The Glass Menagerie by Tennesse Williams

     In Tennesse Williams' memory play The Glass Menagerie (1945), he illustrates the hardships between the siblings, Tom and Laura Wingfield who are trying to live and overcome the conflicts within the era of the Great Depression but also the battles within themselves of emotion and wanting. Williams uses a parallel structure in using Tom Wingfield in beginning the play, during the play, and in the end to tell the events that are happening within the household and how later on it hurts to remember his sister because he abandoned her; and he also uses imagery in the beginning of the scenes and during the scenes to illustrate the events and also to slow down the moment to take in the scene to spark the imagination, and finally he uses soliloquy for Tom Wingfield to speak the regrets and the memories he has of his sister in failing her. Williams purpose on this memory play is to tell a story that is saddening and heartfelt also to make one remember that life cannot be lived without a purpose or even self motiviation to do well in life. He seems to have an audience who enjoys stories involving family trials, the romance of life and memory, and the becoming of one coming out of situation that ties oneself down. 

Vocabulary:

• menagerie: a collection of wild or unusual animals
• kitchenette: a very small compact kitchen
• voile: a lightweight, semisheer fabric of wool, silk, rayon, or cotton constructed in plain weave

Tone: sincere, reflective, dreamy

Rhetorical Strategies: 

• imagery: "A fragile, unearthly prettiness has come out in Laura: she is like a piece of translucent glass touched by light, given a momentary radiance, not actual, not lasting." (pg:69)
• allusion: "No, sister, no, sister- you be the lady this time and I'll be the darky." (pg:25)
• metaphor: "...-stuck away in some little mousetrap of a room- encouraged by one in-law to vist another- little birdlike women without any nest-eating the crust of humility all their life!" (pg.34)
• foreshadow: "For sixty-five dollars a month I give up all that I dream of doing and being ever! And you say self-self's all i ever think of. Why, listen, if self is what I thought of, Mother, I'd be where he is-GONE! As far as the system of transportation reaches!" (pg.41)
• idiom: "Stick and stones can break our bones..." (pg:47)

Questions:

1. What is the D.A.R. that Amanda attends to?
2. Why does Willliams include Jim O'Connor as one of the characters and who is able to draw Laura out of her protective shell?
3. Does having a protective and demanding parent a good thing for children when growing up? 

Memorable Quote:
 "The window is filled with pieces of colored glass, tiny transparent bottles in delicate colors, like bits of a shattered rainbow. " (pg:115)

The Glass Menagerie and Tennesse Williams

     The Glass Menagerie first performance was on December 26, 1944, but the play's actual publication date was in 1945. Written by Tennesse Williams, whose real name was Thomas Lanier Williams III, but took on his nickname from college as his real name. He was born on March 26, 1911 in Columbus, Mississippi and died on February 25, 1983 from choking on a top from his eye medicine and was believed from a drug overdose also. He lived during the Great Depression which was part of the "setting" of the play. The character Laura in The Glass Menagerie is based on his sister Rose Williams, whom he was very close to. It was believed that Rose had mental issues because she allegedly accused her father for sexual assault. In 1937 by the permission of their parents she underwent a brain surgery that left her incapitated which was an emotional shock to Tennesse Williams. Williams childhood wasnt a very happy one he was sick and weak for a while he consider his mother as one of his heroines. His mother was very supported of his writing career that she gave him a typewriter. His father was an alcoholic and affected by the Great Depression during the 1930s. His father had disowned him when Tennesse declared himself a homosexual.           
     Williams top plays and performances were really famous and praised during the early 1940s and early 1960s by the motivation and his involvement with his partner Frank Merlo until his death. "Alcoholism, depression, thwarted desire, loneliness in search of purpose, and insanity were all part of Williams' world" which affected his daily life that sometimes lead to emotional breakdowns. By the change of society in taste and culture later on in the 1960s his plays became less viewed and famous.

"SparkNotes: The Glass Menagerie: Context." SparkNotes: Today's Most Popular Study Guides. N.p., n.d. Web. 17 Apr. 2011. <http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/menagerie/context.html>.

