The Glass Menagerie
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50 free The Glass Menagerie trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Tennessee Williams was an unknown when The Glass Menagerie opened in 1944. Within months he was the most talked-about playwright in America, and his breakthrough has rarely been off the stage since. It needs only one small apartment, four characters and a narrator who admits up front that he cannot be trusted with the facts. This quiz follows the script from Tom's opening address to the final blackout. It covers Amanda's stories of her youth, Laura's secret, the quarrel and the dawn homecoming in Scenes 3 and 4, and the long evening with the gentleman caller. Later questions turn to the first production, the family history behind the Wingfields, and the film and small-screen adaptations. It is written for students checking their reading, for teachers who need a ready set of questions, and for theatergoers who want to see how much has stayed with them. Every answer comes with a short explanation.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In The Glass Menagerie, which of Laura Wingfield's figurines is her favorite, later damaged by Jim O'Connor?
The unicorn
The unicorn stands for Laura herself: one of a kind, fragile and out of place among the ordinary horses. When Jim damages it, she says it will now feel less like a freak.
Q 02In The Glass Menagerie, what nickname did Jim O'Connor give Laura in high school after mishearing her illness?
Blue Roses
Blue Roses is what Jim heard when Laura said she had been out with pleurosis. The name fits her: a flower that does not exist in nature.
Q 03In The Glass Menagerie, what product fills the warehouse where Tom Wingfield earns sixty-five dollars a month?
Shoes
Shoes were Tennessee Williams's own drudgery too: his father put him to work at the International Shoe Company, a job he hated as much as Tom hates his.
Q 04In The Glass Menagerie, where does Tom Wingfield say he spends his nights, though Amanda suspects he is lying?
The movies
The movies are Tom's nightly refuge, his stand-in for the adventure his job never offers. Late in the play he says he is tired of watching other people have it.
Q 05The Glass Menagerie is set in a cramped apartment facing an alley in which American city in the 1930s?
St. Louis
St. Louis is where Tennessee Williams's own family settled when he was a boy, moving from home to home around the city, so the Wingfields' address was ground he knew well.
Q 06At the close of The Glass Menagerie, what does narrator Tom ask Laura to do as he bids her farewell?
Blow out her candles
Blow out her candles is Tom's last plea, and when Laura does, the stage goes dark. Years after leaving, he admits he has never managed to stop thinking of her.
Q 07Which Hollywood star played the gentleman caller Jim O'Connor in the 1950 film of The Glass Menagerie?
Kirk Douglas
Kirk Douglas played Jim in the first film ever made from a Tennessee Williams play. The playwright disliked the casting, and the director later wished he had hired unknowns.
Q 08Which Hollywood actor directed the 1987 film of The Glass Menagerie, the last feature he made as a director?
Paul Newman
Paul Newman directed his wife, Joanne Woodward, as Amanda, putting on film a stage production that had begun at the Williamstown Theatre Festival.
Q 09In The Glass Menagerie, which structure is both the Wingfield apartment's entrance and Tom's smoking spot?
The fire escape
The fire escape is where Tom narrates from, half in the family's life and half out of it. Williams gives the name a second meaning: everyone inside is desperate to get out.
Q 10The sister of Tennessee Williams, the model for Laura in The Glass Menagerie, underwent which operation in 1943?
A lobotomy
A lobotomy left her institutionalized for the rest of her life, and Williams learned of it only afterward. He later directed a share of his royalties toward her care.
Q 11In Scene 3 of The Glass Menagerie, what does Amanda Wingfield sell by phone to pay for sprucing up the apartment?
Magazine subscriptions
Magazine subscriptions for a women's journal are her sideline, pitched to fellow club members. One of them hangs up on her in the middle of the sales talk.
Q 12In Scene 3 of The Glass Menagerie, which Civil War novel does Amanda liken a new serial to in her sales pitch?
Gone with the Wind
Gone with the Wind is her yardstick: she promises the new serial will grip readers just as Scarlett O'Hara's story did. Amanda, a displaced Southern belle, is selling her own lost world.
Q 13In Scene 3 of The Glass Menagerie, which English novelist's work does Amanda refuse to allow in the apartment?
Q 21In The Glass Menagerie, where does Laura mostly spend her days while pretending to attend business college?
Walking in the park
Walking in the park through the winter was how she filled the hours, with detours to the zoo and the art museum. She could not face her mother's look of disappointment.
