Just a quickie on Glass

          I already did my Glass vs. Streetcar post, but i just want to talk a little bit about psychology in The Glass Menagerie. There are many psychological problems with the characters in this play. We’ll start with Tom. Tom was unfit to support his family. He didn’t have the willpower to go to work everyday and put up with his family.

“You think I want to spend fifty-five years down there in that- celotex interior! With- fluorescent- tubes! Look! I’d rather somebody picked up a crowbar and battered out my brains- than go back mornings! I go! Every time you come in yelling that God damn ‘Rise and shine!’ ‘Rise and shine!’ I say to myself, ‘How lucky dead people are!’

          I think this is a perfect example of how Tom can’t deal with his problems psychologically and ends up walking out on the family.

          Laura is also incapable of acting like an adult because she is so unbelievably shy and mentally affected, she couldn’t even look at the man she was about to go on a date with. As Jim walked in the door, Laura immediately jumped behind the door and hid there until Jim approached her. The first question Jim, her first gentleman caller asks her, Laura retorts, “Excuse me- I haven’t finished playing the Victrola” and awkwardly leaving the scene, leaving Jim in a state of confusion, while he was able to immediately pick up on her psychological issues.

          Amanda is also psychological affected because she loves her children so much but doesn’t know how to communicate with them. The constant bickering and senseless talk she does starts fights with her kids, which lead to all 3 of their psychological issues. It is her rants such as:

“Honey, don’t push with your fingers. If you have to push with something, the thing to push with is a crust of bread. And chew- chew! Animals have secretions in their stomachs which enable them to digest food without mastication, but human beings are supposed to chew their food before they swallow it down. Eat food leisurely, son, and really enjoy it. A well-cooked meal has lots of delicate flavors that have to be held in the mouth for appreciation. So chew your food and give your salivary glands a chance to function!”

          When she says things like this, that is when Tom gets upset and can’t deal with his problems, Amanda yells back and is an emotional wreck because she thinks that her children aren’t as successful as they should be, and Laura is caught in the middle with nothing to say, and is shy and quite in the corner, making her shyness and psychological issues even worse.