Hello, Good Bye.

 Hello, Good Bye.

“Hello. Good Bye.” If this is my first time seeing this sentence, I wouldn’t think that this would be the last sentence that a father said to his family. But that was exactly the case in the play The Glass Menagerie. This is one of the most famous American literature pieces. The Glass Menagerie is written by Tennessee Williams. When I first started to read it, I thought this is just a play about the life of ordinary People in America. But as I kept on reading, I found out that there are so much more than that.

In The Glass Menagerie, Tom Wingfield is not only one of the characters in the play, but also the narrator of the play. He says at the beginning of the play, “The scene is memory and is therefore nonrealistic. Memory takes a lot of poetic licenses. It omits some details, others are exaggerated, according to the emotional value of the articles it touches, for memory is seated predominantly in the heart.” Then, the story begins. The main characters are Amanda(Tom’s mother), Laura(Tom’s younger sister), Jim(The gentleman caller that Tom found for Laura) and Tom. In the book, Tom’s father left the rest of the family and went on to different places in the world. Tom works himself hard to support the family. Laura was supposed to go to the business school and learn how to type, but she stopped going to the business school because of her extreme shyness. Amanda kept giving the order to Tom and asks him to care for his family more. Tom’s patience was eventually used up. However, when Amanda mentioned that he can find a gentleman caller for Laura and then go to wherever he wants, Tom invited his friend Jim home to meet Laura. However, when Amanda finds out that Jim is engaged already, she gets really mad at Tom. They had a huge argument. In the end, Tom left the family just like his father did.

Since this is a play about the life of a family, I thought it was going to talk about the love among family members and how they support each other. But I was wrong. While I was reading, I eventually realized that the most important information was about the things that can break up a family. Everyone in the book doesn't have the life that he/she desires. And they all chose to run away from this fact. Amanda wanted a gentleman caller to take care of her daughter, but she couldn’t. Therefore, she talks about her “good old days” when she had seventeen gentlemen callers going after her. “I remember one Sunday afternoon in Blue Mountain when your mother was a girl she received-seventeen-gentlemen callers!” Seventeen for Amanda must’ve been a long time ago. But she still likes to talk about it all the time. Maybe to prove to her children that she could have a better life. Or maybe to give herself satisfied and hopeful. Tom wants to be a writer and travel around the world, finding his own adventures, but he couldn’t. Therefore, he stands in the fire escape, smoking, seeing how other people in his age enjoying their lives, hanging around. When he was in the fire escape, he said to himself, “You could see them kissing behind ashpits and telephone poles. This was the compensation of lives that passed like mine, without change or adventure. Changes and adventure, however, were imminent this year. They were waiting around the corner for all these dancing kids.” He desires changes and adventures, but because of his family, all he could do was to stay in the warehouse, doing such a boring job every day, without any change.  Laura, I don’t know what she wants. But it seems like she doesn’t want anything. She doesn’t like to be with other people because of her shyness. Therefore, she spends days staying with her glass menagerie, doing nothing else. They all run away from their true lives. And that eventually breaks this already unstable family apart.

The staging in the movie was quite different from what I imagined what it would be after reading the play. When I was reading the play, I thought Tom and his family live in an apartment of one building and the dancing hall is beside the building. Therefore, when Tom looks out from the dance hall, he can see what people are doing down there. However, in the movie, the dance hall is right in front of his door. Even though it is different from the play version, it made more sense to the audience when Jim and Laura start to dance together with the music coming out from the dance hall. It was so near to the apartment so that they can hear the music clearly and feel as if they are in the dance hall. Also, even though the audience already knows that the apartment is very small and crowded, the movie version gives them a more direct feeling of how tiny it is. There is hardly any gaps between each furniture. Laura lives in the living room, sleeping on the daybed. She has almost no private space in this place. As soon as Amanda walks into the house, she can see what Laura is doing. The typewriter and the glass menagerie are all placed in the corner. When Jim and Laura try to dance, they don’t have a place to walk around and therefore, Jim hits the table and the unicorn fall off. This might also be a reason why Amanda and Tom argue so much. They have to face each other all the time and all the little conflicts keep adding up until the relationship between two of them completely breaks.

The character that I like the most it, Amanda. It is not because of her personality, even though it is really impressive. The reason why I like this character is that she seems very interesting. I think of her actions and the reasons why she acts like that. For example, in the book, Amanda always seems so rude and not understanding. However, when she argues with Tom in the movie, I can always see her eyes filled with tears. It changed the way I think of this character a lot. When she talks about finding Laura a gentleman caller, she says to Tom, “I mean that as soon as Laura has got somebody to take care of her, married, a home of her own, independently-why, then you’ll be free to go wherever you please on land, on sea, whichever way the wind blows you!” When I saw this line in the play, I thought Amanda is an irresponsible mother. She doesn’t love Tom at all. She treats Tom like a tool that she can throw away after use. Nevertheless, in the movie, she said these lines with sadness and tears in her eyes. At that moment, I really felt her love towards Laura. And also, her hopelessness. She was almost trading with Tom. She hopes that Laura can have a security for the rest of her life. The way that the actress of Amanda present this character led me thinks very differently about this character. Maybe, she loves her children more than anyone else, but the stress she has had made her a beast. A beast that asks for more things and never satisfies.

This play tells about the ordinary life of an ordinary family. However, the tension among the families kept growing and eventually tears it apart. I thought this play is very straightforward. Then, I found out that each character can be viewed differently. Some people might think Tom is selfish, but some might admire his courage of following his heart and chase his dream. Some people might think Amanda is cold, but some might be touched by her caring towards her child. Some people might think Laura is useless, but some might have sympathy for her and thinks she is innocent. However, no matter how people view them, the ending of the family won’t change. The endless auguring had used up all the patience and love they have. Without a word, Tom left the family. His action was his last sentence, the same one as his father had said, “Hello, Good Bye.”