Essay on Escape in The Glass Menagerie

Amanda belittles Laura’s self-ownership which makes Laura immature and helpless as an adult. When the subject of gentleman callers comes up, Amanda addresses Laura, saying, “How many do you suppose we’re going to entertain this afternoon? [...] [reappearing, airily] What? No one — not one? You must be joking! [Laura nervously echoes her laugh]” (Williams 18). Amanda is caught up in her dreams of marriage for Laura, made clear by her enthusiastic tone and body language, but Laura’s uncomfortable laugh shows how she is not amused by her mother’s aspirations. Amanda is only focused on what she wants for Laura, but she should really be concerned with what Laura wants for herself. In addition, Amanda cannot accept the fact that her daughter is not going to have any suitors; she denies reality and tries to bring Laura into her world of illusions. This irresponsible parenting causes Laura to become the childish adult that she is. When Amanda questions where Laura was going instead of business college, Laura explains that, “I went in the art museum and the bird houses at the Zoo. I visited the penguins every day! [...] Lately I’ve been spending most of my afternoons in the Jewel Box, that big glass house where they raise the tropical flowers” (21). Laura is twenty-three years old and she is getting excited about visiting attractions meant for kids. She would rather explore the Zoo, an art museum, or a greenhouse than attend college, exhibiting her immature and irresponsible mindset. This juvenile behavior is what leads to Laura’s helplessness. While on the fire escape, Amanda tells Laura to make a

She is unable to cope with reality and she escapes back into her fantasy world of old records and glass figurines.

   Tennessee Williams' play, The Glass Menagerie, describes three separate characters, their dreams, and the harsh realities they face in a modern world.  The Glass Menagerie exposes the lost dreams of a southern family and their desperate struggle to escape reality. Williams' use of symbols adds depth to the play. The glass menagerie itself is a symbol Williams uses to represent the broken lives of Amanda, Laura and Tom Wingfield and their inability to live in the present.

Amanda is a desperate mother who is “clinging frantically to another time and place.”() Caught between the past and the present, she has a hard time coming to terms with the fact her life had passed her by. She hopelessly uses escape

Laura Wingfield’s avoidant personality hinders her life. Her excessive shyness causes her to drop out of college. Laura’s typing instructor states, “The first time we gave her a speed test, she [Laura] broke down completely- was sick at the stomach and almost had to be carried into the wash room! After that morning she never showed up any more” (Williams 14). Due to Laura’s inability to adapt to new situations, she cannot work and must stay at home. Furthermore, when her longtime crush, Jim, visits as the gentleman caller, she is unable to act socially. As she learns of Jim’s fiancée she “sways slightly forward and grips the arm of the sofa…Laura struggles visibly with her storm” (90). Due to her social inability, she is unable to see that

Although evident that Laura is fond of Jim, her shyness omits her from initially interacting with

Because of her low self-esteem it has forced her to go into an imaginary world that everything is perfect with her and her family. It all started off with Laura as a child being crippled from a childhood disease. The lack of self-confidence led her to go into an imaginary world where everything with her was perfect. Her family was perfect with no

The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams had ordinary people in an ordinary life that closely resembled the influences of Williams’ personal life while having reoccurring themes and motifs throughout the story. The play has been done by many with some variations in the scripts and setting while still clinging to the basic ideas of the original play.

We all want to disappear at times… escape even. In the end we all know that we cannot run from our problems, no matter where you run they are always there lurking in the shadows. Tennessee William’s 1944 play “The Glass Menagerie” is a remembrance of time long ago and wanting to escape the unhappy, confining lives of Tom, Amanda, Laura and Jim. Although they are unhappy with their lives they choose to hide from the reality. Amanda is stuck in a lifetime ago- her youth back in St. Louis in the 1930s. She tries to relive her youth through Laura. Laura is pretty much terrified of life in general and uses her disability to hide. Tom on the other hand just exists through life and spends a lot of time writing poetry, drinking and living vicariously through movies he watches every night at the theater. Jim is a coworker of Tom’s and went to high school with Tom and Laura. He knows that there is more to life than what he lives. His plan of escape come via continuing his education, but often relives the past of his glory days. Each character in the play has their own method of escape which they use to hide from the real world.

