d the passage.
cerpt from The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams
Wingfield apartment is in the rear of the building, one of
se vast hive-like conglomerations of cellular living-units that
wer as warty growths in overcrowded urban centres of lower-
dle-class population and are symptomatic of the impulse of
largest and fundamentally enslaved section of American
ciety to avoid fluidity and differentiation and to exist and
ction as one interfused mass of automatism.
apartment faces an alley and is entered by a fire-escape, a
ucture whose name is a touch of accidental poetic truth, for all
these huge buildings are always burning with the slow and
placable fires of human desperation. The fire-escape is
cluded in the set-that is, the landing of it and steps descending
m it.
non realistic, Memory
How do the faded, transparent portières, or curtains, in the
Wingfields' apartment affect the play?
о
They emphasize the importance of Laura, who sleeps
on the sofa in the living room.
They give the apartment a soft, feminine atmosphere
reminiscent of Amanda's Southern-roots.
They serve as the walls of the apartment to
distinguish one room from another for viewers.
They evoke a dim, hazy appearance of the
apartment, giving it the impression of a memory.