Themes Of The Glass Menagerie Essay, Research Paper

?The Glass Menagerie? is a play that contains intense human

feelings; frustration, shyness, regretfulness, anger, and sadness. The play

is set in the apartment of the Wingfield family. In this cramped, dinghy

place lives three characters; Amanda, Laura, and Tom, who are desperate

to make their dream come true.

Amanda is a shrew, she wants to live through her daughter, Laura.

Her dream is for her daughter to marry to a well-educated man and

support her throughout the rest of her life. Amanda always make

complaining remarks about her husband who had left her with Tom and

Laura. Amanda nags Tom for spending too much time watching movies

instead of working and finding a suitable for Laura. She likes to brag about

how many Gentleman callers came to her house to pursue her.

Tom is the narrator of the play. His dream is to be a poet and have

no responsibilities to his family. He works at a warehouse, which he

doesn?t appreciate because it avoids him to complete his dream. He

detests when his mother tell him what to do and how to do it, sometimes

he has to act without pity.

Laura is shy and has a low self-esteem. She is compared to her

glass collection, fragile in every sense. As an effect of a childhood illness,

she was left crippled, which made her think that she was less than

everybody else. She avoids socializing because she is afraid of breaking

up, however this changes when she sees her old crush, Jim O?cconor. Her

dream is to feel good about herself and to get out of her depression.

Each character desires to escape from this lifestyle, poverty is what

has them trap.

The fire escape provides a different purpose for each of the characters.

From the opening of the play, Tom?s addresses the audience from the fire

escape. The fire escape allows Tom to get out of the apartment and away

from his nagging mother. Amanda sees it as an entrance for the

Gentleman callers to enter their lives. Laura hides inside the apartment

not in the fire escape. The fire escape separates authenticity from the

undiscovered.

Tom escapes in more than one way, first is the fire escape which

leads him away from his home, then the movies. The movies temporarily

takes him to another world, where mothers and runaways fathers doesn?t

exist. He also gets away by drinking. He wants to escape his

responsibilities of taking care of his mother and sister. He wishes to have a

life of his own.

Laura finds an escape through her glass collection. She also finds

relieves in playing the same old record day after day. Across their

apartment is the Paradise Dance Hall. Perhaps the music floating up to the

apartment from the dance hall is supposed to be her escape which she

just can?t take.

As time goes it?s getting harder and harder for Tom to avoid the real

world, and the time for him to leave comes. When he leaves , he feels

guilty for abandoning Laura . However, he discovers that he hasn?t

escaped, but led himself onto a path of even more powerful desperation.

The theme escape is used throughout the play to demonstrate the

hopelessness of each character?s dreams. For the characters, an escape is

possible, however, in the end no one finds a clear break.

Bibliography

Williams, Tennesse. The Glass Menagerie.