SCENE 6

1. SCENE 6 Presented by: Stephanie Kubota, Ji Won Lee and Ju Sung Kim

2. Summary • Amanda and Laura prepares for the gentleman caller’s (Jim O’Connor) visit • Laura refuses to open the door when she discovers that Jim is her gentleman caller (her high school crush) • Tom reveals that he has made plans to join merchant navy, and to have “adventures” like the people from the movies • He used the payment for the electricity bills • He admits that he is just like his father, a “bastard” • Jim briefly gets introduced to Laura, and is won over by Amanda’s “Southern” hospitality

3. Themes

4. Theme of ConfinementTom generally feels confined in his uninspiring job, small apartment and his mom Amanda, and his reality without adventures. Amanda is confined in her thought of the past. Laura is confined due to her physical weaknesses that also lead to mental pressure. "You and me, we’re not the warehouse type." (30) "I’m starting to boil inside. I know I seem dreamy, but inside—well, I’m boiling! Whenever I pick up a shoe, I shudder a little thinking how short life is and what am I doing! Whatever that means, I know it doesn’t mean shoes—except as something to wear on a traveler’s feet!" (31) • Tom and Jim find friendship in their both desire to escape from their reality, of working in the warehouse. • Tom shows desire to escape in a desperate way. This makes him an impulsive individual rather than an adult who makes decision with composure.

5. Theme of Duty and AbandonmentThe Glass Menagerie expresses the characters’ conflict between their obligations as members of the family, and their own desires. Abandoning one’s family for one’s own desires leave the others in despair. This links to the theme of family on the next slide. "I paid my dues this month, instead of the light bill.” "You will regret it when they turn the lights off." "I won’t be here." (31) "How about your mother?""I'm like my father. The bastard son of a bastard! Did you notice how he's grinning in his picture in there? And he's been absent going in sixteen years!" (31) • In contrast to Amanda’s selflessness to her children, Tom appears selfish and apathetic towards his family. • Tom sides with his missing father rather than his mother. Tom plans to abandon his mother who has been looking after him until now. • Link between Tom and his father. The similarity of son and the father in lack of care and responsibility for their family.

6. "I married a man who worked for a telephone company! That gallantly smiling man over there! A telephone man who-fell in love with long distance! Now he travels and I don't even know where!" • There is sympathy for Amanda as she talks about her husband who abandoned her and left to far away.

7. Theme of Family • "Laura Wingfield, you march right to that door!""Yes—yes, Mother!" • Amanda orders and disciplines her children as though they were very young. Laura, still obedient to Amanda, shows her weak and submissive character.

8. Themes of Memory "I was valuable to him as someone who could remember his former glory.” "There was a Jim O'Connor we both knew in high school-[then, with effort] If that is the one that Tom is bringing to dinner-you'll have to excuse me, I won't come to the table." • Jim, like Amanda, revels in the memory of his glory days. • Laura is haunted by her own past that it debilitates her living in the present. "You remember that wonderful write-up I had in The Torch?""Yes!""It said I was bound to succeed in anything I went into!" • Jim spends excessive time discussing both the glory days of his past, which is mentioned at the start of Scene Six and his dreams for the future.

9. Themes of Weakness "I knew that Jim and Laura had known each other at Soldan, and I had heard Laura speak admiringly of his voice. I didn’t know if Jim remembered her or not. In high school Laura had been as unobtrusive as Jim had been astonishing." • Jim presents a character with the opposite of Laura’s fragility, which may be why she is so drawn to him. "Why are you trembling?""Mother, you’ve made me so nervous!""How have I made you nervous?""By all this fuss! You make it seem so important!" • Laura’s shyness puts her constantly at odds with her mother. • "There was a Jim O’Connor we both knew in high school — [then, with effort] If that is the one that Tom is bringing to dinner—you’ll have to excuse me, I won’t come to the table. • Despite her shyness and weakness, Laura takes seemingly firm stands against her mother. • "Please, please, please, you go!""You’ll have to go the door because I can’t.""I can’t go either!""Why?""I’m sick!" • Laura uses her physical weaknesses to explain her mental ones.

