Mistakes
Jim O'Connor tells Laura that he went to the Chicago World's Fair "the summer before last." However, the Chicago World's Fair closed in 1934, meaning the action of the play takes place no later than the Summer of 1936. Tom makes a couple of references to Guernica in his soliloquies; the event happened in April 1937. The play is usually referenced as happening in spring of 1937. However, as the play is a memory play, Tom could be narrating in the spring of 1937 events that occurred in years previous to 1936.
When Amanda asks Jim to take the candelabra and wine glass out to Laura, she asks if he can manage both. In the original script Jim says, "Sure, I'm Superman." The Superman character did not appear in comics until 1938's Action Comics #1. The phrase already existed from English translations of ubermensch in works by Nietzsche, whom Williams often references in his plays. The line is altered in the Acting Edition to "Well, I can try."
The evening of scene 6, Amanda describes the moon as a "little silver slipper." Tom says it is "rising over Garfinkel's Delicatessen." An evening crescent moon would be setting, not rising.
These could be considered lapses in memory on Tom's part, or artistic license on Williams' part.
Read more about this topic: The Glass Menagerie
Famous quotes containing the word mistakes:
“We shall make mistakes, but they must never be mistakes which result from faintness of heart or abandonment of moral principles. I remember that my old school master Dr. Peabody said in days that seemed to us then to be secure and untroubled, he said things in life will not always run smoothly, sometimes we will be rising toward the heights and all will seem to reverse itself and start downward. The great thing to remember is that the trend of civilization itself is forever upward.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)
“The only people, scientific or other, who never make mistakes are those who do nothing.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)
“Feeling that you have to be the perfect parent places a tremendous and completely unnecessary burden on you. If we’ve learned anything from the past half-century’s research on child development, it’s that children are remarkably resilient. You can make lots of mistakes and still wind up with great kids.”
—Lawrence Kutner (20th century)