Sunday, October 16, 2011

In Tom's speech at the end of Scene III of The Glass Menagerie, how are humor and bitterness developed through verbal irony?

In the scene, Tom's anger and frustration boil over in a
confrontation with his mother about his activities. Amanda believes that Tom has been
"doing things that you're ashamed of." When he says, once again, that he is going to the
movies, Amanda accuses him of lying, which leads to Tom's speech at the end of the
scene.


Through verbal irony (sarcasm) Tom makes fun of
Amanda's suspicions. In contrast to the mundane daily life Tom lives working in the
warehouse, his wild exaggerations are humorous as he explains what he "really" does
instead of going to the movies:


  • He goes to opium
    dens with criminals.

  • He's a member of the Hogan gang, a
    hired assassin who carries a Tommy gun in a violin
    case.

  • He's known as "Killer Wingfield" and "El
    Diablo."

  • He's a "czar of the underworld" who loses
    fortunes in gambling casinos.

  • Sometimes he wears an eye
    patch and a false mustache.

Tom's speech
becomes very bitter, however, when he tells Amanda that his "enemies" plan to blow up
the Wingfield apartment with dynamite:


readability="8">

They're going to blow us all sky-high some night!
You'll go up, up on a broomstick, over Blue Mountain with seventeen gentlemen callers!
You ugly--babbling old--witch . . .
.



Tom's allusion to Blue
Mountain expresses his frustration with Amanda and her tiresome, endless romantic
stories of her youth. In saying his mother is ugly, a "babbling old witch," Tom's
contempt and hatefulness show his deep anger and resentment toward her. He despises the
life he is forced to lead in St. Louis, and Amanda's behavior makes it even more
unbearable.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Calculate tan(x-y), if sin x=1/2 and sin y=1/3. 0

We'll write the formula of the tangent of difference of 2 angles. tan (x-y) = (tan x - tan y)/(1 + tan x*tan y) ...