The Glass Menagerie

Use these questions or activities to help gauge students’ familiarity with and spark their interest in the context of the work, giving them an entry point into the text itself.

Short Answer

1. How does the importance of movies to Tom compare with the role of movies in people’s lives today?

Teaching Suggestion: It may be useful to poll the group to find out how many have gone to a movie in a theater in the last month (or another period of time). Why did they go—or why don’t they go? What about the cost? How many think watching a movie at home is just as good as or better than going out to the movies?

• “Now Is the Perfect Time to Revisit the Movies That Brought America Comfort in the Past”—This article summarizes eight Depression-era movies that helped lift people’s spirits.
• “1930s Movie Trailers”—A 10-minute collection of previews of some classic 1930s movies (Content Warning: Some of these films, such as Gone with the Wind, include content that is racist or considered offensive in other ways today.)

2.  How were mental health issues treated in the 1930s? Tennessee Williams’s sister Rose had a mental health condition and underwent a prefrontal lobotomy; she lived most of her life afterwards in an institution. Williams modeled Laura, sister of the protagonist in The Glass Menagerie, after his own sister. How do you think writing about a family member’s mental health struggles might help someone seeking to process such an experience?

Teaching Suggestion: It may be beneficial to allow online investigation of historical treatments for mental health conditions like mental asylums, electroshock therapy, and lobotomies. The discussion could then turn to the latter question: Might it be helpful to write about the nuances of a loved one’s mental health condition, so that the complexity of the individual is at least depicted on paper, if not shown to others?

• “A History of Mental Illness Treatment: Obsolete Practices”—An article by Concordia University-St. Paul about historical treatments for mental health conditions
• “Writing to Heal”—An article in Pegasus: The Magazine of the University of Central Florida about a writing class that teaches students to heal through writing, whether about their own or a loved one’s mental health or criminality
• “Creativity and Mental Illness: Prevalence Rates in Writers and Their First-Degree Relatives”—A brief abstract of a study revealing that writers and their relatives have higher rates of mental health disorders and that creativity and intelligence are not correlated

Personal Connection Prompt

This prompt can be used for in-class discussion, exploratory free-writing, or reflection homework before reading the play.

Laura plays records over and over again on the victrola. Choose a piece of music that you have listened to repeatedly in your life. Listen to it again and free-write about the memories it stirs and how it makes you feel. Notice in particular how music can play with Time and Memory by transporting you back to an earlier situation and even making you feel like you are reliving it.

Teaching Suggestion: It might be helpful to play your own choice of music for the group and relate an associated personal memory—for example, a popular oldie that you associate with going to the beach when you were young, which brings back the sound of the waves and gulls, the smell of suntan lotion, the feeling of sand between your toes, and so forth. Share how it helps you to relate to Laura—for example, maybe you had an embarrassing experience similar to her getting sick in public, but when you listen to the song, you’re back at the beach, in a pleasant world where you can forget the humiliation.