Q 22What happened to Laura Wingfield at Rubicam's Business College that made her quit in The Glass Menagerie?
She threw up
She threw up as the first timed typing test approached and never went back. Amanda finds out only after fifty dollars of tuition has been wasted.
Q 23In The Glass Menagerie, in which Southern state did Amanda Wingfield grow up as a much-courted belle?
Mississippi
D. H. Lawrence
D. H. Lawrence was one of Tennessee Williams's own literary heroes. Amanda will not have his novels under her roof, and Tom snaps back that he is the one paying the rent.
Q 14How does Tom Wingfield accidentally smash some of Laura's figurines at the end of Scene 3 of The Glass Menagerie?
He hurls his coat
He hurls his coat across the room after his arm snags in the sleeve, and it strikes the shelf of ornaments. Laura cries out as though she herself had been hit.
Q 15In their Scene 3 quarrel in The Glass Menagerie, what does Tom call Amanda as he tries to leave?
A witch
A witch is the insult that stops the fight cold, and it stuns Amanda into silence. She vows not to speak to Tom again until he apologizes.
Q 16In Scene 4 of The Glass Menagerie, which trick by Malvolio the Magician does Tom envy most?
Exiting a nailed-up coffin
Exiting a nailed-up coffin without pulling a single nail is the trick Tom calls the most wonderful. He sees his own boxed-in life in it, and no clean way to get out.
Q 17In Scene 4 of The Glass Menagerie, what souvenir of his night out does Tom give Laura at dawn?
A rainbow scarf
A rainbow scarf is his gift, a prop he says the stage magician waved over a bowl of goldfish to turn them into canaries.
Q 18In Scene 4 of The Glass Menagerie, what is Laura sent out to buy when she slips on the steps outside?
Butter
Butter is the errand, and Amanda invents it to get a few words alone with Tom. Laura's stumble on the way out briefly breaks the silence between mother and son.
Q 19After Tom apologizes in Scene 4 of The Glass Menagerie, what does Amanda make him promise never to become?
A drunkard
A drunkard is what she fears he will turn into, because his father drank. Tom gives his word over black coffee, barely an hour after stumbling home at dawn.
Q 20In Scene 4 of The Glass Menagerie, what must Tom find before Amanda will let him go?
A husband for her daughter
A husband for her daughter is Amanda's price for Tom's freedom: a replacement breadwinner. He grudgingly agrees to look for a likely man at work.
Mississippi is also where Tennessee Williams was born, and Amanda's small-town stories echo his own mother's past. She claims seventeen gentleman callers arrived there in one afternoon.
Q 24In The Glass Menagerie, what did Laura think everyone heard when she came late to high school singing class?
Her leg brace
Her leg brace clumped so loudly, she thought, that the whole class turned to look. Jim tells her he never even noticed it.
Q 25In The Glass Menagerie, what does Laura Wingfield retreat to and play whenever she feels anxious or cornered?
The Victrola
The Victrola plays the worn records left behind by the man who deserted the family. Laura retreats to it after confrontations, and again in the moments after Jim says he is engaged.
Q 26In The Glass Menagerie, what nickname does Jim O'Connor, Tom's one friend at the warehouse, give him?
Shakespeare
Shakespeare is Jim's friendly tease for a co-worker with literary dreams. Because Jim liked him, the other men at work, once hostile, began to warm to Tom too.
Q 27What job does gentleman caller Jim O'Connor hold at the warehouse where Tom works in The Glass Menagerie?
Shipping clerk
Shipping clerk is a modest post for a former high school hero, though it pays twenty dollars a month more than Tom earns. Jim takes night classes to climb higher.
Q 28At the end of Scene 5 of The Glass Menagerie, what does Amanda call Laura outside to make a wish on?
The moon
The moon gets two wishes that night: Amanda has already made hers beside Tom, for her children's success. In tears, she tells Laura to wish for happiness and good fortune.
Q 29What is the name of the dance hall across the alley from the Wingfield apartment in The Glass Menagerie?
The Paradise
The Paradise sends its swing music and colored lights drifting over to the Wingfields. Tom says its dancers were chasing thrills while Europe slid toward war.
Q 30What does Amanda Wingfield wear to receive the gentleman caller in Scene 6 of The Glass Menagerie?
A dress from her girlhood
A dress from her girlhood is what she pulls out: the frock in which she once led the cotillion. She greets Jim as though she were still a debutante.