A/L English Literature - RCF Online Paper Class - Day 05 - Drama - The Glass Menagerie - Introduction and

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The Drama The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams - Introduction - Model Qustions and Answers

Brief Biography of Tennessee Williams

Born in Columbus, MS, Williams moved to St. Louis, Missouri as a child. His father was a heavy drinker, and his
mother was prone to hysterical fits. At age sixteen, the already prolific Williams won five dollars for an essay
entitled “Can a Good Wife be a Good Sport?” Williams attended the University of Missouri, where he frequently
entered writing contests as a source of extra income. After Williams failed military training during junior year, his
father pulled him out of college and put him to work in a shoe factory, which Williams despised. At age twenty-
four, Williams suffered a nervous breakdown and left his job. He studied at Washington University in St. Louis and
then at the University of Iowa, finally graduating in 1938.

Historical Context of The Glass Menagerie

The Great Depression of the 1930s deeply affected the United States economically as well as psychologically. Jim
mentions the Chicago Word’s Fair of 1934, an exhibition symbolizing the promise of American industry and the
possibility of escape. But the history that most clearly impacts The Glass Menagerie is Tennessee Williams own
personal history. The Glass Menagerie is deeply autobiographical in many ways. Williams’s real name is Thomas,
or Tom: “Tennessee” comes from his father’s home state. Williams’s mother, Evelina, had been a Southern belle,
and his father was both tyrannical and frequently absent. Williams was very close with his elder sister Rose, who
was delicate and supposedly mentally ill. Laura’s nickname “Blue Roses,” a mis-hearing of “pleurosis,” also links
her to Rose. In 1943, Rose underwent a pre-frontal lobotomy, and Williams felt guilty that he hadn’t been able to
help her more, since he had long since left the family home in St. Louis. The Glass Menagerie is a memory play for
both Tom Wingfield and Tom “Tennessee” Williams as they try to overcome their regrets and to reconcile
themselves with the past.

The Glass Menagerie Summary

The Glass Menagerie is a memory play, and all the events are drawn from the memories of the play’s narrator,
Tom Wingfield, who is also a character in the play. The curtain rises to reveal the dimly lit Wingfield apartment,
located in a lower-class tenement building in St. Louis. The apartment is entered by a fire escape. Tom stands on
the fire escape and addresses the audience to set the scene. The play takes place in St. Louis in the nineteen-
thirties. Tom works in a warehouse to support his mother, Amanda, and his sister, Laura. A gentleman caller, Tom
says, will appear in the final scenes of the play. Tom and Laura’s father abandoned the family many years ago, and
except for a single postcard reading “Hello––Goodbye!” has not been heard from since.

Tom enters the apartment, and the action of the play begins. Throughout the play, thematic music underscores
many of the key moments. The Wingfields are seated at dinner. Amanda nags Tom about his table manners and
his smoking. She regales Tom and Laura with memories of her youth as a Southern belle in Blue Mountain, courted
by scores of gentleman callers. The stories are threadbare from constant repetition, but Tom and Laura let
Amanda tell them again, Tom asking her questions as though reading from a script. Amanda is disappointed when
Laura, for what appears to be the umpteenth time, says that she will never receive any gentleman callers.

Amanda has enrolled Laura in business college, but weeks later, Amanda discovers that Laura dropped out after
the first few classes because of her debilitating social anxiety. Laura spends her days wandering alone around the
park and the zoo. Laura also spends much of her time caring for her glass menagerie, a collection of glass figurines.
Amanda is frustrated but quickly changes course, deciding that Laura’s best hope is to find a suitable man to
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marry. Laura tells Amanda about Jim, a boy that she had a crush on in high school. Amanda begins to raise extra
money for the family by selling subscriptions for a women’s glamour magazine.

Tom, who feels stifled in both his job and his family life, writes poetry while at the warehouse. He escapes the
apartment night after night through movies, drinking, and literature. Tom and Amanda argue bitterly, he claiming
that she does not respect his privacy, she claiming that he must sacrifice for the good of the family. During one
particularly heated argument, precipitated by Tom’s manuscripts pouring out of the typewriter, Tom accidentally
shatters some of Laura’s precious glass animals.