Why are We Floating in this Abiss? Chp:8-11

     In the Heart of the Sea by Nathaniel Philbrick (2000) he illustrates and describes the tale of the famous Essex whale crew of their survival after several months at in the rancorous sea. The author uses scientific jargon to describe the clinical, navigational, and the body changes the crew is suffering because of low portions of food and water; then he provides maps and charts to show the voyage stops and dates and how many of the sailors have they lost on the way; and in conclusion uses telegraphic sentences to be blunt and frank about dangerous situation the crew is going through. Philbrick's purpose is to show the history, the survival, and social traditions the crew kept even in hope and use for their voyage toward safety. Philbrick attracts the audience that seems to enjoy the possibility of hope even in the inevitable, history, and adventure of a whale crew although butchers of whales they are still human that brings sympathy to the heart.

Vocabulary:

1. porpoise: small sociable cetaceans that swim in the Pacific and North Altlantic
2. rutabagas: a type of turnip
3. gunwales: the upper edge of the side or bulwark of a vessel.
4. euthanasia: painless death

Tone: logical, suspenseful, hopeful

Examples:

• Allusion: "Nantucket's Quaker Graveyeard was without worldly monuments of any kind, and many had compared its smooth, unmarred sweep to the anonymous surface of the sea." (pg:154)
• Metaphor: "While a shar is a primitive killing machine, a porpoise is one of the most intelligent mammals on earth." (pg:161)
• Irony: "It was a black night, and the noise that had once signaled the thrill of the hunt now terrified them." (pg:162)
• Telegraphic Sentences: "First they had to butcher the body." (pg:165)
• Evidence: "Sailors commonly accepted that eating human flesh brought a person's moral character down to the level of those 'brutish savages' who voluntarily indulged in cannibalism." (pg:171)

Questions:

1. Why is Pollard always siding to the majority rule?
2. What do you think happen to the whale boat with the last African-American on it?
3. Since women have a much bigger possiblity in surviving starvation, would the men eat them first or the women eat the men?

"This was apparently how Richard Peterson passed away. '[T]he breath  appeared to be leaving his body without the least pain,' Chase reported,'and at four o'clock he was gone.'" (pg:163)

In the Heart of the Sea: Chp. 5-7

     In the Heart of the Sea by Nathaniel Philbrick, he describes the challenges and the ultimate doom that the whale hunter crew of the Essex will come to face. The author uses telegraphic and terse sentences to show how the events are becoming more dangerous and crucial for the survival of the crew; then Philbrick uses excerpts to describe the first point of view of the sailors and how the ramming of the sperm whale scared them and even scarred them psychologically like the first mate Chase, also using the diction of navigation and sailing within his writing to draw in the reader of how the crew was living before and after the ramming of the ship. Philbrick's purpose is to illustrate the adventure of death and suffering the crew of the Essex has suffered and how it ties to the fictional novel of  Moby Dick, also to describe the possible what ifs the crew could have taken to save themselves but have actually taken the most likely choice of following their intuition or "plan". This book has an audience in mind of those that enjoy the story of navigational and historical content and who are fascinated with the true tale that is tied to Moby Dick.

Vocabulary:

• bailing: to dip water out of the boat with a bucket
• tempestuous: violent, stormy
• arduous: requiring great exertion

Tone: suspenseful, pitiful

Rhetorical Strategies:

• Examples: "'All the sufferings of these miserable men of the Essex might, in all human probability, ahve been avoided, had they, immediately after leaving the wreck, steered straight for Tahiti...'" (pg: 98)
• Irony: "Without their ship  to protect them, the hunters had become the prey." (pg: 116)
• Analogy: "On the morning of November 20, 1820, sperm whales were not the only creatures filling the ocean with clicking sounds; there was also Owen Chase, busily nailing a piece of canvas to the bottom of an upturned whaleboat." (pg:87)
• Telegraphic: " The ship shuddered with each wave." (pg: 91)
• Simile: " Like a whale dying in a slow-motion flurry, the Essex in dissolution made for a grim and disturbing sight, her joints and seams working violently in the waves."

Questions:

1. How did the sailors modified the whale boats to become boats of navigation?
2. What effect does the telegraphic sentences add to the book? 
3. Why didn't the sailors take the risk of reaching unknown than following the "plan" of heading toward South America?

