Essay on the Illusion of Escape in The Glass Menagerie

The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams is a celebrated and cherished play that has affected generations. Written in 1945, the play very well may have been an outlet for Williams to accept what had happened to his own sister. Rose Williams had been lobotomized due to schizophrenia, affecting her brother greatly. While Williams’ family may be real, his characters are over dramatic and eccentric. The characters of Amanda, Tom, and Laura make up an extremely dysfunctional family living together in a 1930’s Saint Louis. By the end of the play, each character has affected themselves and each other. The characters spend the majority of their lives inventing someone who will make the rest of their family members happy, and when these facades crumble,

The loss of her husband causes Amanda to develop a dependence on her children. She wants Tom and Laura to become successful. Amanda complains that Tom does not earn enough money at the shoe factory. She wants him to attend night school so he can attain a better career.

In The Glass Menagerie, Tennessee Williams uses the theme of escape to help drive the play forward. None of the characters are capable of living in the real world. Laura, Amanda, Tom and Jim use various methods to escape the brutalities of life. Laura retreats into a world of glass animals and old records. Amanda is obsessed with living in her past. Tom escapes into his world of poetry writing and movies. Jim also reverts to his past and remembers the days when he was a high school hero. Mr. Wingfield is referred to often throughout the play. He is the ultimate symbol of escape. This is because he has managed to remove himself from the desperate situation that the rest of the family is still

   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 living through her daughter Laura. Amanda is very controlling. Amanda treats her son Tom like a child. Amanda try's to live the life she wished she had though her children. Amanda is very similar to Gatsby and Hannah.

Along with the character transformation in “A Doll’s House”, Tom, from “The Glass Menagerie”, also goes through some character changes. Throughout the entire play, Tom was working in a warehouse trying to support his family. While working there, he was struggling with his dreams of becoming a merchant marine. Towards the end of the play, when Tom introduces his friend Jim O’Connor to his sister Laura, his mother hopes that this could be a man that Laura could settle down with and someday marry. When Amanda finds out that Jim is already engaged, she blames Tom. She is furious that Tom brought a gentleman caller over

One of the big motivations shown through the characters in The Glass Menagerie is the yearning of escape from the real world. One example shown through Laura’s character is she finds a way to escape reality through her glass menagerie and the old records she plays that once belonged to their father. The mother, Amanda, tries to escape her current life as a deserted wife who must constantly scramble for money by retelling stories of when she was young. Her favorite story to retell regards one day when she received the attentions of seventeen gentleman callers. For her, those gentleman callers represent what her life was and what it could have been if she had not married her husband, “the telephone man who fell in love with long

In The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams, the theme of abandonment is salient throughout the play. Tom contemplates whether he should stay with his family doing something he hates or leave them and follow his dream. His yen to be happy and fulfill his American dream controls his final decision. Through Tom's actions, thoughts, and the negative imagery of his father, Williams proves that abandonment is a viable solution in escaping challenges and reality, if it is tenable.

The theme of Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie is conflict. The play contains both internal and external conflict. The absence of Tom's father forces external turmoil and conflict between Tom the protagonist, and his mother the antagonist. The internal conflict is seen within Tom through his constant references to leaving home and his selfishness. The play is about a young aspiring poet named Tom, who works at a shoe warehouse. Tom is unhappy with is life at home mainly because of his overbearing, over protective mother named Amanda. Tom also has a sister within the play named Laura who chooses to isolate herself from the rest of society. During the play Tom's relationship with his mother is filled with very harsh and abrasive

Laura keeps a picture of Jim, her high school crush, similarly to how Amanda hangs a picture of Mr. Wingfield in the living room (16). This demonstrates that Laura likes to live in the past and Jim holds a special place in her heart. Amanda makes Tom invite a gentlemen caller to find an alternative for Laura’s bleak future since she dropped out of business school. Ironically, the gentlemen caller is Jim - the source of Laura’s infatuation. Laura’s initial hesitation to see Jim is captured by this quotation: “There was a Jim O’Connor we both knew in high school [then, with effort] If that is the one that Tom is bringing to dinner - you’ll have to excuse me, I won’t come to the table” (55).

With a glass collection, just a small mistake can break the entire collection of figures. The smallest things can affect Laura because she is so delicate. When Tom gets mad and breaks some of her glass pieces, Laura cries out (scene 3, 130-132). The collection, to Laura, is like another world, and she is in her own world where she is able to console herself with her glass collection and old phonograph.

Unfortunately, she has internally magnified this limp until it has affected her entire personality. Laura being so insecure believes that everyone notices nothing but her limp; it becomes for her it represents deformity which makes it near impossible for her to live a normal life. The reader understands that Laura’s lack of ability to overcome her physical flaw causes her to withdraw into her world of fantasy. The title of the play The Glass Menagerie refers to Laura’s prized collection of glass figurines that she delicately polishes and cares for. Laura herself is as unique and lovely as her tiny glass animals; she retreats from her fear of social interactions and the pressures of daily life by drifting into a fantasy world made up of nothing but beautiful inanimate objects.

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.

Written in 1944, Tennessee Williams wrote a play during World War II when people were barely making ends meet. Centering on the Wingfield family, the story consisted of five characters: Amanda Wingfield (the mother), Laura Wingfield (the daughter), Tom Wingfield (son, narrator, Laura’s older brother), Jim Connor (Tom and Laura’s old acquaintance from high school) and Mr. Wingfield (father to Tom and Laura, and Amanda’s husband)- who abandoned the family long before the start of the play. The title, “The Glass Menagerie”, represented a collection of glass animals on display in the Wingfields’ home. At one point or another, these animals then represented each character when they couldn’t accept reality. The theme of this play were about the

Amanda forces the action in the play by pushing both Laura and Tom, this often causes friction between herself and Tom