Tom stumbles back early one morning and tells Laura about a magic trick involving a man who escapes from a
nailed-up coffin. Tom sees the trick as symbolic o'f his life. Due to Laura’s pleading and gentle influence, Tom and
Amanda eventually reconcile. They unite in their concern for Laura. Amanda implores Tom not to abandon the
family as her husband did. She asks him to find a potential suitor for Laura at the warehouse. After a few months,
Tom brings home his colleague Jim O’Connor, whom he knew in high school and who calls Tom “Shakespeare.”
Amanda is overjoyed and throws herself into a whirlwind of preparation, fixing up the lighting in the apartment
and making a new dress for Laura. When Laura first sees Jim and realizes that he is her high-school love, she is
terrified; she answers the door but quickly dashes away. Amanda emerges in a gaudy, frilly, girlish dress from her
youth and affects a thick Southern accent, as though she is the one receiving the gentleman caller. Laura is so
overcome by the whole scene that she refuses to join the table, instead lying on the sofa in the living room.

After dinner, the lights in the apartment go out because Tom has not paid the electricity bill––instead, as Tom and
Jim know but Laura and Amanda don’t, Tom has paid his dues to join the merchant marines. Amanda lights
candles, and Jim joins Laura by candlelight in the living room. Laura slowly warms up and relaxes in Jim’s gently
encouraging company. Laura reminds Jim that they knew each other in high school and that he had nicknamed her
“Blue Roses,” a mispronunciation of her childhood attack of pleurosis. Jim tells Laura that she must overcome her
inferiority complex through confidence. Laura shows Jim her glass collection and lets him hold the glass unicorn,
her favorite. They begin to dance to the strains of a waltz coming from across the street. As they dance, however,
Jim knocks over the unicorn, breaking off its horn.

Jim kisses Laura but immediately draws back, apologizing and explaining that he has a fiancée. Laura is devastated
but tries not to show it. She gives him the broken glass unicorn as a souvenir. Amanda re-enters the living room
and learns about Jim’s fiancée. After he leaves, she accuses Tom of playing a trick on them. Tom storms out of the
house to the movies, and Amanda tells him to go to the moon. Tom explains that he got fired from his job not long
after Jim’s visit and that he left his mother and sister. However, no matter how far he goes, he cannot leave his
emotional ties behind. The play is his final act of catharsis to purge himself of the memories of his family.

Themes:

• The Difficulty of Accepting Reality

Among the most prominent and urgent themes of The Glass Menagerie is the difficulty the characters have in
accepting and relating to reality. Each member of the Wingfield family is unable to overcome this difficulty, and
each, as a result, withdraws into a private world of illusion where he or she finds the comfort and meaning that
the real world does not seem to offer. Of the three Wingfields, reality has by far the weakest grasp on Laura. The
private world in which she lives is populated by glass animals—objects that, like Laura’s inner life, are incredibly
fanciful and dangerously delicate. Unlike his sister, Tom is capable of functioning in the real world, as we see in his
holding down a job and talking to strangers. But, in the end, he has no more motivation than Laura does to pursue
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professional success, romantic relationships, or even ordinary friendships, and he prefers to retreat into the
fantasies provided by literature and movies and the stupor provided by drunkenness. Amanda’s relationship to
reality is the most complicated in the play. Unlike her children, she is partial to real-world values and longs for
social and financial success. Yet her attachment to these values is exactly what prevents her from perceiving a
number of truths about her life. She cannot accept that she is or should be anything other than the pampered
belle she was brought up to be, that Laura is peculiar, that Tom is not a budding businessman, and that she herself
might be in some ways responsible for the sorrows and flaws of her children. Amanda’s retreat into illusion is in
many ways more pathetic than her children’s, because it is not a willful imaginative construction but a wistful
distortion of reality.

