Tennessee Williams Play the Glass Menagerie Essay

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Glass Menagerie

Methods of Escape in the Glass Menagerie

The three members of the Wingfield family are trapped within the claustrophobic confines of their poverty, sadness, and regret. However, each one of them escapes from the realities of their daily existence by engaging in acts of fantasy. For Tom, the narrator of the play, this escape is found through books, movies, and alcohol. His mother, Amanda, distances herself from her current condition by escaping into memories of a more genteel past. And, even more so than her mother or brother, Laura is incapable of living in the real world and instead chooses to escape from her fears and anxiety by creating a fantasy world that is symbolized by her love of the glass animals. The difficulties each character has in dealing with reality serves to drive them further apart from each other, heightening their isolation and causing them to retreat further inward.

As the play's narrator, Tom is the only character in The Glass Menagerie whose dreams of escape are actually realized. He spends much of the play avoiding his financial and familial responsibilities by behaving like a teenager and sneaking off to the movies.

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When his mother, Amanda, accuses him of going to the movies far too much, he tells her that his life in the warehouse forces him to seek excitement elsewhere. "Man is by instinct a lover, a hunter, a fighter, and none of those instincts are given much play at the warehouse," (Williams 33) he tells her, illustrating that the fictional worlds afford him the freedom to reinvent himself in a way that conventional life does not. At the play's conclusion, Tom speaks directly to the audience, telling them that he had finally escaped to St. Louis and "followed, from then on, in my father's footsteps, attempting to find in motion what was lost in space" (97). This implies that while he might have physically removed himself from the stifling burden of his mother and sister, he was never able to achieve true freedom.

Tom's mother, Amanda, also strives to free herself from the dull and dingy world of her small, impoverished apartment. However, she accomplishes this in a much different manner, escaping into herself rather than into the fictional worlds of film and books. Although she is aware of….....

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