Drama Explication Assignment

Write a 2-page explication of a scene (or part of a scene) from The Glass Menagerie Tuesday, September 20th.   Be prepared to discuss your ideas and possible read your explication out loud in class.

For some biographical background on Tennessee Williams, go to The Mississippi Writers Page on Williams. You may be interested to know that he lived in St. Louis for a time, and that our city is the setting for The Glass Menagerie.

When writing explications about plays, it's tempting to take on large amounts of the text and address sweeping themes. However, that is not the point of an explication (see "What is an Explication?"). To help you avoid this temptation, I'm providing you with the following passages to choose from for your explication:

• Scene 1, from Amanda's line, "Resume your seat" until the end.
• The two monologues where Amanda is trying to sell magazine subscriptions on p. 1335 and p. 1343.
• Scene 4, from the beginning through Tom's line "Goody, goody! . . . . removing one nail?"
• Scene 5, from Jim's line "Now how about you?" (p. 1364) through Laura's last line on p. 1365.

Your explication should be double-spaced and formatted according to MLA (Modern Language Association) style. You can find more about MLA style at the Purdue University Online Writing Lab's Web page on Using MLA Format.