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Tennessee Williams EssayThe American theatre public first took notice of The furnish Menagerie by Mississippi-born Tennessee Williams when it was stand fored in Chicago in December 1944. Opening in New York on March 31, 1945, it ran for more that 500 performances and won both popular and critical acclaim. It is now considered one of the some delicate plays of the twentieth century. Much of the play is drawn from the writers own life and by chance because of this, he invests it with extraordinary realism and poetry. Though the lives of his characters are blighted by frustration and misery, he paints them with the indistinctness of illusion, the patina of tenderness (Krutch, 424). And no wonder Tom is Tennessee, Amanda is his mother, and Laura is his sister Rose.Williams calls The Glass Menagerie a memory play. Tom, the son, narrates in seven emotionally-charged scenes the events that happened to him, his mother, Amanda Wingfield, and his sister Laura onwards he deserted the m to become a merchant sailor. Extremely wretched as a shoe-factory worker, Tom, the poet-dreamer, frequently escapes to poetry-writing or the movies. Because Amanda loves her son, she nags him so that he would be more serious about improving himself. Amanda besides notes that her delicate, sensitive, helpless Laura will never be able to cope with the realities of making a living. So Amanda asks Tom to invite an eligible bachelor to dinner for his sister. Tom invites Jim OConnor, a fellow employee at the shoe-factory. Good-natured Jim gradually makes Laura warm up to him, but before the evening is through, he reveals that he is engaged to be married. Shortly after, Tom breaks away from the two women to join the merchant marine. All leash are yearning to get out of the coffin of their lives. Tom pines for romance and adventure, which, however, cannot blow the candles of memory out. Amanda escapes from cave in by retreating to her memories, but for her children she decides quite realistically that the practical, not the romantic, way is the path to an easy life. An interesting throw of the play is the application of Williams theory of expressionism. Because it is a memory play, much leeway is given to atmospheric touches and subtleties of direction. In the romantic spirit of expressionism (Young, 506), Williams contends that the truth, life, or reality is an organic thing, which the poetic imagination can work or suggest, in essence only those through transformation, through changing into other forms than those which were merely present in appearance.The use of symbols is inline with the expressionistic theory. For instance, the delicate glass unicorn is a symbol for the fragile loner that Laura is. The dispirited roses, the apartment in the tenement, the fire escape, the alleys, and the dance-hall are all symbolic. Williams experiment with more open forums, and colloquial styles also contributed to the mode of expressionism. Creating stellar roles for actors, especially women, Williams brought a passionate lyricism and a tragic Southern vision. in addition using the symbols, the author recommends that the use of magic-lantern slides to show titles or images which could stress accredited values or the most important phrases. These slides are considered redundant by some critics (Tischler, 232) because the play is self-sufficientand eloquently so. Our unconventional or non realistic techniques are the use of the narrator and special lighting to express changes in mood. The stage is unplowed poetically dim, in keeping the mood of memory while shafts of light draw attention to certain areas or actors. An effective literary accent in the play is provided by the repetition of haunting agate line that expresses the surface vivacity of life and the underlying strain of immutable and inexpressible sorrow (Bloomfield, 233). Finally, not the least of the reasons for the potently moving quality of The Glass Menagerie is the dialogue. Wi lliams has accurately recorded every nuance and beat of American speech, giving the language a poetic touch to boot. The language lives, the characters live. As the characters play out their lives before us, our hearts vibrate unfailingly to the plays humanity and beauty or the beauty of its humanity. Everything in the play contributes to pure theatre magic, the secret of which lies deep in the heartand the artof Tennessee Williams.Works CitedBloomfield, Morton and Eliot, Robert., eds. enceinte Plays Sophocles to Brecht. New York Holt,Rinehart and Winston, 1966.Krutch, Joseph Wood. Drama. The Nation, CLX (April 14, 1945).Tishler, Nancy. Tennessee Williams Rebellious Puritan. New York The Citadel Press, 1961.Young, Stark. The Glass Menagerie. The New Rpublic, CXII (April 6, 1945).