book data
6099 ratings, 3.61 average rating, 226 reviews
(more data...)
edit
published
June 1970
(first published 1944)
by New Directions
binding
Paperback, 115 pages
isbn
0811202208
(isbn13: 9780811202206)
description
Harold Bloom?s introduction suggests Tennessee Williams is the most literary of American dramatists. Examine The Glass Menagerie with some of the best...more
Sign in to Goodreads to see your friends' reviews of this book.
| topics | replies | views | last activity | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Next Best Boo...: OFFICIAL WINTER CHALLENGE | 354 | 303 | 1 hour, 20 min ago | |
| The Book Challenge: * *A-Z Title Challenge* | 75 | 524 | 1 day ago, 08:47AM |
friend reviews
To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.
This book is currently not featured on any Listopia lists.
Add this book to your favorite list »
other reviews (showing 1-20 of 6990)
All ratings
|
5 stars (1221)
|
4 stars (2106)
|
3 stars (1981)
|
2 stars (590)
|
1 star (142)
|
avg 3.61
I read this play in high school, and now that I'm preparing to student teach English at a high school, I reread it to make plans. I enjoy the play and feel like we can learn a lot from it about illusion, living in the present - even while learning from the past and planning for the future, the American Dream, etc. It IS kind of depressing - but I want to analyze/ teach it in a positive light, even if that light is simply: how can we learn to avoid the sadness these characters choose? Or how ...more
Like this review?
yes
(1 person liked it)
2 comments
Read in January, 2000
By far the best book I read in High School
Like this review?
yes
(1 person liked it)
1 comment
Read in August, 2008
recommended to Núria by:
Mariarecommends it for: los que se sienten atrapados en una vida que no les gusta
Da toda la impresión que Tennessee Williams tenía que ser una persona muy pesada y muy cursi. Toda mi impresión proviene de las acotaciones de 'El zoo de cristal' que me han parecido las peores que he leído en mi vida, por plastas y por cursis. Yo estaba todo el rato en plan "¡Cállate ya y deja hablar a los personajes!" Si tantas ganas tienes de divagar, dedícate a la narrativa a tiempo completo (por cierto, después de esto no creo que nunca tenga ganas de acercarme a la narrat...more
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Read in July, 2007
recommends it for:
anyone without a lot of spare time
My life has been a bit frought recently and I've been wanting to sit down and read something but haven't had the inclination to dive into anything too big. The Glass Menagerie was on my shelf - it's a short play by Tennessee Williams - it couldn't be more than 100 pages in paperback.
Anyone who knows of Tennessee Williams from seeing his plays will really enjoy reading his work. I thought he was extremely tuned into the characters - and the stage direction was really comprehensive. I got the ...more
Anyone who knows of Tennessee Williams from seeing his plays will really enjoy reading his work. I thought he was extremely tuned into the characters - and the stage direction was really comprehensive. I got the ...more
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
I have often found that plays tend to be more boring than prose for many reasons (hard to bring out characters, make third-person observations, etc.), but this play was absolutely amazing! It combines realistic circumstances and characters with poetry and beauty. Towards the end, you will begin to sympathize with all the characters: Laura, the poor disillusioned sister who lives in her world of glass figures; Amanda, the mother who was a Southern Belle once upon a time, always dreaming of old ti...more
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Read in January, 2008
I do not know why I read this play. Perhaps it is because I've always wanted to read some Tennessee Williams since The Strokes song, "What Ever Happened?" [and the lines, "OH TENNESSEE, WHAT DID YOU WRITE? I'll come together in the middle of the night...":] Or it is because I had just finished The Bloody Chamber and did not feel like doing work during senior privelege. So I flipped through my literature book, found The Glass Menagerie, and decided to read it. Then finished it...more
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Read in July, 2007
Usually I'm not too much in to plays but I'm happy I picked this one up. William's was able to put me in synch with all four charcters of this novel. For Laura I understood how overwhelming it can be to come face to face with some dream and to want to shy away from it so that if it doesn't work out as you had planned you wouldn't lose hope that maybe someday it could. For Amanda too, I know how it feels to prepare and prepare for something, having others interests in mind only to have all the wo...more
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
نمایش نامه ی "باغ وحش شیشه ای" بی تردید به فارسی ترجمه شده چون من اجرای صحنه ی آن را در سال های بسیار دور، به یاد دارم. دقیقن یادم نیست چه کسی آن را ترجمه کرده بود و چه کسانی در اجرای صحنه ای آن بازی می کردند اما اگر اشتباه نکنم، کارگردانش حمید سمندریان بود.
هیچ ربطی نداره ول...more
هیچ ربطی نداره ول...more
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
recommends it for:
everyone
Every semester I have to read a play for my Drama class, and since my dad still has his old English notebook for college, I usually choose one from out of there. This was one of the plays I stumbled upon.
The family's struggles are real--the crippled daughter who is emotionally unstable, the wandering son, the flowery mother who spends her days on the past. The play is told in an essence of memory, from the son's POV (it was a little while ago, I can't quite remember his name...Tom?) Who want...more
The family's struggles are real--the crippled daughter who is emotionally unstable, the wandering son, the flowery mother who spends her days on the past. The play is told in an essence of memory, from the son's POV (it was a little while ago, I can't quite remember his name...Tom?) Who want...more
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Read in August, 2007
recommended to Hanley by:
Ken Kay
Also one of my favorites by Tennessee Williams which also probably benefits from my bias having played Laura last year. But if I attempt to put aside my subjectivity, I still think it's one of the best plays ever written. The symbolism all throughout is downright fun for an English major, and the incredible language and simmering emotions all throughout are downright fun for an actor. The gentleman caller scene is one of my favorites in all of theater. And like Summer and Smoke, the endin...more
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Read in May, 2008
Exceptional drama. The first scene, I quoted many of the narrator (Tom) and stage directions because they are so rich and captivating.
