C - PROJECTS
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the glass menagerie (2019)
Character Analysis and Descriptions
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Amanda (scene 1)
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The mother of the family.
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She loved her children and planned future for them, especially for her daughter. Amanda spoiled Laura, never let her do housework and even school. Amanda believed her daughter could like her, having a lot of gentleman callers come to visit and at this age could still “flounces girlishly toward the kitchenette” suggests she is naïve and sunk in her ideological world. She keeps Laura like a piece of glass, and she mirrored herself into Laura. She always recalls her glamourous time as an unmarried lady with all her followers. She remembers all the names of the gentlemen callers at that time and their current life, which indicates she is a little bit narcissistic like the jonquils she loved (metaphor in Greek tales, also suggests her short-lived florescence when she was young) and gossipy.
moodboard
modern version costume
Tom (scene 1)
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The son of the family.
The play was his memory.
As the only income source of the family, Tom was strictly instructed by his mother. He thought this home and his family bring too much pressure on him and limited his great future. Same as Jim, he has great ambition to be a writer like Shakespeare, a nickname called by Jim. But he has too many practical things to worried which is like a “2 by 4 nailed coffin”. He gets bored with this life and impatient with his mother. Tom went to cinema every night to get away from reality. Cinema is like his glass menagerie. But he knows his decadent (through the talk he made about Hollywood with Jim in later scenes) and his visionary. He is still responsible with this home; he didn’t just slip away like his father because he loves his family.
modern version costume
moodboard
Laura (p.51)
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The daughter of the family.
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As her brother and mother mentioned in the play, she is terribly shy and even trembling and breathless before meeting Jim. Laura is extremely self-abased and “self-conscious” (as Jim said), because when Jim said she was used to be late and the only thing she recalled was her “crippled leg” that “clumped so loud like thunder”. Even though nobody noticed the sounds. Back to her school life, Jim recalled that she is “sort of stuck by herself” and didn’t have much friend. She is obsessed with glass, when she gets nervous, she put glass in her hand to “to cover her tumult”. She is very imaginative and sentimental with her collections of glass, which also reveals her pure and naïve. Laura is like a piece of glass her mother keeps.
moodboard
modern version costume
Gentleman Caller – Jim (p. 51)
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Tom’s colleague and high school friend at the warehouse. Has a girlfriend Betty.
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When Jim arrived, he talked to the family very friendly and politely. Before supper, he chatted with Tom about their dreams and between his words “we're not the warehouse type”, and his speech about science museum and electro-dynamics with Laura, we could see his ambitions to go higher class and further goals. He is the same kind of person with Tom who “boils inside”. Though he is now doing a warehouse job, he is still optimistic and practical about future. He tried to warm the conversation up with Laura and to guide her not to be so shy, which indicates that he is encourageable. In Laura’s words, he was a famous people at school, and he can sing. So, he must be a very social and talkative, which make people at that time thinks he must be successful in any field.
He was the only hope to drag her out of glass menagerie into reality, but he failed because he was already married, which broke her dream. 】
