Beginning of Essay
In the drama, The Glass Menagerie (1945), Tennessee Williams reflects upon personal experiences he and his family encountered during the Depression of the 1930’s. As a lower class family, the characters are placed in the slums of St. Louis in 1935. The protag ....

Middle of Essay
.... to function in the outside world, Laura becomes a liability to both Tom and Amanda. The gentleman caller, Jim O’Connor, is a friend of Tom’s from the warehouse. He is an ambitious young man, who strives for the American Dream through hard work and optimism. Jim offers the Wingfields hope for the future: Tom: He is the most realistic character in the play, being an emissary from a world of reality that we were somehow set apart from. But since I have a poet’s weakness for symbols, I am using this character also as a symbol; he is the long-delayed but always expected something that we live for (23). Williams gives the reader many emb ....