The Glass Menagerie

Amanda looks back to the gracious lifestyle she associates with her past, while Laura is stuck on endless repeat in the present, like a broken record, and Tom is desperate to escape to a future of freedom and adventure. If time is the greatest distance to travel, as Tom suggests, what does it say about the Wingfield family that all of them seem to exist in different times? How do their relationships with Time and Memory influence their connections to reality? How do ideas around Aging affect how one or more of them relate to time and memory?

Teaching Suggestion: It may be helpful to begin a discussion about why history is important. You might start globally, referencing atrocities that humanity must remember to avoid repeating them (e.g., the Holocaust, slavery, mistreatment of Indigenous peoples), and then decrease the scope to the personal, referencing family histories that inform us of our roots. It might be beneficial to then ask why it’s important to live in the now. Finally, why is it important to be forward-thinking? Can all three approaches to living in time be important? If so, why does time seem to be a problem for the Wingfields?

Differentiation Suggestion: For advanced learners and others who might benefit from an alternative way of demonstrating human relationships with time, ask the group these questions: Is time real? Why are hours and minutes divided into portions of 60? Which of Earth’s time zones is the most accurate? Then show the video embedded in this article, which uses visual metaphors to illuminate the subject: