The Glass Menagerie Research Paper

When encountering uncomfortable or undesirable situations, many people escape either physically or mentally. One of the most important themes within The Glass Menagerie, a classic play written by Tennessee Williams, is the difficulty the characters have facing and accepting reality. The play begins inside the Wingfield tenement apartment, where Amanda lives with her two children, Laura and Tom. The American drama takes place during the Great Depression, a time when families barely scraped by. The family’s lives are not without struggle, and everyone is forced to make sacrifices. Amanda wants Laura to to enroll in a typing class, grooming her for a future job. Tom is reluctantly employed at a warehouse, which halts his dream to become a writer.

A disability she was born with is the root of her low self-esteem. While she was growing up, Laura wore a brace on her leg, which embarrassed her. In high school and the present, Laura escapes from reality and enters into a fantasy world. Throughout the play, it is clear Laura does not think or concern herself with the future. When her mother, Amanda, enrolls her in typing class, Laura drops out on the very first day. After that, Laura is so frightened that she does not tell Amanda and pretends to go to class every morning. Instead, Laura goes to the park or zoo, just like a young girl. When Amanda discovers Laura has dropped out of class, she is enraged: “Oh! I feel so weak I could barely keep on my feet! I had to sit down while they got me a glass of water! Fifty dollars tuition, all of our plans -- my hopes and ambitions for you -- just gone up the spout, just gone up the spout like that. [Laura draws a long breath and gets awkwardly to her feet. She crosses to the Victrola and winds it up.]” (Williams 14). After Amanda yells at Laura for dropping out of school and lying to her for weeks, Laura winds up the Victrola. She mentally escapes from the uncomfortable conversation by listening to music. Later on in the argument over Laura’s decision to drop out of school, Amanda asks Laura what she plans to do now that she will not get a job: “So what are we going to do for the rest of our lives? Stay home and watch the

In order to deal with the pressure to find a job, Laura escapes to a fantasy world. While working at the warehouse, Tom escapes though his trips to the movies and bars to watch other people’s adventures. And in the end, Tom stops making sacrifices for his family and escapes from them entirely to have his own adventures. Yet those adventures do not quite satisfy him as in Naoimu Shihab Nye’s poem, “Burning the Old Year,” it is “only the things I didn’t do” that “crackle after the blazing dies” (Nye, 13-15). Tom, years after leaving home, mourns, “Oh, Laura, Laura, I tried to leave you behind me, but I am more faithful than intended to be! I reach for a cigarette, I cross the street, I run into the movies or a bar, I buy a drink, I speak to the nearest stranger -- anything that can blow your candles out!” (Williams, 97). Many years and many miles later, Tom is still ducking into bars and movie theaters to escape reality. This time, though, he is not trying to escape the reality of what he is doing with his life, but of what he is not doing. He cannot escape the guilt of having deserted the sister who needs