The Glass Menagerie Essay

The Glass Menagerie, a short play by Tennessee Williams, is about family dysfunction. The play is centered on the Wingfield family, living in St. Louis during the depression-Era1930. The play consists of five characters who try to escape unpleasant reality and live in their dream world. Mr. Wingfield left Amanda, his wife, with two children years ago to seek pleasure in his life and to escape from his duties towards his family, so Amanda Wingfield is a single, mother of two children, Tom (her son) and Laura (her daughter). She depends entirely on Tom for her and her daughter’s livelihood. She always lives in the fear that Tom would leave her and Laura as her husband did. She tries to fluctuate between illusion of her youth the and real world.
Tom works in a shoe warehouse; he tries to escape from his family and his duties, whereas Laura is living in the illusion of a glass world escaping from reality. Jim O’Connor, the gentlemen caller, seems to be the person who lives in reality, but at some point he went back too in his glorious past of school. All the character uses different escape mechanism to run away from their present in search of pleasure and happiness.
Throughout the play, Amanda appears as a frivolous character essentially lost in her own world. When her husband leaves her behind with two children, she was left with an empty and meaningless life. In order to that emptiness, she began to live through her children and her past memories of when she young and living in the Blue Mountains, where she was financially and socially stable and had many gentlemen callers in a day. She wants her children to live the same life that she had in her youth, but it is not possible now as she is no longer the same southern belle. She never accepted this truth about her life and continues to live in the world of illusion of her prosperous life. Whenever it was possible for her, she used to close her eyes and escape from reality in order to run away from unwanted conditions. She always tries to have the best for her children but she fails to understand what they actually need. That created the conflict between her and Tom, and he finally decided to leave them. She seems to be happy only in her imaginary life. She is not a happy woman in real life, as she is not satisfied with her children because they area doing completely opposite from what she had thought. She wants Laura to have either a business or doting husband, but she found that what she expects from Laura is out of her reach, and she is still single sitting at home. On the other hand, she wants Tom to look after the family needs and especially his younger sister, but Tom is following his father’s path and starts drinking and wants to go away from her. All these could be clearly understood when she says “as soon as Laura has got somebody to take care of her, married, a home of her own, independent – why, then you’ll be free to go wherever you please, on land sea, way the wind blows you. But until that time you’ve got to look out for your sister” (Williams). Her concern for Laura and Tom’s plan to join the Merchant Marines and leave them makes her unhappy.
Tom is the only member of the family who is capable of functioning in the real world as he interacts with strangers at his work place. However, his capability to live in the real world is limited because he finds ways to escape from his mother and his duties towards his family. This becomes clear when he paid fees for Union of Merchant Seamen membership instead of the paying electric bill. Apart from these, he invites his friend Jim for dinner to see Laura, without confirming that he is single or not. All this is proved when he says, “I’m right at the point of committing myself to a future that doesn’t include the warehouse and Mr. Mendoza or even a night-school course in public speaking” (Williams). Even after he is out of the house for a whole day working at warehouse, he goes to watch movies after his job almost every day so that he can escape from his mother’s scrutiny and nagging. Tom’s act of trying to escape and leaving his mother and sister is an irresponsible act. (As he is repeating the same thing that his father did to his mother Amanda, because of which they are having such conditions to live in the house.)
Laura is very introverted and shy, almost lost in her world of the glass menagerie.
The glass menagerie symbolizes her fragility, her retreat from real world, and her incapability of facing the reality. So in order to escape from the real world, she lives in the world of glass feeling her at ease and normal. When Jim comes for dinner she give him to see the unicorn, the one that she liked the most and which she never allows anybody to touch. He keeps the unicorn on the table, and they started dancing. While they were dancing Jim accidently knock off the unicorn from the table. Jim apologizes, but Laura says; “Now its just like all the other horses… Maybe it’s blessing in disguise.” (Williams). This means that the breaking of the unicorn’s horn represents the breaking of her shyness, freeing all of the feeling she had bottled up and making her a normal person, or the unicorn horn has broken and changed into a horse that is normal like other animals; therefore, she is trying to change from being different from others to becoming more normal. The breaking of the unicorn is significant as it indicates breaking out of her glass world. However, when she comes to know that Jim is already engaged, the breaking of unicorn seems to be a traumatic event for Laura as it is like breaking her heart. Apart from this, she thinks that she will always be like the broken unicorn in the
society.
Jim O’Connor, the gentlemen caller, is a friend, a co-worker of Tom at the warehouse, and a profound crush of Laura from school times. In school, Jim was a sport star, a lead actor, and was followed by many girls including Laura. But now he is working as shipping clerk, just a post higher than Tom and dreaming for a better life. Amanda and Jim both had glories pasts; however, he is not lost in the past as Amanda is, but he tries to move forward and enjoy life. He is constantly striving for a better future, and so he started studying public speaking and radio engineering at night school. He says, “I believe in the future of television! I wish to be ready to go up right along with it. Therefore I’m planning to get in on the ground floor” (Williams). which reveals his confidence and positive attitude. He is the only person who can break into Laura’s world of the glass menagerie. But in conversation with Laura, he lost himself in his glorious school past. He becomes so enwrapped in the past that he not only breaks Laura’s unicorn, but also her dream.
Each and every member of the Wingfield family had different escape mechanisms, so they run away from the real world. Amanda escapes into her past glories, and Tom tries to run away by staying away from home. Laura lives in her dream world of the glass menagerie, and Jim, at some point, tries to dream about his school days. However, none of them was able to escape from the real world. All this leads to frustration and dysfunctions in the family. In today’s world it is often possible for people to relate to one of the family member in some way. It is still relevant in 2018 because people still find different ways to escape from the reality by using different mechanisms. For instance, some of them drink alcohol or take drugs, so they can escape from the pain in their life. Some of them never come out from their phone or video games, so they don’t have to face other people. Some others remain inactive and always wait for better options to come. So, the concept of reality and escapism has affected people of each and every generation. The mechanisms of escapism have changed but the reasons are the same.