The New Wave of twentieth century American drama was of an expressionistic and experimental style which

explored the interior landscape of the individual’s mind as much as the external. As a reactionary movement
against realism, their presentation is subjective, their conflicts primarily psychological, as the imitation of
life is replaced by the ecstatic evocation of mental states. Paul T. Nolan defines the memory play as “a
projection of the conscious mind…concerned with only that action that is understood and retained by the
mind of the protagonist.:
Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie is a memory play as it set inside the conscious mind of Tom
Wingfield and stands aloof from outside testimony. Although Tom assumes the “truth” of his memory, one is
aware how full of distortions it is. However, as he speaks of the relationship of the play to his memory, the
point Tom makes in his opening narration when he says he is the opposite of a stage magician is that
although he may use illusion and sentimentality, the tale that he narrates is an honest one. On one level, can
the play be read as the personal myth of Tom, the narrator- protagonist while on another; it serves as the
personal myth constructed by Williams to deal with his own past. Through this, the playwright appears to
argue that “autobiography”, or organized declarative memory is an elaborate fiction based on facts and that
through the creative use of memory, “fiction is at heart emotional autobiography”.
This theatrical re-enactment of the past as Tom “turns back Time”, performs an enabling function allowing
him to embrace the mother he scorned, blamed and rejected as a young man. The ghosts of his past, the
memory of his sister Laura haunts him at every moment, at every juncture, for he has been more faithful than
he intended to be. It has a therapeutic effect on his mind which is plagued by a longing for the past, guilt, and
the frustrations of continuous entrapment. In his 'memory play’, Tom is loving, understanding and regretful.
The final lines of the play might thus be considered as a plea for release: “I reach for a cigarette, I cross the
street, I run to the movies or a bar, I buy a drink, I speak to the nearest stranger – anything that can blow your
candles out ... Blow out your candles, Laura – and so goodbye...” Although Laura puts the candles out, the
powerful memory will still haunt in Tom’s mind and continue to exert some influence upon him. The Glass
Menagerie, beginning with memory and ending with memory, leaves readers an abundant imagination.
Through this earnest plea, the narrator confirms the uncontrollable power of his own memories. Just as Tom
is unable to extinguish the light of his memories himself, the other characters are also unable and unwilling
to forget the past. The present is hostile and difficult, it provides little comfort, and so they seek refuge the
comfort of the past. Their dependence on the past is caused by a multiplicity of factors including neglect,
loss, mental disability, impersonal urbanity, and the surfeit of societal myths like that of the American
Dream. This tendency is also caused by the socio-political forces such as the clash of cultures as dramatized
through Amanda’s memory of Southern gentility contrasted with the drudgery of urban postmodern life in
St. Louis.
Amanda lives on her memories, fighting to reconstruct them in the present. Blue Mountain symbolises the
illusory world which she craves but cannot have. It is an embodiment of the Southern fantasy – a recurrent
theme in Williams’ writing. Her persistent retreat into her memories of life at Blue Mountain becomes the
only source of beauty and comfort for her otherwise dreary reality where there are no evenings, dances, long
rides or picnics, only the day-to-day struggle of existence. While urban life filled with loss, Blue Mountain is
symptomatic of youth, vivacity and abundance. Bereft of her husband’s company, Amanda frequently
recollects the Sunday afternoon of her youth where she received seventeen gentleman callers. The emotional
scars of abuse and neglect force her to seek refuge in her past.
Laura too, like her mother, clings to the past – objects her menagerie, and the Victrola, which suggests that
memories are her only comfort. She seeks refuge away from the hostile outside world that threatens her
fragility. Having been ignored and neglected all her life due to her physical defect and crippling anxiety, she
dwells on the few remembrances of the times when she was valued by her peers. Her affection for Jim is
rooted in the past. She tells Amanda of how they sat across the aisle at their choir class, and the nickname
Jim had mistakenly given her: “He called me Blue Roses!” However, when her idealized image of Jim is
destroyed and she is brought out of her reverie for a few moments, she disintegrates.
Williams’ stage design, especially the transparent screen, and the many layers of curtains, and portieres aid
the psychological aspect of the play. With the removal of every layer, the audience journeys further into
Tom’s memory. The dramatic structure too comprises seven independent scenes like a sequence of
reminiscences. Tom adds that as the scene is memory, “it is dimly, lighted, sentimental, and not realistic.”
Moreover, the music in the play acts as an allusive uniting motif that returns between episode “as a reference
to emotion, nostalgia, which is the first condition of the play.” The screen device is used for added effect to
emphasise certain events in the characters’ memories like Amanda’s recollection of the Sunday afternoon
when she entertained seventeen gentleman callers or Laura’s memory of Jim who called her ‘Blue Roses’.
We might feel that the characters' inability to forget the past hinders them, but the images of light that are
used throughout the play suggest the playwright's ambivalence about memory. Tom argues that the world is
nowadays “lit by lightning”, hoping that there is an alternative to the pain and guilt he associates with
Laura's fragile candlelight. But Laura's candlelight is seductive, so much more attractive than the harsh
fluorescent lighting at the warehouse where Tom works. Artificial lighting is associated with life-in-death at
the shoe company. Furthermore, the lighting follows the trajectory of memory by laying emphasis upon
certain objects or actors to focus shafts of light on while keeping others dim to single out and focus on
whatever it permits to completely show the “pristine clarity” (Williams) that was used in “early religious
saints or Madonnas”.
The ambivalence towards memory, in fact, sets up the major dialectic of the play. The characters are well
aware that their dear ones are trapped in illusions. Amanda reprimands Laura in scene 2: “So what are we
going to do for the rest of our lives...Eternally play those worn out phonograph records left us as a painful
reminder of him?” In the last scene of the play, enraged and disappointed, she tells Tom “You live in a
dream; You manufacture illusions!” Yet, she herself is most vital, charming and happy when she is reviving
her memories. We cannot blame Amanda for revisiting her memories; the past was a better place for her. The
same true for Tom who is skeptical about his mother’s elaborate reminiscences of life at Blue Mountain. In
all of the plays that Williams wrote after The Glass Menagerie, his characters struggle with this conundrum.
In The Sweet Bird of Youth, the corrupt heroine Alexandra Del Lago, insists that she has failed to break away
from the past. The same is true for Blanche from A Streetcar Named Desire, who constantly tries to recreate
the life of Belle Reve but fails to uphold the aristocratic ideals in the rapidly changing world.
Williams's portrayal of memory suggests that it is impossible to resist. But perhaps we should not try too
hard to escape its clutches. The trick, which none of the characters pulls off, is to find a way of living in the
present while accommodating the past,