Tennessee Williams" "The Glass Menagerie" is an insightful play about Williams's portrayal about himself. When writers are in the process of writing a play they try to include a deeper meaning or insight about one's self or about life as a whole. Since this play is established as a memory play, Williams gives the audience a glance at his own life. However, being a memory play, many events are exaggerated and these exaggerations describe how Williams felt during these moments. The way Williams has created the complex character of Amanda Wingfield may reflect how Williams own mother may have been. The overbearing and domineering mother, Amanda, spends much of her time reliving her past days as a southern belle. She desperately hopes her daughter, Laura, will get married. The glass menagerie symbolizes Amanda Wingfield's overwhelming need to cling to her past, and her paranoia of being alone, so she keeps herself surrounded by the menagerie and her memories. Furthermore, Amanda resents the poverty-stricken neighborhood, in which she lives, so much that she needs to mentally escape from it. She is constantly inventing imaginary romances to escape from the depressing reality of her existence only to indulge in self-deceptions. She is so obsessed with her make belief world that she refuses to accept the truth of her real world. Amanda constantly escapes into her past in order to evade her present problems and truths. This inability to deal with her present circumstances becomes the greatest flaw in her character. As a result, she loses all confidence in her ability face life with its reality. Her life therefore, becomes a vicious circle of escapes and evasions from the facts of everyday life. She is more comfortable with living in the past and dwelling with the events of her youth. Her denial of the present is ingrained in her consciousness to the point that she is not prepared to accept her own daughter's disability.