Although the Wingfields are distinguished and bound together by the weak relationships they maintain with
reality, the illusions to which they succumb are not merely familial quirks. The outside world is just as susceptible
to illusion as the Wingfields. The young people at the Paradise Dance Hall waltz under the short-lived illusion
created by a glass ball—another version of Laura’s glass animals. Tom opines to Jim that the other viewers at the
movies he attends are substituting on-screen adventure for real-life adventure, finding fulfillment in illusion rather
than real life. Even Jim, who represents the “world of reality,” is banking his future on public speaking and the
television and radio industries—all of which are means for the creation of illusions and the persuasion of others
that these illusions are true. The Glass Menagerie identifies the conquest of reality by illusion as a huge and
growing aspect of the human condition in its time.

• The Impossibility of True Escape

At the beginning of Scene Four, Tom regales Laura with an account of a magic show in which the magician
managed to escape from a nailed-up coffin. Clearly, Tom views his life with his family and at the warehouse as a
kind of coffin—cramped, suffocating, and morbid—in which he is unfairly confined. The promise of escape,
represented by Tom’s missing father, the Merchant Marine Service, and the fire escape outside the apartment,
haunts Tom from the beginning of the play, and in the end, he does choose to free himself from the confinement
of his life.

The play takes an ambiguous attitude toward the moral implications and even the effectiveness of Tom’s escape.
As an able-bodied young man, he is locked into his life not by exterior factors but by emotional ones—by his
loyalty to and possibly even love for Laura and Amanda. Escape for Tom means the suppression and denial of
these emotions in himself, and it means doing great harm to his mother and sister. The magician is able to emerge
from his coffin without upsetting a single nail, but the human nails that bind Tom to his home will certainly be
upset by his departure. One cannot say for certain that leaving home even means true escape for Tom. As far as
he might wander from home, something still “pursue[s]” him. Like a jailbreak, Tom’s escape leads him not to
freedom but to the life of a fugitive.

• The Unrelenting Power of Memory

According to Tom, The Glass Menagerie is a memory play—both its style and its content are shaped and inspired
by memory. As Tom himself states clearly, the play’s lack of realism, its high drama, its overblown and too-perfect
symbolism, and even its frequent use of music are all due to its origins in memory. Most fictional works are
products of the imagination that must convince their audience that they are something else by being realistic. A
play drawn from memory, however, is a product of real experience and hence does not need to drape itself in the
conventions of realism in order to seem real. The creator can cloak his or her true story in unlimited layers of
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melodrama and unlikely metaphor while still remaining confident of its substance and reality. Tom—and
Tennessee Williams—take full advantage of this privilege.

The story that the play tells is told because of the inflexible grip it has on the narrator’s memory. Thus, the fact
that the play exists at all is a testament to the power that memory can exert on people’s lives and consciousness.
Indeed, Williams writes in the Production Notes that “nostalgia . . . is the first condition of the play.” The narrator,
Tom, is not the only character haunted by his memories. Amanda too lives in constant pursuit of her bygone
youth, and old records from her childhood are almost as important to Laura as her glass animals. For these
characters, memory is a crippling force that prevents them from finding happiness in the present or the offerings
of the future. But it is also the vital force for Tom, prompting him to the act of creation that culminates in the
achievement of the play.

Symbols

• Laura’s Glass Menagerie

As the title of the play informs us, the glass menagerie, or collection of animals, is the play’s central symbol.
Laura’s collection of glass animal figurines represents a number of facets of her personality. Like the figurines,
Laura is delicate, fanciful, and somehow old-fashioned. Glass is transparent, but, when light is shined upon it
correctly, it refracts an entire rainbow of colors. Similarly, Laura, though quiet and bland around strangers, is a
source of strange, multifaceted delight to those who choose to look at her in the right light. The menagerie also
represents the imaginative world to which Laura devotes herself—a world that is colorful and enticing but based
on fragile illusions.