10. Theme of Gender roles "Now look at yourself, young lady. This is the prettiest you will ever be!" "It’s rare for a girl as sweet an’ pretty as Laura to be domestic! But Laura is, thank heavens, not only pretty but also very domestic." • Amanda takes pride in physical appearance over all else. • Amanda exaggerates and fabricates qualities to make her daughter seem more attractive. Recurs to the theme of family – Amanda’s care for

11. Theme of Love • "Laura, Laura, were you in love with that boy?""I don’t know, Mother. All I know is I couldn’t sit at the table if it was him!" • The intensity of Laura’s feelings for Jim becomes evident as the play progresses.  This adds up to… Theme of Contrast: • Laura’s delicacy vs Jim’s straightforwardness • Past and the present of Jim • Past and the present of Amanda • Jim sees that the warehouse is starting point of his commercial success • Tom sees it as a coffin • Wingfield (emotional) vs Jim (materialistic)

12. Staging Devices

13. [Image on Screen: The sailing vessel with Jolly Roger again.]

14. "I’m planning to change." [He leans over the fire-escape rail, speaking with quiet exhilaration. The incandescent marquees and signs of the first-run movie houses light his face from across the alley. He looks like a voyager.] "I’m right at the point of committing myself to a future that doesn’t include the warehouse and Mr. Mendoza or even a night-school course in public speaking." (31) • Tom plots his escape well in advance; therefore his abandoning the family is a pre-meditated act, not something executed in the heat of an argument at the end. Links to the theme of confinement.

15. "Excuse me—I haven’t finished playing the Victrola…"[She turns awkwardly and hurries into the front room. She pauses a second by the Victrola. Then she catches her breath and darts through the portieres like a frightened deer.]” • Laura uses the Victrola as means to explain retreating, just as Tom uses the movies to find escape from his confined reality. Adds to the theme of confinement and escape.

16. “The light dims out on Tom and comes up in the Wingfield living room—a delicate lemony light. It is abut five on a Friday evening of late spring which comes ‘scattering poems in the sky’.” • Williams uses light to emphasize the subjective and memory nature of the play. Links to the theme of memory, and the theme of confinement for Tom, as writing poems

17. “A faraway, scratchy rendition of ‘Dardanella" softens the air and gives her strength to move through it." • Williams uses music to emphasize the subjective and memory nature of the play. Links to the theme of memory. • Dardanella – popular song written in 1919 by Fred Fisher • “The music seems to answer his question, while Tom thinks it over. He searches his pockets.” • Williams uses music to emphasize the subjective and memory nature of the play. Links to the theme of memory.

18. A fragile, unearthly prettiness has come out in Laura: she is like a piece of translucent glass touched by light, given a momentary radiance, not actual, not lasting. • Laura’s beauty is inherently tied to her fragility. Links to the theme of Laura’s weakness • Laura suddenly stumbles; she catches at a chair with a faint moan • Laura’s fragility manifests itself physically, linking to the theme of weakness. • Laura, stretched out on the sofa, clenches her hand to her lips, to hold back a shuddering sob. • Laura is acutely aware of and bothered by her deficiencies.

19. Amanda produces two powder puffs which she wraps in hand kerchiefs and stuffs in Laura’s bosom. (25) • While Jim will later recognize Laura for her individuality, Amanda tries to make her into a cookie-cutter woman. Links to the theme of gender, and also weakness, as to cover her weakness.

20. Legend on screen: "A Pretty Trap." (26) • "You make it seem like we were setting a trap.""All pretty girls are a trap, a pretty trap, and men expect them to be.” • Amanda believes in using looks, not personality, to attract men.

