Conflict Between Illusion and Reality: A Study of Tennessee Williams? The Glass Menagerie

Abstract

Abstract

The Glass Menagerie is one of the finest plays of Tennessee Williams. It almost transformed the life style of Williams overnight. It is through his wandering that Williams has experience the trauma of life like Crane, an American poet and displayed the swinging motion of illusion and reality in a splendid way in his plays. Tennessee Williams presents before us the dark world of one-dimensional society of the modern civilization that survives in the midst of exploitation, violation of moral code of conduct, dehumanized passions of power and intimate relationships in this play. He makes us realize that such worldly circumstances of the tainted world drives the misfits, the rebels or the fugitive kinds to lead lives of depression, alienation and unhappy madness. It happens due to their failure of adjustment with the worldly norms and they construct make-believe worlds around them through fabricated illusions in order to feel a sense of untrammeled freedom. Williams through his impulsive creative activity provides us with a basic premise to understand with tenderness ad fortitude such individuals trapped in their own predicament. In the light of these factors, the paper analyses the theme of the conflict between illusion and reality in Tennessee Williams? The Glass Menagerie.