• The Glass Unicorn

The glass unicorn in Laura’s collection—significantly, her favorite figure—represents her peculiarity. As Jim points
out, unicorns are “extinct” in modern times and are lonesome as a result of being different from other horses.
Laura too is unusual, lonely, and ill-adapted to existence in the world in which she lives. The fate of the unicorn is
also a smaller-scale version of Laura’s fate in Scene Seven. When Jim dances with and then kisses Laura, the
unicorn’s horn breaks off, and it becomes just another horse. Jim’s advances endow Laura with a new normalcy,
making her seem more like just another girl, but the violence with which this normalcy is thrust upon her means
that Laura cannot become normal without somehow shattering. Eventually, Laura gives Jim the unicorn as a
“souvenir.” Without its horn, the unicorn is more appropriate for him than for her, and the broken figurine
represents all that he has taken from her and destroyed in her.

• “Blue Roses”

Like the glass unicorn, “Blue Roses,” Jim’s high school nickname for Laura, symbolizes Laura’s unusualness yet
allure. The name is also associated with Laura’s attraction to Jim and the joy that his kind treatment brings her.
Furthermore, it recalls Tennessee Williams’s sister, Rose, on whom the character of Laura is based.

• The Fire Escape

Leading out of the Wingfields’ apartment is a fire escape with a landing. The fire escape represents exactly what its
name implies: an escape from the fires of frustration and dysfunction that rage in the Wingfield household. Laura
slips on the fire escape in Scene Four, highlighting her inability to escape from her situation. Tom, on the other
hand, frequently steps out onto the landing to smoke, anticipating his eventual getaway.
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Context Questions:

• Context Question 1:

JIM: Aw, aw, aw. Is it broken?

LAURA: Now it is just like all the other horses.

JIM: It’s lost its—

LAURA: Horn! It doesn’t matter. . . . [smiling] I’ll just imagine he had an operation. The horn was removed to
make him feel less—freakish!

Answer:

This exchange, also from Scene Seven, occurs not long after the previous one. After persuading Laura to dance
with him, Jim accidentally bumps the table on which the glass unicorn rests, breaking the horn off of the figurine.
Apparently, Laura’s warning to him about the delicacy of the glass objects reflects a very reasonable caution, but
Jim fails to take the warning seriously enough. The accident with the unicorn foreshadows his mishandling of
Laura, as he soon breaks her heart by announcing that he is engaged.

Just as Jim’s clumsy advances make Laura seem and feel like an ordinary girl, his clumsy dancing turns her beloved
unicorn into an ordinary horse. For the time being, Laura is optimistic about the change, claiming that the unicorn
should be happy to feel like less of a misfit, just as she herself is temporarily happy because Jim’s interest in her
makes her feel like less of an outcast. Laura and the glass unicorn have similar fragility, however, and Laura,
perhaps knowingly, predicts her own fate when she implies that no matter how careful Jim might be, her hopes
will end up shattered.

• Context Question 2:

LAURA: Little articles of [glass], they’re ornaments mostly! Most of them are little animals made out of glass,
the tiniest little animals in the world. Mother calls them a glass menagerie! Here’s an example of one, if you’d
like to see it! . . . Oh, be careful—if you breathe, it breaks! . . . You see how the light shines through him?

JIM: It sure does shine!

LAURA: I shouldn’t be partial, but he is my favorite one.

JIM: What kind of a thing is this one supposed to be?

LAURA: Haven’t you noticed the single horn on his forehead?

JIM: A unicorn, huh? —aren’t they extinct in the modern world?

LAURA: I know!

JIM: Poor little fellow, he must feel sort of lonesome.

Answer:
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This exchange occurs in Scene Seven, after Jim’s warmth has enabled Laura to overcome her shyness in his
presence and introduce him to the collection of glass animals that is her most prized possession. By this point in
the play, we are well aware that the glass menagerie is a symbol for Laura herself. Here, she warns him about the
ease with which the glass figurines might be broken and shows him the wonderful visions produced when they are
held up to the right sort of light. In doing so, she is essentially describing herself: exquisitely delicate but glowing
under the right circumstances.

