Futile Dreams of Escape in The Glass Menagerie

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Futile Dreams of Escape in The Glass Menagerie

"I have always been more interested in creating a character that contains something crippled. I think nearly all of us have some kind of defect, anyway, and I suppose I have found it easier to identify with the characters who verge on hysteria, who were frightened of life, who were desperate to reach out to another person" (Rasky 134). This statement of Tennessee Williams supports the idea that he incorporates something crippled into all his major characters. In his play, The Glass Menagerie, Williams portrays a crippling mother and child relationship. He clearly illustrates that none of the characters are capable of living in the present. The characters believe that happiness will be found in their repeated quests for escape from the real world. As such, they retreat into their separate worlds to escape life's brutalities.

Set in Depression-era St. Louis, the overbearing Southern ex-charmer, Amanda Wingfield is the de facto head of the household. A former Southern belle, Amanda is a single mother who behaves as though she still is the high school beauty queen. Williams' still-resonant study reveals her desperate struggle with the forces of fate against her dysfunctional relationship that looms and grows among her adult children. (Gist)

Laura, Amanda, Tom, and Jim resort to various escape mechanisms to avoid reality. Laura, fearful of being denigrated as inferior by virtue of her innate inability to walk, is shy and detaches herself from the unfeeling modern world. Amanda tries every means to integrate her into society, but to no avail. She sends her to business school and invites a gentleman caller to dinner. She is both unable to cope with the contemporary world's mechanization represented by the speed test in typing and unable to make new acquaintances or friends due to her immense inhibition with people. Her life is humdrum and uneventful, yet it is full of dreams and inundated with memories. Whenever the outside world threatens Laura, she seeks solace and retreats to her glass animal world and old phonograph records. Amanda, her mother hints at the alternative of matrimony for fiasco in business careers and Laura "utters a startled, doubtful laugh. She reaches quickly for a piece of glass." (Williams, ). The glass menagerie becomes her tactile consolation.

The little glass ornaments represent Laura's self and characterize her fragility and delicate beauty.

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