At first, I was going to be glib and say that both Native Son and The Glass Menagerie were books. But then I remembered The Glass Menagerie was in fact a play. And then I remembered that I want a good grade in American Studies. So my connection is the fact that both main characters, Bigger and Tom, don’t really fit in. Bigger is a black man stuck in a white world, and therefore just wants to get away. (So naturally, throwing someone into a furnace is the appropriate reaction. (This, by the way, was not a parenthetical notation. It was simply my thoughts inside parentheses.)) Tom is a grown man, who is stuck with his obnoxious mother who is stuck in the past. His plan throughout the whole book, (I’m sorry, throughout the whole play), is to leave and go do whatever he wants, wherever he wants. Although both have this sense of being trapped, the two react to it differently. Bigger lashes out violently, such as with the rat and with Gus. Oh yeah, and Mary and Bessie. And that police officer. Tom, on the other hand, constantly expresses his disapproval, aiming his anger and frustration towards his mother. In addition to that, he finds another outlet for these feelings in movie theaters (though not the way Bigger does). He lives his dreams of being somewhere else through the heroes and adventurers in the movies, and spends most of his time there. Plus, he drinks a lot, which probably helps him as well.
Cordially,
Matthew Dever
2 comments:
haha, hey Matt. So, for my question on another person's post-if Amanda and Mrs. Thomas had put less pressure on their sons, how would the outcome of the books differed? Would the young men have found it easier to fit in?
The Glass Menagerie is a play, but the form it comes in is the form of a book so I think that you could have made that connection. For my question on someone else's post: "Do you think this will count?"
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