The glass unicorn, Laura’s favorite figurine, symbolizes her even more specifically. The unicorn is different from
ordinary horses, just as Laura is different from other people. In fact, the unicorn is so unusual a creature that Jim
at first has trouble recognizing it. Unicorns are “extinct in the modern world,” and similarly, Laura is ill-adapted for
survival in the world in which she lives. The loneliness that Jim identifies in the lone unicorn is the same loneliness
to which Laura has resigned herself and from which Jim has the potential to save her.

• Context Question 3:

Well, in the South we had so many servants. Gone, gone, gone. All vestige of gracious living! Gone completely! I
wasn’t prepared for what the future brought me. All of my gentlemen callers were sons of planters and so of
course I assumed that I would be married to one and raise my family on a large piece of land with plenty of
servants. But man proposes—and woman accepts the proposal! To vary that old, old saying a bit—I married no
planter! I married a man who worked for the telephone company! . . . A telephone man who—fell in love with
long-distance!

Answer:

This quote is drawn from Scene Six, as Amanda subjects Jim, who has just arrived at the Wingfield apartment for
dinner, to the full force of her high-volume, girlish Southern charm. Within minutes of meeting him, Amanda
introduces Jim to the broad arc of her life history: her much-lamented transition from pampered belle to deserted
wife. As she does throughout the play, Amanda here equates her own downfall with that of a system of “gracious
living” associated with the Old South, which contrasts starkly with the vulgarity and squalor of 1930s St. Louis.
Naturally, Amanda’s intense nostalgia for a bygone world may have something to do with the fact that neither she
nor her children have managed to succeed in the more modern world in which they now live.

Amanda’s memories of her multitudinous “gentlemen callers” are responsible for the visit of Jim, whom Amanda
sees as a comparable gentleman caller for Laura. Amanda’s decision to tell Jim immediately about her gentlemen
callers demonstrates the high hopes she has for his visit. Indeed, the speech quoted might be taken as rather
tactless move—a sign that Amanda’s social graces have a touch of hysterical thoughtlessness to them and that
putting herself and her story at the center of attention is more important to her than creating a favorable
atmosphere for Laura and Jim’s meeting.

• Context Question 4:

But the wonderfullest trick of all was the coffin trick. We nailed him into a coffin and he got out of the coffin
without removing one nail. . . . There is a trick that would come in handy for me—get me out of this two-by-four
situation! . . . You know it don’t take much intelligence to get yourself into a nailed-up coffin, Laura. But who in
hell ever got himself out of one without removing one nail?

Answer:
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At the beginning of Scene Four, Tom, returning home from the movies, tells Laura about a magic show in which
the magician performs the coffin trick. Tom, who dreams of adventure and literary greatness but is tied down to a
mindless job and a demanding family, sees the coffin as a symbol of his own life situation. He has been
contemplating an escape from his private coffin since the beginning of the play, and at the end, he finally goes
through with it, walking out on his family after he is fired from his job. But Tom’s escape is not nearly as
impressive as the magician’s. Indeed, it consists of no fancier a trick than walking down the stairs of the fire
escape. Nor is Tom’s escape as seamless as the magician’s. The magician gets out of the coffin without disturbing
one nail, but Tom’s departure is certain to have a major impact on the lives of Amanda and Laura. At the beginning
of Scene One, Tom admits that he is “the opposite of a stage magician.” The illusion of escape that the magician
promotes is, in the end, out of Tom’s reach.

Possible Essay Type Questions and Answers:

1. Discuss the role played by the setting in the play Glass Menagerie:

In reviewing Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie, it is vital to consider the role of setting and how setting
affects the meaning and tone of the work in relation to the general themes of the play. The way that setting
influences the direction of plot and character development is like a greater encapsulation of the individuals or an
environmental sphere in which the people move and live. Very often it is the setting around the characters which
helps to set the tone and develop the plot of the story, the environmental and character interchange being in
constant flux.

