Glass Menagerie, Death of a Salesman, Oedipus Rex Theme

The Glass Menagerie, The Death of a Salesman, and Oedipus Rex are complex, deep stories that any reader can enjoy. The Glass Menagerie is a story about a family of three, a mother, a son, and a daughter who all struggle to cope with how their lives turned out. They sometimes reminisce of a happier life or a way to somehow escape life itself. The Death of a Salesman is about a depressed man named Willy who often has day dreams of what he perceives as a perfect life. Willy is angry with his life and wishes his children would be more successful. Towards the end of the story Willy decides that life is not worth living and commits suicide. Oedipus Rex is a story about the King and Queen of Thebes who was told by a prophet that one day their newly born baby, Oedipus, will kill his father (King Laius). The King decides to have a shepherd take Oedipus to a far-away mountain to be left for dead. But the shepherd shows pity on the baby and ends up giving Oedipus to the King and Queen of Corinth. Oedipus ends up crossing paths with his father and kills him. Oedipus then correctly answers a riddle from a Sphinx who then rewards Oedipus by making him the new King of Thebes. Unbeknownst to him that his father and mother were the King and Queen of Thebes, he ends up marrying and having children with his own mother and searches for the killer of King Laius. The theme in The Glass Menagerie, The Death of a Salesman, and Oedipus Rex gives the reader a chance to get a more in-depth interpretation of the story. If you know the theme of The Glass Menagerie you get a much clearer interpretation of what the Author was trying to say to his audience. The theme is how difficult it is to accept reality. Each character in the story has trouble facing reality and in result withdraws into a perfect fantasy land that the real world does not offer. Knowing the theme lets the reader know how much thought is put into the story. It lets the reader know that every word in the story has meaning