American Literature Drama Test Notes

The Glass Menagerie (Tennessee Williams)

- A ground breaking play (multimedia incorporation and setup)
- Allusions
Importance of Staging:
- Use of multi-media=screen backdrop (slides music color gels)
- Use of narrator/character= Tom is both the narrator telling the story (memory
play) and a character in the present
- Single Setting= Wingfield Apartment
Amanda Wingfield and Jay Gatsby
- Both have a problem with time and being in the crrect time
a) Gatsby wants to go backt o his time with daisy
b) Amanda wants her daughter to have her experience that she remembers
she had as a courted young woman (caught up in memories trying to make them an
actuality for Laura)
- Both have issues/involvement with money
a) Gatsby has gone from poor to rich in order to buy love and the past
b) Amanda has slipped from the gentile to the impoverished
- Both live in their distorted memories or unrealistic dreams. Both confuse dream
and reality and live in a dream world
a) Gatsby dreams of being Daisy’s only love
b) Amanda dreams of her dysfunctional daughter being a belle
- This shyness is Laura’s most affecting problem (she also has a
limp, but that isn’t her major problem, the reaction to being intensely self-consumed and
shyness is the main problem)
- Williams thoughts on the power of feelings/emotions
a) Strong emotions destroy (Tom and Amanda hold strong emotions and
aren’t successful people; Lara has strong emotions but keeps them buried inside [just as
destructive])
b) Strong emotions make it hard to live comfortably in the mundane world
- Frequently creates fragile female characters
- Had a sister who was unstable, she was given harsh electroshock
treatments, never recovered (carried it as a memory, if he would have been there for her
to protect her
a) Amanda (on surface seems bold, but she isn’t what she appears)
b) Laura (appears to be as fragile as glass, shy without skills and
romantically fragile, seems she could easily break)
-Frequently created trapped or cornered men
a) Tom is a poet, Williams often shows creative/sensitive men who are
trapped/deadened by traditional society (don’t understand poetic sensibility [misread or
condemn it])
b) Tom is oppressed by
- His mother (treats him like a child)
- His job (mind-deadening job)
His sense of duty to his sister (his own awareness)
-Use of Symbolism
 a) Fire Escape (come in and out, we are to understand that inside there is
an emotional/familial fire bubbling; Tom often goes out there to escape what is going on
in the apartment)
b) The Glass Menagerie (Laura collects little glass animals [they are
fragile and breakable]
c) The Unicorn (particularly fond of mystical beast, A real symbol for
Laura)
d) The Gentleman caller (southern euphemism for a date/bf)
- Williams deals with the dysfunctional Family
-Amanda
-Laura
-Tom
- Amanda-Tom
Allusions
Shorthand
-Proscenium: arch divides real (audience) world from the world of the stage
a) Narrator breaks off and talks to us
Flower of the Jonquil: Youth is one of beauty with flowers and bows and dresses,
fun times she had
The Jewel Box: Looks at the tropical plants there instead of going to typing
school
Magazines: Had serials in them (story that came out in parts)
Scarlett O’Hara: A southern belle, beautiful and alluring southern woman, has a
hard life yet perseveres
El Diablo:
The Jolly Roger: Tom wants to be a merchant marine
Eagles Nest: Reference to Hitlers mountaintop retreat Lost Generation: Personal
brewing, and international bubbling about stuff happening after WWI and how there was
bound to be a WWII
Guernica: A slaughter in the Spanish Civil War (Picasso)
Annunciation: Messenger from God comes to Mary and tells her she will
conceive Jesus (a momentous revelation!) allusion to the bible
Kitchenette: idea that this is a fairly cramped quarters (Laura sleeps in living
room)
Candelabrum: Candlesticks and holder
Worlds Fair: Century of Progress (forward thinking hes done p 72)
US Merchant Marines: Official member of merchant marines
Pirates of Penzance: Play he was in
Victrola: Wind up music playing machine
Lifesavers: Candy, and saving ones life
Scene 2: Complications revolve around Laura (businesswoman, find a boyfriend)
- Laura doesn’t want to go out, wants to stay and play with her glass menagerie
(lacks Dreams)
Scene 3: Spotlight on Tom (He wants to learn new things, he has dreams)
- Amanda is out of touch on both of her kids (pulling back on tom, wanting
Amanda to be more)
 - Fight between Tom and Mom
- He doesn’t like his job (he pays rent)
- Insane Mr. Lawrence
a) When mom and brother fight, it’s Laura that suffers (tearing her
apart because she is delicate and fragile [like her glass menagerie])
- These people’s lives are simmering (imagery thru fire; Like a boiling pot)
Scene 5
- Moon on pg 49
Scene 6
- Jim and Laura are absolute opposite personalities
- She plays her dads old records even though he’s been gone out of her life since
she was eight
Scene 7
He finally remembers her from high school, go over their memories
- He comforts her about her cripple ness
- The Torch: Yearbook
- Tells her she has inferiority Complex
a) That’s her main problem
- An unresolved ending
1) Tom is going thru life racked by guilt while being in merchant marine
because he abandoned his family just like his father (Amanda and Laura are doing the
same sort of things)
2)
- She was willing to sacrifice the horn and become normal, she thought she had
love and Jim washers so she was wiling to make that change (when he pulls out, she is no
longer ok with it)
a) Unicorns are innocence (broken innocence), they are mythical
beasts that cannot be attained
-We find out that Jim has a fiancé betty
a) Didn’t know the purpose of the invite, feels bad
- He had kissed her, broken the horn off of the unicorn
-Use of Color and Lighting (quiz)
Most of my Glass Menagerie notes are in my book, sorry!

