I found this in the Schwules Museum in Berlin, Deutschland along with "Endstation Sehnsucht" ("A Streetcard Named Desire"). I can't remember having read the English-language version of "The Glass Menagerie", although certainly I'm familiar with the play, having been a theatre major at Niagara University and NYU, and having seen at least one version of this play, featuring Katharine Hepburn, on television in the 1970's. My German is intermediate level; I read it and understand it better than I speak it. Nonetheless, I understand written German well enough to have comprehended the main themes of this play, despite my lack of advanced German vocabulary. That being said, I will now review this play as if I had read it in English.

First of all, if you ever become suicidally depressed, question the value of your life and think about ending it all, then remember that you're probably better off than Laura Wingfield, who unfortunately I cannot refer to as a tragic heroine, since being a heroine, even an anti-heroine, implies having an existential, conquering nature (think Brunnhilde or Medea). Unfortunately Laura is crippled emotionally as well as physically, and seemingly afraid of everything; in today's culture, she would probably be committing cybersuicide. I found myself getting angry at Laura and her obsession with her glass menagerie (a 1940's metaphor for obsessive-compulsive disorder); probably because I'm angry at that fear-ridden part of myself. On the other hand, her brother Tom is either purposely unaware, or being insensitive, in suggesting to Amanda that Jim O'Connor come over to the Wingfield's for dinner so that Laura can meet a man. Because unfortunately Jim ends up being engaged to Betty, and therefore will not be able to whisk Laura away to wedded bliss like a knight in shining armour. Thus, according to Tennessee William's perspective in 1945, men are bastards (this is still true today); Tom, Mrs. Wingfield's absentee husband, and even two-timing (at least as Laura sees it) Jim O'Connor also fit that description.

In the end, Laura is the ultimate victim, Tom is the ultimate bastard, and Amanda ss the ultimate overbearing, nagging yet neglectful mother. And yet, I feel sorry for Amanda for having been abandoned by her "no-good man", as Laura was by Jim O'Connor. Laura is William's first "delicate soul" (the next being Blanche DuBois); given that most homosexuals were closeted in 1940's America, Williams, as a gay man, lived vicariously through these women. His male characters, on the other hand, can be brutes (IE Stanley Kowalski, or the kind of guy Sal Mineo or Pier Paolo Pasolini were interesting in meeting). Even though I may sound flippant in this review, I still find "Das Glasmenagerie" to be authentically, heartbreakingly and bleakly tragic. When Laura blows out the candles at the close of the play, it's as if hope is non-existent and she will remain in that house for the rest of her life. The three characters in this play share a hell similar to those of Sartre's "No Exit". I hope anyone who reads this play will be inspired to transcend their fears and live life to the fullest (I know, easier said than done), lest they end up like Tom, Amanda and Laura. ( )

*All reviews are from online reviews*

The Glass Menagerie follows the lives of a family in St. Louis in the 1930s and is recalled as a memory from the narrator Tom . Amanda, the mother, is without her de ella's alcoholic husband de ella, who has abandoned the family years before, and lives with her two children, Tom and Laura.

Essay included: The Catastrophe Of Success

Classic Williams ( )

It's a charming window into the past, but I have to say the meaning of the story escapes me. The best I can muster is that, although Tom needs adventure and to have his own life separate from his family, he will always feel a responsibility for his sister who he abandoned. ( )