The Glass Menagerie and The House of Yes - Book Report/Review Example

'The Glass Menagerie' and 'The House of Yes' A Compare and Contrast Essay Order No. 292355 20988 'The Glass Menagerie' is a very sensitive family drama by Tennessee Williams that is so melancholic that it really tugs at the heart of its audiences. The play was a resounding box- office success when it was performed in Broadway in 1945. The play centers around three main characters - i.e. Amanda Wingfield, the mother of Laura and Tom who were two adult children. The 'House of Yes' by playwright Wendy Macleod is an obsidian - black comedy, that unfurls around the Pascals for whom time stood still at Kennedy's assassination. In 1990, this play was premiered at 'The Magic Theater' with a cast comprising of two male characters and three female characters. This play is a shocking blend of family frivolity and a good dose of deadly political allegory. The characters of both these plays are going to be compared and contrasted with each other bringing out the essence of each play. In the 'Glass Menagerie' we find Amanda Wingfield, Laura and Tom's mother, clinging frantically to things of the past and misses out on reality, which is described as - "Her life is paranoia" Amanda is unwittingly foolish peppered with both cruelty and tenderness that she displays according to her moods. Though Amanda loved her children, she constantly expects too much from them and forcefully tries to get them to do what she wants. She reprimands Tom for his small fledgling job and bickers about his eating habits and personality. Tom retaliates by saying - "I haven't enjoyed one bite of this dinner because of your constant directions on how to eat it. It's you that makes me rush through meals with your hawk-like attention to every bite I take." Amanda does not spare her daughter Laura too, knowing pretty well that the girl is too shy and introverted yet she forces her to be outgoing and meet suitors. She reminisces about her own life in days gone by when she had 17 gentlemen callers in one day. In Macleod's black comedy, we find that the play revolves around obsessive and incestuous affairs that take place within the family which seems to be taken quite lightly by the mother, Mrs. Pascal, who continuously laments the desertion of the family by her wayward husband. "The resulting battle over Marty becomes something of a class struggle between the Pascals' poetic insanity and Lesly's plebian pragmatism." Steven Mikulan, LA Weekly. Quite like Amanda in "The Glass Menagerie", Mrs. Pascal tries to protect the members of her family at any cost, but she too fails miserably in her attempts because she does not see the reality of things. The Glass Menagerie's protagonist Laura is a cripple who is not only extremely shy but incredibly introverted. She suffers from a fixation on her collection of glass figurines and in fact could be compared to them for her exquisite fragility. Laura gave up her zest of life when she became crippled, as all her hopes and ambitions were dashed to the ground. Apparently, the only thing that interested her was a collection of old music records and her collection of animal figurines "the glass menagerie." Jim O'Connor was Laura's potential suitor, but all her hopes are dashed when Jim tells her he is going to be married shortly. The two plays set out the course life takes for the various characters, after they have been deserted by the father, and the irreparable harm this event does to their lives. Tom wishes to escape his humdrum existence, which in his own words was 'without any change or adventure." Marty O'Pascal, is on the other hand seeking to chalk out a new life for himself along with Leslie, normal in its scope but away from the dysfunctional members who constitute his family. The matriarch, in both the cases is unable to handle the emotional baggage of having been deserted by their husbands, which ultimately destroys the life of their children. The two plays fit into the mould of a memory play, and for the Glass Menagerie, Williams himself accepted this in the production notes for the play. The characters in both the plays are desperate to leave behind their present lot in life and seek new pastures, which lead them to take extreme steps. Darryl E. Haley has called Tom "a sensitive, artistic man who is forced by circumstances into a phenomenological situation" and who is forced to lead the life of a provider to his mother and younger sister or what he himself calls "2x4 situation." Tom resents his job, his mother's loquaciousness, the utter boredom of his life, yet he hesitates to leave this because he cares for his sister. Both Tom and Marty are on the lookout to lead a more normal life, yet they know that in order to do so, they would have to trample upon sensitive emotions and discard their family members. Marty's incestuous relationship with his sister is made explicit but the same is not the case with Tom. His love for his sister is brotherly, but certain critics have gone into exploring the reasons behind his extreme unwillingness to desert Laura. Harold Bloom, in his Introduction to Tennessee Williams explicates this notion when he says that the character of Tom is the "driving force" of the Glass Menagerie but he is also symbolic of the "repressed representation of the quasi-incestuous and doomed love" which exists between him and the 'exquisitely fragile,' Laura, who exhibits extreme low self-esteem and a slightly schizophrenic tendency. (Harold Bloom, 1987) Marty on the other hand, has a shared past with his sister, and attempts to break free by getting married to Leslie. The tragedy in the lives of these two characters, Tom and Marty, is their inability to break the shackles placed by society and tread their own path. They are prisoners of their conscience, bounded by the rope of righteousness which prevents them from taking the steps necessary to find their own happiness. When Marty tries to do this, by bringing home his fiance, his sister Jackie, consumed by rage ultimately kills him, while in the case of Tom we are left wondering what his fate is going to be after he has walked out. Tom Wingfield, in spite of having stepped out and away from his family in the end finds that he is no more free now than he was when he lived with them. Laura and Amanda are etched deep into his subconscious mind and how much ever he tries to, he cannot let go of the memories, and by clinging on to these remembrances he is still connected to them. In his fifth soliloquy he says that he was "more faithful than I intended to be" and it is this connection to his past that prevents him from being happy in spite of having broken the bonds of his confinement. The sisters in the two plays, Laura and Jackie, have borne the brunt of the father's desertion and their lives are completely dependent on the other male figure in their lives, that is, the brother. They have fragile emotions, live in a world of make-believe, and any attempt to alter this arrangement leads to tragic consequences. Laura is as fragile as the glass figures that make up her menagerie, while Jackie has nervous disorders which threaten the placid existence of her family whenever she is urged to change the status quo of her ordered relationships. Esther Merle Jackson in her work "The Synthetic Myth," has called the play the Glass Menagerie "schematic explication of modern life" (26), and Wendy McLeod's play "The House of Yes" can be represented on the same level, although the vagaries of modern life have considerably altered with the passage of time, and thus McLeod's play crosses the threshold where Tennessee Williams restrains his characters from crossing. Both the plays traverse the area between the conventional values which guide the lives of individuals and the realities which are so different from these values. The two plays deal with the complexities of modern life and the desire of the protagonists to escape. The characters in both the plays display varying tendencies that border on the fanatic to the weird. The characters seem to be flitting through reality and abnormality. Both the plays are filled with dark moments interspersed with a few lighter moments. They defy convention and trail into somewhat hideous territory. All the characters of both the plays - 'The Glass Menagerie' and 'The House of Yes' display insanity because they seem to be far away from reality and what is going on in the outside world. The sanest characters in both the plays are Tom from 'The Glass Menagerie' and Marty from 'The House of Yes.' The two plays gained critical acclaim and are well appreciated even to this day. References Bloom, Harold. Introduction. Tennessee Williams. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea House, 1987. 1-8. Jackson, Esther M. "The Synthetic Myth." In Tennessee Williams. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea House, 1987. 23-42. http://www.etsu.edu/haleyd/essay1.html Mikulan, Steven. "Family Affairs: Shattering houses of Yes and Glass." LA Weekly 16 November 1990. Wendy Macleod: The House of Yes. www.wendymacleod.com/plays/house_of_yes.shtml The Glass Menagerie characters plays.about.com/od/plays/a/glassmenagerie.htm Read More