THE RAISIN IN THE SUN

Word Association
- Life:
- Energy:
- Search:
- Movement:
- Release:
- Stability:
- Mobility:
- Heritage:
- Walter Lee:
- Mama (Lena):
 - Ruth:
- Beneatha:
- George:
- Asagai:
Tension
- Between Walter Lee, Mama, Ruth, and Beneatha
a) Walter Lee and Ruth have conflicts
- Not much money
-He talks with this friends that Ruth doesn’t like them
- Ruth wont give kid 50 cents because she says they don’t have it,
Walter gives him a whole dollar
- Walter Lee is trying to change his life because he hates what he
does, and Ruth tells her to eat and go to work
a) Hates how he is 35, unsuccessful, boy sleeps on couch
b) The women/family do not understand him
- Walter Lee tells Beneatha she is weird for being a doctor, needs
to be like all other women (get married and stay in the home)
- Mama “spoils” her child
a) She lost her husband, she loved him, says Walter lee is
just like him
- When you tell them you’re sick, say the flu because white people
get it so they don’t think you’re just making up an excuse
- Mama doesn’t go to supermarket, frightened by them, goes to the
traditional market
- Mama’s plant doesnt get a single speck of sunlight the first day
a) But it has spirit, just like Bennie and Walter
- Mama and Big Walter lost a baby (Big Walter was so sad and depressed)
a) Loved his children, wanted them to have and be something
- Mama yells at Beneatha for trying to learn guitar (she experiments all the
time and never sticks with anything)
a) They laugh at her because she wants to express herself
b) They think its funny that they say she might not marry
- Beneatha says she is tired of hearing about God getting credit for things
humans do, Mama slaps her hard, Makes her say there is still God in mothers house
a) Mama strongly enforces Christian values
- Asagai gives her robe, calls her alaiyo , Mama makes stereotypical
comments about Africa that are obviously inaccurate, Asagai is too polite to react
- The Check ($10,000)
a) Mama could take a trip and forget about the family
b) WILL Help pay for Beneatha’s medical school (no matter where)
c) Get a summer home for vacation where Travis could play in the yard
d) Walter wants to open a liquor store
- Mama wont have any part of it
e) Mama gives him 3k for Beneatha’s medical school, 3k for him and tells him to
be the head of the family the way he’s supposed to be (she trusts and loves him!)
- Asks Ruth to put the check away as soon as she gets it
 a) Tells Walter lee that she will never invest in a liquor store
- Walter Lee says there is no peace in his house
a) He don’t got nothing, he aint gonna be nothing (doesn’t even think he
has an actual job, he is like a servant) (sees his future as empty nothingness)
- Walter Lee says money is life (not freedom): the newer generation of blacks has
changed (children so different from mama)
- Ruth is pregnant, Mama wants him to stand up and be like his daddy (tell Ruth
to not abort the baby), he walks out “a disgrace to his fathers memory”
a) He goes out and drinks his pains away
- Beneatha
- Walter Lee yells at George and makes fun of him and the education he has
a) Probably jealous of his opportunities
- George calls him Prometheus, they have never heard it before
b) Shows their immense lack of education
- Mama buys a house in a place where only whites live
a) Ruth is very happy to say good bye to misery and move into a new
home
- There’s a whole lot of sunlight at the new house (light imagery)
- Walter Lee tells mama she’s the head and she can run the family however she
wants because its her money
- Ruth gets a call from her husband’s employer saying that he will get fired
tomorrow if he doesn’t show up because he hasn’t gone the last 3 days
a) Mama goes to the bar to get him, tells him how his dad died with
dignity even through enduring more hardship
b) he compares his opportunity to mamas opportunity to leave the south,
and how now that he didn’t do it he thinks that one opportunity will never come again
- She gives him a third of the money to do whatever he wants with
in a checking account and be the head of the family
- Family gives Mama a gardening tool kit to be their “Mrs. Miniver”
a) Travis gives grandma a “gardening” hat
- She is very excited they are happy to be in new house
- Ruth and Walter are seen in happy embrace, unlike the fighting they
were doing back in the old place
- A man comes to their household to tell them how they want to change the notion
that colored people are what cause problems and crime when they moved places
a) a hard-working honest people community
- He tells them its not race prejudice, but a matter of cultural background
a) Tells them negroe families are happier when they live in their
own communities
- Makes them an offer to buy the house from them at a financial gain to
the family
a) Walter Lee tells him to leave without letting him tell him the
financial details, The man straight up says how they are not wanted in that community
- They tells mama that they want a fine family of colored people out in
Clyborne Park
a) Lie to her, but she knows when she sees the business card (?)