Props, setting, and location lend to a fine tuning of the environment in which the history and daily activities of the
people becomes illuminated and shaped. In The Glass Menagerie, one can get a good sense of who the characters
are and how they live simply from noting the general and specific environmental touches, the large and small
surrounding objects which lend to how the people behave and interact with one another and their communal
world.

One of the first aspects of setting displayed in the play is the home of Amanda, Tom, and Laura, a lower middle
class apartment in a Saint Louis, Missouri tenement. The socioeconomic status of the family is illuminated in their
choice of dwelling. By noting the fire escape which moves out from a window to an alley below give the reader an
initial glimpse to the idea of escapism and lends the apartment a confining or jail like feeling. The wall of the
nearby building voids out any view and further locks the apartment into place. The function of the family home
serves as an illumination of the characters’ lower level status and encapsulated existence, further highlighted by
the absence of the runaway father. Despite the father being gone from the family, long escaped to Mexico, his
portrait still hangs in the living room and serves as a memorial to what was or could have been and effectively
distorts the reality of the present family situation.

The theme of lost reality or fantastical dreams is even further illuminated by Laura’s collection of glass figurines.
During an angry scene in which Tom declares his mother Amanda an “old witch”, Tom accidentally breaks some of
the figurines when throwing his coat across the room and is stopped in his tracks. Laura cries out and turns away,
and Tom glances guiltily at Laura as his mother demands an apology. The crushed glass symbolizes broken
dreams, something Laura cannot face, and Tom is perhaps pressed to feel ashamed of his participation in
destroying the fantasy world which Laura has created. The world of beauty and solace which Laura finds in her
figurines is carelessly ignored and crushed. However, at the end of the play, one of the figurines is broken by a
potential suitor and Laura remains unfazed. The shift in the meaning of the glass menagerie changes at the end of
the play. When Jim accidentally bumps the glass unicorn and its horn breaks off while dancing with Laura, she
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merely comments that now the unicorn is simply a regular horse. After receiving her first dance and kiss, perhaps
Laura is freed from her constructed fantasy world and blossoms into a real woman.

The main setting and props serve to define the plot and the characters of Tennessee Williams’ play, utilizing
effective symbolism to cast a feeling of containment and fantasy which eventually shatters enough to allow the
characters to move forward in their own unique ways. The cage of the apartment also mirrors the cage of the
dysfunctional family and their crippling relationships, yet the beauty sought in the idealistic world of the fantasy
figurines in Laura’s glass menagerie finally begins to materialize in more realistic ways, encouraging an escape of
Amanda’s children. The locked world in which dreams are the only service to desires and passions becomes more
open in the end of the play, Laura experiencing the genuine affection of a romantic suitor and Tom seizing the
opportunity to truly escape the family home.

2. What does The Glass Menagerie reveal about the lives of women during this time period?

The world depicted in the play is one in which men can shape their lives as they choose, even if it means behaving
irresponsibly, while women must accept a circumscribed and dependent position. For a woman such as Amanda,
deserted by her husband sixteen years ago, the economic situation is precarious. Amanda depends on her son to
pay the rent and the other bills for their apartment. When she wants to bring in some income, she is reduced to
selling magazine subscriptions from her own home.

Laura's position shows even more clearly the limited opportunities open to women during this time period.
Although she does have the chance to attend a business college, what she learns there is shorthand and typing,
which would be sufficient to get her a job as a secretary (to a male executive) but no more. When she drops out of
college, her prospects are even worse. All she can hope for is to snare a man who will support her, and for that she
must develop her feminine wiles. According to Amanda, all women should be a trap for men ("and men expect
them to be," she says).

But the reality is that men are not trapped by women, since they are able to escape any situation that is not of
their liking, with little consequence. The prime example of this is the father, Amanda's husband, who left his job
with the telephone company and deserted his family. Interestingly, Amanda, far from despising him, seems to
retain much affection for him, since she displays his over-sized portrait prominently on the mantel and points it
out to Jim with some pride. If she feels any anger toward her husband, she does not show it. She lives in a world
where it seems accepted that men will behave in this way, and there is little women can do about it.

