The Glass Menagerie
by Tennessee Williams
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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i think that my appreciation of this book is less than it probably should be, but it may have something to do with how i came to read it. i was in a class in college that seemed to be going in one direction, but then the professor changed and we got a student that seemed to know not a whole lot more than we did. anyway, long story not so long, we read the glass menagerie, but spent more time watching and talking about the movie because the student teaching teh class was a drama major or someth...more
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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
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Read in January, 2001
Great play.
I'm reviewing it only because we read it out loud my senior year of high school and I did the part of the overbearing mother.
It was insisted that I use a Southern accent.
Best part-- while reading the stage directions, a certain classmate (Apple!) read the words "nickle clasp" as "nipple clamp," which I immediately pointed out and he repeated every time he attempted the line.
It was fabulous.
Mainly because he may not have actually said it in...more
I'm reviewing it only because we read it out loud my senior year of high school and I did the part of the overbearing mother.
It was insisted that I use a Southern accent.
Best part-- while reading the stage directions, a certain classmate (Apple!) read the words "nickle clasp" as "nipple clamp," which I immediately pointed out and he repeated every time he attempted the line.
It was fabulous.
Mainly because he may not have actually said it in...more
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Has a copy to sell/swap
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Read in April, 2008
recommends it for:
those who jam on reading plays
1. Amanda = Willie Loman. I hate delusional parents that think their children are The Best Ever and are DUE success.
2. I had seen this as a play in 8th grade and did not like it especially much I think. I liked it more this time around, mostly because I was making MAD literary connections.
3. Tennessee Williams is a control freak. His "SCREEN" with images is a horrible idea.
4. Jim would not actually be that nice (and attracted to) to someone as awkward as Laura.
2. I had seen this as a play in 8th grade and did not like it especially much I think. I liked it more this time around, mostly because I was making MAD literary connections.
3. Tennessee Williams is a control freak. His "SCREEN" with images is a horrible idea.
4. Jim would not actually be that nice (and attracted to) to someone as awkward as Laura.
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Read in May, 2006
This Tennessee Williams play is terrific! I really enjoyed it, even though it's sad. I think it would be enjoyed by a lot of teenagers who feel alienated from their parents or who feel overly protected by the same. Probably why it's read in so many high schools, eh? I can't wait to see a production of it! :D
Highly recommended for ages 14-15 and up. Great stuff and it's short! Might as well expand your cultural literacy with the short things at the very least!!
Highly recommended for ages 14-15 and up. Great stuff and it's short! Might as well expand your cultural literacy with the short things at the very least!!
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book data (includes all editions)
avg rating (all editions): 3.62 (5346 ratings) avg rating (this edition): 3.62 (5008 ratings) number of reviews: 207popular shelves
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quote
"Yes, I have tricks in my pocket, I have things up my sleeve. But I am the opposite of a stage magician. He gives you illusion that has the appearance of truth. I give you truth in the pleasant disguise of illusion."
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