 - They mock and the way he tries to sugar coat situation
- Mama is taking the ratty looking old plant to the new house because IT EXPRESSES
HER
a) Gets upset when he almost makes her ruin her plant
- Bobo tells Walter Lee that Willie never showed up to the train station to go to
Springfield (he is nowhere to be found, Willie took the money and is gone)
a) Walter Lee says how he put his whole life in his hands, money made from his
fathers flesh
b) He lost all the money! ($6,500, including what B needed for medical school)
- Mama talks about how hard his dad worked and now Walter has given it
all away in one day (asks God for strength numerous times)
-Beneatha tells Asagai how he gave away the money in a bad investment
a) Says Mama is the crazy one that gave away her future (the end for Beneatha)
- All the dreams in this house cant depend on what happened when and
whether or not a man died (all about those insurance money)
- You need to understand that Mama still believes she can change things
- Asagai invites her back to Nigeria (home)
a) B says too many things have happened, shes all mixed up, she will sit
and think
- B makes fun of him like an “entrepreneur”, mocks him for his mistake by creating false
things he could be going out and doing like a meeting at US Steel
- Mama wants to stay in the house, but Ruth says she will work like no other to get the
heck out of there
a) Mama offers to maybe just fix the house, ”Learn to give up some things and
hold on to what you got”
- Walter Lee: He who gets and he who doesn’t get (mixed up and always
worrying trying to figure out whats right and wrong, and that makes us be taken
advantage of) (This world is all about taking, He who takes the most is the smartest, and
it don’t make a difference how)
a) Walter Lee invites the Clybourne Park guy back to try to get money
from his initial offer
- Talk of dreams and sunlight are all dead now, we are dead says Beneatha
b) Walter Says hes fine with degrading himself and accepting the offer,
that he will even get on his knees and beg for that money and acknowledge that they
would be dirtying up the neighborhood
- Beneatha said that Walter Lee is no brother of mine, that he wasn’t a man
a) Mama says who gave you the privilege to think you’re better than him
- I taught you to love him (there’s always something left to love)
- You need to love people the most when they are at their
lowest and cant believe in themselves, take into account what he’s gone thru to get to
where he is child
- Mama forces Travis to stay, and says Walter needs to teach him good like Willie
Harris taught him
- Walter Lee tells the man about his family and its situations, how they come from
a long line of proud people, Tells him that his father earned the house brick by brick so
they will move in and cause no trouble
 - As he leaves he says, I sure hope you people know what youre
doing
-They start moving boxes, they are all happy and show affection to each other
a) B tells her family about how Asagai asked her to marry him
- Mama tells ruth how Walter Lee became a man today, like a rainbow after the rain
- Mama is very sad to leave her house, but then she turns and grabs her plant as is very
happy again
Review
The Plant a symbol
a) Mama’s plant
b) Shabby but doesn’t get enough sunlight
- Struggling, environmental issues
- She is nurturing this plant, nothing in its environment induces it to grow
a) What else is Mama trying to nurture but is really in a bad
environment? (Children/Travis)
Takes place in the 1950’s , Tenement area of Chicago
a) Limited number of more advanced jobs for blacks
Mama tells Walter Lee that he is shaming his race/family/ancestors by taking a slap at
who he is in order to make money (like selling himself back into slavery)
- Accuse Mrs. Hansburry that she turns the people every which way, bipolar shifting
W.L. is playing the music of Jazz (comes from the black culture in America)
a) B Says we are not going to listen to this assimilationist junk anymore, puts on
African music (lose white culture into black cultural norm)