Die Glasmenagerie

A Family Drama by Tennessee Williams
Translated by Jörn van Dyck

“I deliver truths to you in the friendly guise of illusions.”

These are the words with which Tom Wingfield begins to tell the story. It is his own story as the brother of the introverted Laura and the son of Amanda, a manipulative mother who mourns her own past. The father has long since left, and with him went the money, love, and happiness. But then Tom announces that he wants to bring his colleague Jim over for dinner. Amanda immediately takes hope: her dream that a man might marry Laura and thus rescue the family from their misery seems to be coming true, and Tom, too, would finally be freed from his family obligations and able to go his own way. So Amanda does everything she can to impress Jim, thereby maneuvering the family into even deeper misery—until the horn breaks off the unicorn from Laura’s glass figurine collection, shattering her heart along with it.

Tennessee Williams, or Thomas Lanier Williams (1911–1983), was born in Columbus, Mississippi, and was raised primarily by his mother. He had a complicated relationship with his father. The resulting circumstances drove him to a nervous breakdown and led him to forge a new identity away from his family. But his family situation provided ample material for his work as a playwright. His mother became the model for the foolish yet strong Amanda Wingfield in *The Glass Menagerie*, and his father for the aggressive, driving Big Daddy in *Cat on a Hot Tin Roof*.