4 & 5

Commitments

According to my interpretation, I decided to set the whole atmosphere of the poem somewhat fantastic as considering the speaking person as a dead guy, possibly due to his serve of duty (military or something), and looking at the pictures of his family members and indulges in reminiscence about his past with them. From the beginning, He vividly describes how he was happy about living with his family by stating his smiling face. In addition, he also enjoyed to have a barbecue and chicken party with music of pop songs. From his statement; I am the invisible son, I interpret it as that he does not exists anymore in presence, but wishing to look at his family members playing whatever they enjoy, and also wishes to be with them whenever they needed him. Although the reality does not allow him to be with them, his will is always with them and feels very proud of them by thinking of them consistently. Finally, he states that he feel also very proud of what he has done at his service of duty even though he became an “invisible person”, who cannot be with his family anymore in reality. In doing this interpretation, I felt very fantastic mood of this poem.

The Glass Menagerie

This play certainly impressed me how literature can describe well about the human reality. Obviously, I did not live in the time of early 1980s’, however, I was able to feel the economic and cultural situation in those days. As a compromised analysis, I would start from the meaning of “the Glass menagerie”. If I take the meaning of the word as “strange or weird people”, there are many supporting points in the text, especially from the symbolic characters; Amanda, a lady bound to the past when she was in the aristocratic class, Laura, a lady who cannot overcome her disability and locked in her own world, and Tom, a boy who watches movies every night and dreams to take an adventure to some place. These people are all very peculiar and stuck in their own private structures, that nobody can touch and get in at any moment, which makes their family bonding relationship to be so weakened. In the conversations of Tom and Amanda at the scenes 3, 4, and 7, they show no effort of understanding each other and saying their one sided opinions in a parallel path, and Amanda’s attitude is shown to be forcing her children to achieve what she desires rather than letting them to do what they really want to do. Then, more problems subsequently show form Tom and Laura by not following what Amanda orders them to do even though it is not their desired things to do, but could be good things to do for their future; going to school or being married, and consistently sticking in their own frame, resulting in being a hands-off individuals. Their this kind of relationship indicates very fragile and weak, and this is directly linked to the title of this play – The Glass Menagerie, a glass. As an effort to resolve this problem, Jim, a character who represent a person of reality appears in the scene 7, however, his appearance even destruct their weak relationship and breaks their own fantasies by saying that he has a fiancée. Because of this, Amanda loses her dream that she attempted to get from the success of her daughter, Laura, and also Laura becomes unable to go back to her own world as Jim already broke her world as he gave her a hope to get along with, which makes her more misery. The incident of broken unicorn in the scene 7 is a good example of this situation. Finally, after Amanda expressed her madness to Tom due to failure of marriage of her daughter with Jim, Tom leaves house as he wishes, but I interpret that he realizes that the reality is not what he expected to be, and his family takes a hold on him whenever and wherever he stays. Therefore, his own dreaming world also has been destructed at the end. In conclusion, the Wingfield family members were all stuck in their own fragile fantasies(menageries), and really becomes completely fragile when they faced the reality.