Why is Guernica mentioned in the glass menagerie?
Scenes One & Two Summary: Scene One Tom Wingfield steps onstage dressed as a merchant sailor and speaks directly to the audience. According to the stage directions, Tom “takes whatever license with dramatic convention is convenient to his purposes.” He explains the social and historical background of the play: the time is the late 1930s, when the American working classes are still reeling from the effects of the Great Depression. The civil war in Spain has just led to a massacre of civilians at Guernica. The reference to Guernica was just used to convey what was going on in the world at that time and to explain the mood of the people.