     "That evening Richard Peterson, the sole African American on their boat, led them in prayers and a few hymns." (pg: 113)

In the Heart of the Sea: Chp 1-4

     In the Heart of the Sea by Nathaniel Philbrick he describes the hardships of the crew upon the Essex but also the expectations, rules, history, and social status that the little island Nantucket placed upon these men on the hunting of sperm whales. He narrates the journey of the whaleship the Essex in using the point of view of a young cabin boy Thomas Nickerson and his viewing accounts upon the whaleship. Philbrick describes the religious, social, and also the language views of the little island Nantucket; he also documents and narrates the voyage of the crew on the Essex from the departure from Nantucket to the burning of one of  the Galapajos Islands. His purpose is to tell the lost historic event that not all American people seem to know or realize the the sinking of a whaleship trully did happen, but also to reveal how and why the Nantucket society had prosper on the hunting of the giant mammal, their survive skills in the 19th century, and the environmental impact they have placed on the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. This book seems to targets readers that are fasinated by historical events and the travel adventures of a ship crew, and those who are concern how the whaling industry in the New England island colony almost brought the total death of the gental mammal in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

Vocabulary:

• inexorable: unyielding; not being able to control or dominate
• surrogate: a substitute for another thing, person, place
• captaincies: the office or rank of a captain

Tone: suspenseful, informative, dark

Rhetorical Strategies:

• analogy: "Even the most repugnant aspects of whaling became easier for the green hands to take as they grew to appreciate that each was just part of a process, like mining for gold or growing crops, designed to make them money." (pg:65)
• allusion: "Just as the skinned corpses of buffaloes would soon dot the prairies of the American West, so did the headless gray remains of sperm whales litter the Pacific Ocean in the early nineteenth century." (pg:65)
• imagery: "The hot July sun beat down on her old, oil-soaked timbers until the temperature below was infernal, but Nickerson explored every cranny, from the brick altar of the tryworkds being assembled on deck to the lightless depths of the empty hold." (pg:1)
• diction: "Compounding the confusion was the Nantucketers' accent. It wasn't just 'ile' for 'oil'; there was a host of peculiar pronunciations, many of which varied markedly from what was found even as nearby as Cape Cod and the island of Martha's Vineyard. A Nantucket whaleman kept his clothing a 'chist.' His harpoons were kept 'shurp,' especially when 'atteking' a 'lirge' whale." (pg:22)
• evidence: "' I soon commenced hunting for a voyage, but it was dull times with commerce as seamen's wages were but ten dollars per month, and there wer more sailors than ships in port, and I found it dull times for green hands.'" (pg:25)

Questions:

• What is "short sail"?
• Why does Philbrick use excerpts from the crews' diaries?
• Why do crew members suffer more than regular jobs like being a farmer?

Quote:
     "Each whale, each cask of oil, brought the Nantucketer closer to returning home to his loved ones. And it was when they were trying out the whale that the whalemen typically grew the most nostalgic for home."

Defend Me and My Child!;Chp: 7-8

"'God gave her into my keeping,' repeated Hester Prynne, raising her voice almost to a shriek. 'I will not give her up!'-And here, by a sudden impulse, she turned to the young clergyman, Mr. Dimmesdale, at whom, up to this moment, she had seemed hardly so much as once to direct her eyes. -'Speak thou for me!' cried she. 'Thou wast my pastor, and hadst charge of my soul, and knowest me better than these men can. I will not lose the child! Speak for me! Thou knowest,-for thou has sympathies which these men lack!-thou knowest what is in my heart, and what are a mother's rights, and how much the stronger they are, when that mother has but her child and the scarlet leter! Look thou to it! I will not lose the child! Look to it!'" (103)

     Hester looking for a person to defend her, she looks for the man that knows her, but through out the story Hester has not exchange dialogue with this man since her trial 3 years ago. She seems to know Mr. Dimmesdale and vice versa; she seeks the help in a man that is considered an influential person but also she has no relation to as the Puritan society sees it. This shows that Hester for a long time has knew this man, but when exactly? She speaks to him as if he knows her all her life, that he knows "what is in my heart", is this man the father of Pearl? The "note" that Hawthorne has placed within the dialogue that Hester has not had eye contact with this man but only once is very interesting, is it possible that Hester is avoiding eye contact with the minister?   The dialogue that Hawthorne has chosen for Hester has a style of demanding and persuading Mr. Dimmesdale that he has to defend her. The use of the exclamation marks and the dashes shows that he owes Hester alot and that she has to do this act for her and Pearl.

Questions:

1. Would Mr. Chillingworth find the odd contact and dialogue between Hester and Mr. Dimmesdale to be quite interesting and question it further?
2. Why does Pearl move away from the minister Mr. Wilson's touch, but reaches and welcomes Mr. Dimmesdale's touch? (101 &106)
3. Why does Hawthorne have the minister's still question the paternity of Hester's daughter? (106)