Tom follows in his father's footsteps. He is prepared to be ruthless in planning his escape, paying his union dues
with the money that should have paid the electricity bill. He has a freedom that Amanda and Laura can never
have, simply because he is a man.

The world depicted in the play, of strictly segregated roles for men and women, typifies pre-World War II America.
After the war, as more women remained in the workforce, roles and expectations based on gender gradually
began to change. By the 1960s, the world depicted in The Glass Menagerie was rapidly becoming out of date.

3. “Reality is often disappointing, but it is sometimes difficult to accept. It is also often impossible to
escape from reality.” In the light of this statement, discuss the depiction of reality and its hold on the
characters in Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie. (2019)

The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams centers around a dream of escape from the harsh reality. Amanda
lives her life through her children and clings to her lost youthfulness. Tom retreats into movie theaters and into his
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dream of joining the merchant seamen and some day becoming a published poet. Laura resorts to her Victrola and
collection of glass ornaments to help sustain her world of fantasy. Although everyone wants to escape from a
different reality, they all feel that need to get away. The father is the most successful in his escape because he
never has to deal with anything at home. He actually leaves and doesn't look back. As for the other four: Laura,
Amanda, Tom, and Jim, they seem to be stuck throughout the play. Jim seems to be the only one with a real
chance at breaking away from his reality. When Tom breaks free, his memory brings him back to that place. Each
person escapes their reality in some way and is somewhat successful at it although total escape is, naturally,
impossible.

Amanda Wingfield tries to escape reality by living in the past. She is obsessed with the notion of the “Southern
belle” and identifies with a lifestyle of ease and gentility that is far removed from her own. At every opportunity
she reminds her children of her connection to the planter class. While Amanda ought to be proud she has raised
two children alone for sixteen years, instead she takes pride in her exaggerated incompetence because in her
warped imagination it indicates her high social status. Amanda’s fantasies distort her perception and keep her out
of touch with reality. She fails to see the reason Laura is not able to attract any “gentlemen callers” despite Tom’s
efforts to enlighten her. She tries to dodge the issue by telling Tom not to call Laura “crippled” and not to “say
peculiar” rather than do as Tom asks and “Face the facts”. Amanda uses her obsession with gentile speaking and
politeness to shut out Tom’s attempts to make her face reality. Her obsession with refined Southern manners and
class helps her to blot out the uncomfortable truths of her existence. However, finally she had to face the bitter
truth.

Laura Wingfield is shy and self-conscious of her disability and escapes to a fragile fantasy world to escape her
troubled existence. Laura retreats to imaginary, child-like, fantasy and “lives in a world of her own”. She spends
her time playing the old records her father left and looking at her “glass menagerie.” Laura escapes to a world of
imagination and fantasy, a world as beautiful and fragile as her “glass menagerie.” Laura’s escape from reality cuts
her off from the rest of the world because the fantasy to which she escapes is totally unique. Amanda’s escape to
the Old South and the idea of the “Southern Belle” was a fairly common obsession during the 1930s for women of
her age, but Laura’s “glass menagerie” is less acceptable and sounds childish. This aggravates the alienation Laura
feels from society.

Tom Wingfield’s indulgence in escapism allows him to tolerate his overbearing mother and stay at home for a
time. Like his sister Laura, Tom retreats to worlds of fantasy and imagination but he is more outgoing and mature
in his tastes. He writes poetry and spends almost every night at the movie theater. Tom’s habit of going to the
movies is a means of escaping his dull existence and a substitute for physical separation from his family. He
shouts: “if self is what I thought of, Mother, I’d be where [father] is – GONE!”. Tom uses the movies to fill a void in
his life, a fact he is at pains to explain to Amanda. Tom is not happy with the kind of life Amanda is pushing him
into and watching adventure in the movies helps him to cope with the oppressive atmosphere of his home life.
Although Tom’s use of movies as a means of escaping reality seems harmless, it does help to push him farther
from his family. Tom spends most of his nights out at the movies which worries Amanda. Tom comes to a
realization that neither Amanda nor Laura seem to reach, that escapism is an impediment to action. Tom cannot
have his own adventures if he remains stuck in his boring job and goes to the movies every night.