Jim O’Connor – Tom’s friend from work and Laura’s friend from high school. He is a shipping clerk at the warehouse where Tom works. He was a popular athlete in high school. He is focused on his goals and strives for success in his life.

The present does not satisfy him working at the same warehouse as Tom, despite Tom’s prediction that he would "arrive at nothing short of the White House by the time he was thirty" (Williams, 190). Tom realizes that he "was valuable to him [Jim] as someone who could remember his former glory" (Williams, 190). Jim reminisces about his lead in the operetta and Laura asks him to sign her program. He signs it "with a flourish" (Williams 218). Only as Jim enters the Wingfield’s illusory world, can he become this high school hero again. Subsequently, Jim regresses to his high school days of wooing women as he woos innocent Laura by dancing with her and kissing her. While this might as well be an illusion, the situation’s reality is that Jim is engaged. Unlike the Wingfield’s, Jim can only live temporarily in the past. Thus, he leaves the dream world of the Wingfields.

Just as the menagerie represents Laura, it also holds significance for Laura’s mother, Amanda. Throughout the drama, Amanda tells her children about the life she lived when she was young and living at Blue Mountain. She recalls her dozens of gentlemen callers and her popularity at the time. Seeing how time has changed for Amanda from her youth to the time presented in the play, it is plain to understand why she would try to relive her past. Amanda wishes that her life would be as simple and enjoyable as it was when she was young. She also wants to create such a happy childhood for her two children. Amanda tries to force upon her views to Laura and Tom, and in turn wants to live in the past. She yearns for Laura to have gentlemen callers as she had, and tries to make this dream a reality. “It is Amanda who names Laura’s collection a ‘glass menagerie,’ in which animal drives are frozen into esthetic objects, and it is she who longs for gentlemen callers in an ungentle world” (Cohn 101). Amanda tries to freeze her life to preserve the girl she once was. The glass menagerie, being frozen in time, symbolizes Amanda’s wishes for Laura to live the life Amanda once had.

In the memory play, “The Glass Menagerie” by Tennessee Williams we will discuss the theme escape by providing examples of how Amanda, Tom, Laura, and Jim try to escape their current situations in the play. We will talk about each of these characters in the essay below.

In Tennessee Williams's play The Glass Menagerie, we are introduced to a young lady named Laura. Being shy, to an extreme, Laura lives in a world of her own making. It is a socially limited world where she is safe from all life's painful embarrassments. Laura has wrapped herself in a blanket of protection within the walls of her family's lower middle-class apartment. There in her protected fortress she cares for her collection of glass animals, a collection her mother calls the glass menagerie. There is a consistent parallel between Laura and her collection. Laura's glass collection is a physical extension of herself, representing her lifeless existence and the absolute fragility within her. The glass unicorn specifically

Unlike Tom who would rather spend money on cigarettes than “a night school course in accounting at Washington U” (Williams), Jim would rather spend money on bettering himself so that he is better “fit for executive positions” (Williams). Jim is not just Tom’s projection of who he wishes he could be, but Jim is also Toms projection of who he wishes he could’ve been stemming all the way back to Jim and Tom’s high school days. Tom talks about Jim in high school as “…shooting with such velocity through his adolescence that you would logically expect him to arrive at nothing short of the White House by the time he was thirty” (Williams). Tom obviously admires Jim’s character because of Jim’s drive and motivation to be the best, but Tom also projects the version of who he wishes he could be for Laura. Jim is able to bring Laura out of her illusionary world of the glass menagerie and into the real world. When Jim discovers Laura’s emotional disability, Jim even tells Laura, “I wish you were my sister. I’d teach you to have some confidence in yourself.” (Williams). This quotation from Jim can directly be linked to Tom projecting the kind of man he wishes he could be for Laura onto Jim’s character by having Jim help Laura overcome his emotional disability for just a little while until Jim reveals he has a fiancée.