Fragility In The Glass Menagerie

Tennessee Williams unravels a theme of fragility in his classic play, The Glass Menagerie, by emblemizing Tom breaking various glass figures to emotionally breaking Laura and also symbolizing Laura’s disorder to the unicorn figure’s unusual horn. Although the theme brims he play, fragility most blatantly illustrates through Laura’s quote, “Glass breaks so easily. No matter how careful you are” (86). The quote illustrates the representation of how easily glass can break to how brittle Laura is. Laura’s delicacy can also be channeled through Tom’s anger and selfish needs, specifically when Tom leaves the family for his own good. Fragility is portrayed more and more in the progression of the play, starting with the event of Tom storming out of the apartment, knocking over, and breaking some of the figures in Laura’s collection. According to Jim, Laura “lives in a world of her own- a world of little glass ornaments…” (48). When Tom breaks the figures, he literally, symbolically, and figuratively breaks Laura’s world. Linking this to another event, Tom breaks Laura emotionally when he flees his family for his own selfish need of “adventure” (33). Similarities between the events can be illustrated through Laura’s feelings and emotions. As Tom is saying to blow out the candles in scene eight, he ultimately tells Laura to seal their
Since Laura has no other way of expressing herself, she uses the glass figures which explains why she protects it so cautiously. Catastrophically shattering Laura’s world was the last thing Tom wanted to do. He had to remove himself from a situation without doing any harm. Tom thinks fleeing his family will be the best thing for him so he won’t have to watch over Laura, however he can’t emotionally let her go which explains the line, “time is the longest distance between two places”