Like many people in America during the Great Depression, Amanda, Laura, and Tom seek relief from their dreary
lives by escaping reality. Although each of them retreats to a different place, they all seek escapism for the same
reason, to help them cope with their place in life. Their escapes from reality, however, also drive them farther
apart from one another and, in Tom’s case, result in permanent separation.
 A/L English Literature - RCF Online Paper Class - Day 05 - Drama - The Glass Menagerie - Introduction and
Questions and Answers (Context and Essay Type ) - P a g e | 10

4. A discussion of the symbolism in the play "The Glass Managerie":

The Glass Menagerie is a play that is very important to modern literature. Tennessee Williams describes four
separate characters, their dreams, and the harsh realities they faced in the modern world. His setting is in St. Louis
during the Depression-Era. The story is about a loving family that is constantly in conflict. To convey his central
theme, Williams uses symbols. He also expresses his theme through the characters¹ incapability of living in the
present.

As previously stated, symbols play an important role in The Glass Menagerie. Symbols are substitutions that are
used to express a particular theme, idea, or character. One symbol that is used over and over is the fire escape.
This has different meanings to the characters. For Tom, it is a place where he can escape to. It is where he goes to
escape from his mother¹s nagging. He is open to the outside world when he is on the fire escape. It is his way out.
For Laura, it is where the gentleman caller enters and where the outside world is brought inside to her. But to
Amanda, the fire escape is not only where the gentleman caller enters, but where he will come in and rescue her
daughter from becoming a spinster.

In addition to the fire escape, Williams uses Laura¹s glass menagerie as an important symbol throughout the play.
It represents Laura¹s sensitive nature and fragility. She is very innocent, very much like the glass that she polishes
and looks at. Eventhough, it is very fragile, when put in the light the glass shines and produces a multitude of
colors. This is the same way as Laura. When Laura is enrolled at the Business School she becomes very shy and
embarrassed, hence causing her to become ill in the classroom. She can not bare to face those same faces again
the next day and decides to give up on going to her classes. Part of the innocence Laura has lost is symbolized in
the breaking of the unicorn. When Jim tells Laura of his engagement she is heartbroken. She no longer feels that
uniqueness she once shared with the unicorn, but becomes more common like Jim.

In the same manner, although not very major, the use of rainbows and cigarette smoking are minor symbols in the
play. The rainbows signify the hope in the future. Tom exhilarates Laura when he pulls out the rainbow-colored
scarf and tells her how the magician changed a bowl of goldfish into canaries. He is thinking of the time when he
will be able to escape also. In addition, at the end of the play Tom is speaking about looking into shop windows
and seeing the pieces of glass perfume bottles, which remind him of Laura. He sees their rainbow-colored glass
and remembers how his sister used to protect her glass animals. But, in the end, the rainbows, which at first were
positive, all end in disappointments to each person.

Tom¹s use of cigarette smoking is a symbol of his constant strive for individualism. He is pursued by his mother to
not smoke as much, but he does anyway. Neither Laura nor Amanda smoke, leaving this pleasure to only Tom. He
can go out on the fire escape and smoke his cigarette knowing that neither of the other two will have a say in his
decision. He escapes the everyday racket of his mother by smoking. Although, not as significant as the other
symbols, Tom¹s cigarette smoking is one way he tries to relate to the outside world.

Through Williams’ genius use of symbols he was able to convey his ideas to the reader. He made relationships with
the symbols and the actions of the characters. Along with these symbols he also used the characters¹ incapability
of living in the present to convey the harsh realities that they faced in the modern world.