21. Characterization Tom, Amanda, Laura and Jim

22. Amanda Wingfield

23. Amanda Wingfield Writer’s description: • Great but confused vitality clinging frantically to another time and place • She is not paranoiac, but her life is paranoia • There is much to admire, and as much to love and pity as there is to laugh at. • Has endurance and a kind of heroism • Though her foolishness makes her unwittingly cruel at times, there is tenderness in her slight person

24. Amanda Wingfield Quotes Analysis • “You will not be excused” • “I’ve had too much form you and your brother” (27) • “I told you I wasn’t going to humour you, Laura. Why have you chosen this moment to lose your mind?” • “Why can’t you and your brother be normal people?” (28) • The following quotes demonstrates Amanda’s overbearing personality as she forbids Laura from excusing herself from dinner, and becomes insensitive and infuriated when things do not go her way.

25. Amanda Wingfield Quotes Analysis • “Tom is distinctly shocked at her appearance. Even Jim blinks. He is making his first contact with girlish Southern vivacity” • “Gay laughter and chatter. Tom is embarrassed… altogether [Jim is] won over” • “That’s not southern behavior!” (32) • The following quotes refers to Amanda’s “confused vitality”, her refreshing charm and her Southern origins. It is evident that she is attached to her Southern conventions, which may imply that she is a traditional and old fashioned woman.

26. Amanda Wingfield Quotes Analysis • “In the south we had so many servants… I wasn’t prepared for what the future brought me. Gone, gone, gone… I assumed that I would be married to one and raise my family on a large piece of land with plenty of servants… married a man from telephone company!… [I] fell in love long distance” (32) • This passage reveals Amanda’s life story and her remorse in marrying her husband. It is recognized that she was fortunate before, which may give reason to the implications that she is “clinging to another time and place” and her resolve in finding Laura a suitor. The length of her speech also shows how Amanda tends to be verbose.

27. Amanda Wingfield Quotes Analysis • “To be painfully honest your chest is flat” (25) • “I’ve heard so much about you from my boy” • Jim: “She – [Amanda cuts him off]” (32) • The following quotes suggests Amanda’s “unwittingly cruel” personality and her eagerness in embellishing a story with a lie. Although she may seem cruel, her bluntness does not intend to offend people but to reveal truth. Ironically, she will allows herself to distort the truth to make the story sound better.

28. Amanda Wingfield Jonquils

29. Laura Wingfield

30. Laura Wingfield Author’s Description: • “Amanda, having failed to establish contact with reality, continues to live vitally in her illusions, but Laura’s situation is even graver.” • “A childhood illness has left her crippled” • Laura’s separation increases till she is like a piece of her own glass collection, too exquisitely fragile to move form the shelf” • The light upon Laura should be distinct from others, having a peculiar pristine clarity such as light used in early religious portraits of female saints or Madonna.

31. Laura Wingfield Quotes Analysis • “Laura has been as unobtrusive as Jim had been astonishing.” • “…chest is flat” (25) • The quotes relates to Laura’s “exquisitely fragile” nature; in fact, this idea is emphasized when her ‘unobtrusiveness’ is contrasted against Jim’s ‘astonishing’ high school identity. Her understated character is also translated in her physical appearance.

32. Laura Wingfield Quotes Analysis • “A fragile unearthly prettiness has come out in Laura. She is like a piece of translucent glass touched by light, given a momentary radiance, not actual, not lasting” (25) • “Unusual to meet a shy girl nowadays.” (29) • However, the aforementioned ideas are challenged by her “momentary radiance” when her mother dresses her and when Jim judges her “uniqueness”. This also indicates how Laura may be capable of living a normal life through getting a partner.

33. Laura Wingfield Quotes Analysis • “You asked me once if I’d ever liked a boy… I couldn’t sit at the table if it was him!” (27) • “I won’t answer door” (28) • “Your hand’s cold, Laura” • “[She] catches her breath and darts through the portieres like a frightened deer” (29) • These quotes portrays Jim’s influence over Amanda; her anxiety is displayed emotionally in her rare refusal of her mother’s wishes, and physically the catching of her breath and her cold hands. This also foreshadows the following scene where she faints.

34. Jim O’Conner

35. Jim O’Conner Author’s Description: Author’s Descriptions: • A nice, ordinary, young man.

36. Jim O’Conner Quotes Analysis • “Sports!” (29) • “[Public speaking] done a helluva lot for me… [the difference between Jim and Tom] amounts to social poise” (30) • Jim is portrayed as a stereotypical boy who prefers to read about “sports” and to make an ambition to succeed. He is also used to support the other character’s personality traits, usually through the use of contrast.

