The Glass Menagerie Symbolism Essay

The Glass Menagerie takes place in the 1940s, but the play is a flashback of the narrator’s, Tom, life in the 1930s. Tom Wingfield lives with his mother, Amanda Wingfield, and old-fashioned older sister Laura Wingfield in a small depressing apartment. Tom’s father left when Tom and his sister were young children and has not returned since then. With his father gone, Tom is now the man of his house and provides the main income for his family. Not only is Tom forced to work, but he also has to deal with his mother always nagging him about every little thing from why he goes out to helping getting his sister a man. Amanda is always telling Tom to have “gentleman calls” for his sister and then he can escape. This is a problem for Tom, because he

The symbols he gave were the words on the projector, the glass menagerie, the movies/ fire escape and the alcohol. To explain, Williams’ has a big projection screen in the back behind the actors of the play to project different words and pictures that were essential in certain scenes throughout the play. The words projected on the screen in scene one were “Ou sont les neiges d’antan,” which means “where of the snows of yesteryear,” the viewers were able to get a clue that something is going to repeat itself has it did in the past. Next, Williams is very clever with the title choice, because a little light gets shined on Laura as she is holding a unicorn, which is symbolizes “The Glass Menagerie.” But, before Tom took off, he took “the glass menagerie” and broke it, which probably broke Laura’s fragile self when she notices Tom is not coming back home. Laura is characterizes, as being an admirable and bright, which allows Tom to be reminded of her in his present travels, since he cannot escape the memory of her. Williams uses the movies and dances to escape his mother constant yelling at him. He goes to these places to create excitement to get him by, while living the life he hates. Also, a clue I never got until rereading this play, is that every time Tom leaves he goes out the fire escape, fire ESCAPE. He also enjoys hanging out on the escape, because he always wants to escape his family and attempts to escape until he finally does, even though the memory of his sister never escapes him. Lastly, Amanda does not appreciate when Tom drinks alcohol, since her husband use to drink. She tries to refuse Tom from drinking since she does not want him taking after his father’s ways, but she is a little late because it is already a connection between them both. Thanks to the way Williams wrote the play, the readers are able to make another connection that Tom is going to leave.