanda.

noun · Chapter 3

babbling

Talking rapidly and foolishly without making sense; Tom hurls this as an insult at Amanda during their heated argument, meaning she talks endlessly and irrationally.

adjective · Chapter 3

witch

Used here as a harsh insult meaning a cruel, nagging, or spiteful woman; Tom shouts it at Amanda in the peak of their fight, not as a supernatural reference.

noun · Chapter 3

staggered

Walked unsteadily, swaying and nearly losing balance; here it signals that Tom has come home drunk after a night out.

verb · Chapter 4

warehouse

A large building used to store goods; Tom works in a shoe warehouse, a dull, low-status job he finds suffocating compared to his literary ambitions.

noun · Chapter 4

whichever way the wind blows

An idiom meaning in whatever direction life or chance takes you, with complete freedom to follow any path; Amanda uses it to promise Tom future freedom once Laura is settled.

phrase · Chapter 4

debutante

A young woman from a wealthy family who is formally introduced to society at a special event, signalling she is ready for courtship; Amanda uses the word playfully, pretending she and Laura are rehearsing social roles.

noun · Chapter 5

fire escape

An external metal staircase or platform attached to the outside of a building for emergency exit; in the play it also serves as Tom's private stage where he steps away from the family to address the audience.

noun · Chapter 1

merchant navy

The fleet of commercial cargo and passenger ships, as distinct from the military navy; Tom dreams of joining it as a way to travel the world and escape his trapped life.

noun

pulp

Describing cheap magazines printed on low-quality paper and filled with sensational adventure, crime, or fantasy stories; Amanda disapproves of Tom reading such lowbrow material.

adjective · Chapter 3

subscription

A paid arrangement to receive a magazine or publication regularly; Amanda is angry that Tom secretly signed up for one under a false name.

noun · Chapter 3

unicorn

A mythical horse with a single horn on its forehead; Laura owns a tiny glass one, and its broken horn becomes a symbol of her own sense of being different and then, briefly, ordinary.

noun

engaged

Formally promised to marry someone; Jim's revelation that he is already engaged to Betty destroys the hope the evening had built for Laura.

adjective

Southern belle

A charming, well-bred young woman from the American South, admired for her beauty and social grace; Amanda clings to this identity from her youth even though her circumstances have long since changed.

phrase

gentility

The quality of being refined, well-mannered, and from a respectable social class; Amanda insists on maintaining the appearance of gentility even though the family is poor.

noun