". . .A fire-escape, a structure whose name is a touch of accidental poetic truth, for all of these huge buildings are always burning with the slow and implacable fires of human desperation."
"Memory takes a lot of poetic licence. It omits some details; others are exaggerated, according to the emotional value of the articles it touches, for m...more
". . .A fire-escape, a structure whose name is a touch of accidental poetic truth, for all of these huge buildings are always burning with the slow and implacable fires of human desperation."
"Memory takes a lot of poetic licence. It omits some details; others are exaggerated, according to the emotional value of the articles it touches, for m...more
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Read in July, 2008
I would have given this three stars, but I'm giving it an extra star for Tennessee Williams' introductory essay "The Catastrophe of Success" included in this addition. I especially appreciated his description of the discomfort of being waited on:
"Life should require a certain minimal effort. You should not have too many people waiting on you, you should have to do most things for yourself. Hotel service is embarrassing. Maids, waiters, bellhops, porters and so forth are the mo...more
"Life should require a certain minimal effort. You should not have too many people waiting on you, you should have to do most things for yourself. Hotel service is embarrassing. Maids, waiters, bellhops, porters and so forth are the mo...more
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Read in April, 2006
Durante la década del '30, en Saint Louis, sur de los Estados Unidos, los deseos de los tres miembros de la familia Wingfield entran en pugna. La madre, Amanda, una belleza en su tiempo, vive para el recuerdo. Su hija Laura, tímida hasta lo enfermizo, quizá por su renguera, se refugia en un mundo de animalitos de cristal y en la música que parte de la victrola que perteneció al padre, quien los ha abandonado: discos de 1920, piezas como "Whispering", "The Love Nest" o &q...more
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Though plays are my least favorite forms of literature, "The Glass Menagerie" reads like a novel with its intricate sentences. The first paragraph alone impressed me with its weaving of ridiculously difficult vocab words. However, most of play is easy to read and the focal point is on the tragic plot.
The collection of glass figurines which belongs to a painfully shy female character is a rubic's cube of mystery that could mean a thousand different things depending on which day ...more
The collection of glass figurines which belongs to a painfully shy female character is a rubic's cube of mystery that could mean a thousand different things depending on which day ...more
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Read in January, 1992
I've seen the staging of this play FAR too many times to really love it anymore. My first exposure, as a 14-yr-old Props Manager was the best experience. Ahhh, novelty, if only it would stick around.
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
no words can explain how i felt after this book. It is beautiful as wellas ugly all at the same time. I recommend you read it. It's a very short play, but sweet.
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Read in January, 2008
I was given a copy of this book ex libris from a high school in Vermont. And that's exactly what it smelled like, which was reason enough for me to open it and stick my nose in it for all 7 scenes. The particular copy I was given contained an essay called "The Catastrophe of Success", written by Tennessee Williams himself, in which he gives a very Jay-Z-esque rags to riches account of his life pre and post "The Glass Menagerie". His ruminating on the philosophical woes of be...more
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
recommended to Liz by:
um..me.
recommends it for: EVERYONE, especially artsy people
recommends it for: EVERYONE, especially artsy people
I love love love this book. My friend and I read this book last year when we could pick our books for English, and we absolutely adore it. I love...just everything about it. The underlying theme isolation with Laura is so beautiful. If you go on iTunes and search "The Glass Menagerie" you can find this really gorgeous song, "The Glass Menagerie - Pt II (Blue Roses/ Laura's Theme)", and it's amazing.
Anyways, if you read this book in school, read it before you do as a class....more
Anyways, if you read this book in school, read it before you do as a class....more
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
recommends it for:
Anyone. I'm sure it's my fault that I don't like it.
As a theater major I am supposed to love Tennessee Williams, and I totally, totally don't. I say good for him for writing a whole series of plays where he got to watch half-naked men run around onstage; way to take one for the rest of the frustrated queens, Tenn. They are forever grateful. But everything else about him sucks. Oh, he's good at naming people . . . I guess I can give him points for good names.
Hmmm. Now I kind of want to have two girls and name them Blanche and Stella. I...more
Hmmm. Now I kind of want to have two girls and name them Blanche and Stella. I...more
Read in August, 2008
The most interesting parts of "The Glass Menagerie" are Williams's stage directions. Williams advise that the theater group putting on Menagerie to "escape the photographic . . . as we al have come to know how useless the photographic is in modern art," and he does this through a series of interesting lighting choices as well as a screen set up in the background with various images and/or quotes. As someone who loves biographies of writers as much as their works, I'd have to ...more
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
to-read
(on 364 people's shelves)
plays (on 277 people's shelves)
classics (on 135 people's shelves)
drama (on 122 people's shelves)
fiction (on 75 people's shelves)
theatre (on 34 people's shelves)
play (on 29 people's shelves)
theater (on 25 people's shelves)
currently-reading (on 24 people's shelves)
classic (on 22 people's shelves)
More shelves...
plays (on 277 people's shelves)
classics (on 135 people's shelves)
drama (on 122 people's shelves)
fiction (on 75 people's shelves)
theatre (on 34 people's shelves)
play (on 29 people's shelves)
theater (on 25 people's shelves)
currently-reading (on 24 people's shelves)
classic (on 22 people's shelves)
More shelves...
