The Glass Menagerie

Part 1: Scenes 1-5

Reading Check

1. Tom and Laura’s father (Scene 1)

2. She practiced the art of conversation. (Scene 1)

3. She was embarrassed to learn about Laura dropping out of business school. (Scene 2)

4. A record player (Scene 2)

5. Amanda yelling “Rise and shine!” (Scene 3)

6. Adventure (Scene 4)

7. The fire-escape landing (Scene 5)

8. Being the wife of a drunkard (Scene 5)

Short Answer

1. Tom says that in America, the middle class was being forced to confront the failing American economy, and there were violent labor actions in the cities. In Spain, there was revolution. (Scene 1)

2. The Jewel Box is a greenhouse where Laura spent many of her afternoons instead of attending business school. She calls it a “big glass house where they raise the tropical flowers.” (Scene 2)

3. Back in high school, when she told Jim that she had pleurosis, he misunderstood and heard “blue roses.” After that, he started calling her Blue Roses. (Scene 2)

4. She wants to earn money to prepare the apartment and Laura to properly receive a gentleman caller. (Scene 3)

5. She considers it filth. (Scene 3)

6. He says she can wave it over a canary cage and get a bowl of goldfish, or wave it over the goldfish bowl and they fly away canaries. (Scene 4)

7. He believes that a man is a lover, a hunter, and a fighter by instinct and that those instincts are stifled at the warehouse. (Scene 4)

8. Amanda wishes Tom would take as much care about his appearance as his father did. (Scene 5)

9. She tells Tom that the future becomes the present, the present becomes the past, and without planning, the past turns into everlasting regret. (Scene 5)

Part 2: Scenes 6-7

Reading Check

1. Shakespeare (Scene 6)

2. A pretty trap (Scene 6)

3. Jonquils (Scene 6)

4. In warfare (Scene 6)

5. Her leg brace made it difficult to navigate the stairs. (Scene 7)

6. Jim (Scene 7)

7. To pick up Betty at the train station (Scene 7)

Short Answer

1. Amanda insists that Laura open the door when Tom and his friend arrive, but Laura panics because she just found out the friend is a boy she had a crush on in high school. (Scene 6)

2. Tom doesn’t want to wait for war to have an adventure. He doesn’t want to sit in a dark room and watch all the glamorous Hollywood people having all the adventures for everyone in America. (Scene 6)

3. Amanda wears the same dress, yellow with age, that she wore as a young woman when she received gentlemen callers. (Scene 6)

4. Tom used the money for the light bill to pay his Merchant Marine dues instead. (Scene 7)

5. Jim signs Laura’s program from The Pirates of Penzance after she confesses that she liked him in high school but was intimidated by his popularity. (Scene 7)

6. Laura says she’ll imagine the unicorn had an operation to remove the horn so he would feel less freakish and fit in with the ordinary horses. (Scene 7)

7. Jim tells Laura she has an inferiority complex and advises her to think of herself as superior in some way. (Scene 7)