37. Jim O’Conner Quotes Analysis • “He seemed always at the point of defeating the law of gravity… expect him to arrive at nothing short of the White House by the time he was thirty… 6 years after he left high school he was holding a job that wasn’t much better than mine” (24) • “I was valuable to him as someone who could remember his former glory.” (25) • This suggests that Amanda is not the only character that had a more pleasant life in their past than that of their present. It is ironic how the theme of being “trapped in the past” is also carried through Jim’s character, the gentleman caller that symbolizes Amanda’s, Laura’s and Tom’s escape.

38. Tom Wingfield

39. Tom Wingfield Author’s Descriptions: • A poet with a job in a warehouse. • His nature is not remorseful, but to escape from a trap he has to act without pity.

40. Tom Wingfield Quotes Analysis • “The signs [of waking up] are interior” (30) • “I’m starting to boil inside. I know I seem dreamy, but inside – well, I’m boiling!” • “I’m not patient.” (31) • Since, Tom is both the narrator and one of the main characters, he holds an omniscient ability in delivering the story. This all-knowing role is presented in the quotes that demonstrates Tom’s self awareness.

41. Tom Wingfield Quotes Analysis • “He knew of my secret practice or retiring to the a cabinet of the washroom to work on poems… he called me Shakespeare” (25) • “[He shudders whenever he picks up a shoe] Whatever that means, I know it doesn’t mean shoes – except as something to wear on a traveler's feet” (31) • Through these quotes the audience is reminded that Tom is a poet. Tom’s inclination to write instead of doing his work properly and his colleague calling him “Shakespeare” shows where his interest lies. Furthermore, his use of figurative and metaphorical language reflects his being an author.

42. Tom Wingfield Quotes Analysis • “I’m planning to change. [… he looks like a voyager] I’m right at the pint of committing myself to a future that doesn’t include the warehouse and Mr. Mendoza or even a night-school course in public speaking.” (30) • “I paid my dues this month, instead of the light bill.” • “I’m like my father, the bastard son of a bastard” (31) • The following quotes are pivotal in the audiences feelings towards Tom, as he announces that he will abandon his mom and sister to have “adventures” like his father (“like father like son”). However, the audience sympathizes with him as abandoning his family is his only way to “escape his trap”.

43. Symbols

44. Connection to “The Visit” Compared Animals: ‘Wild Cat’ and ‘Unicorn’ Dehumanization: ‘Stone idol’ and ‘Glass’ Demeaning of Sex: ‘Husbands’ and ‘Girls’ Heroines of the play: Claire and Amanda (character honest) The long awaited hopes: Money and Gentleman caller, Jim Reunion with their old loves: Claire and Laura Artificial body parts: Claire and Laura’s buffed bosom Anticipation of a Happy ending

45. Symbolism with animals Claire is symbolized by a wildcat. Wildcat gives the audience a fierce sense and ferocious nature of Claire. • Laura is symbolized as a unicorn which is known to be the mythical and extraordinary. This show how unusual and unique Laura is.

46. Dehumanization Claire  Stone “You will remain there. A dead man beside a stone idol.” (88) • Laura  Glass “like a piece of translucent glass touched by light, given a momentary radiance, not actual not lasting” (25)

47. Demeaning of Sex “husbands are display purposes only” • “All pretty girls are trap” (26)

48. Heroine Roles Claire is a heroine who fights for justice and donates a million to the townspeople for that justice. • Amanda is a heroine who cares and looks after other people such as her daughter.

49. The long awaited hopes Money for the Guelleners to escape from poverty The banners, choir, speeches… • The gentleman caller for the Tom and Amanda to escape from Laura’s dependence on family • “the long-delayed but always expected something that we live for.” (3)

50. Reunion of old “lovers” “Ill. We were the best of friends. Young and hotheaded…[we walked] barefoot in the Konrad’s Village Wood” (15) • “Yes. I liked one once…His name was Jim” (8)