What Does The Glass Menagerie Represent

"The Glass Menagerie" by Tennessee Williams is widely regarded as one of the finest plays in all of American literature. The story is about a small family living in St. Louis, Missouri, and it takes place during the late 1930's Great Depression. Throughout the play, Williams uses many symbols to give different meanings and themes; however, the dominate symbol is the glass menagerie. The three main characters in "The Glass Menagerie" are symbolic of the menagerie itself. Like the tiny glass animals, Laura, Amanda, and Tom are trapped by fragile illusions and are unable to move forward from a world of fantasy into reality. However, of the three main characters Laura is the most important to the play because she is the axis around which the
Like her collection, Laura is delicate and easily breakable. Glass is transparent, but when filled with light, it creates a rainbow of color. Similarly, Laura, who is almost non-existent, is beautiful when one looks in the right light. Bert Cardullo wrote in "The Explicator", [t]he physically as well as emotionally fragile Laura escapes from her mid-twentieth-century urban predicament in St. Louis, to which her family has migrated from the rural-pastoral South, as someone of a Romantic temperament would, through art and music – through the beauty of her glass menagerie, the records she plays on her Victrola […] (….)". This is true; the menagerie is the only world Laura devotes herself to. The old records Laura plays on the Victrola are strong reminders of Mr. Wingfield, and this is not coincidence; Williams wants Laura to allow Mr. Wingfield to live through her. This world that Laura lives in is colorful and enticing, but it is based on fragile illusions. She lives in a world locked completely inside her home and head. Throughout the play, Williams reminds the audience of Laura's importance. She holds the family together. It
Since the play is through Tom's memories, the audience sees the importance of Laura in his life through numerous references. Tom promises, "'I am the opposite of a stage magician.' ‘He gives you illusion that has the appearance of truth.' ‘I give you truth in the pleasant disguise of illusion (…)'". Later Tom refers to another stage magician, Malvolio the Magician, and he says, "'[b]ut the most wonderfullest trick of all was the coffin trick' ‘We nailed him into a coffin and he got out of the coffin without removing one nail'" (…). Like the magician, Tom feels as if he is in a coffin, but he does not know how to escape "the coffin without removing one nail"; therefore, it is impossible for Tom to escape without hurting his sister. He is aware of Laura's dependence upon him, and this is what traps him. To the very end, Tom is consumed by guilt because of his desertion of Laura. Even when he breaks free of her dependence, she haunts him through her memory. Tom's final lines in the play are telling of how Laura, and his desertion of her, affect the rest of his life; "[o]h Laura, Laura, I tired to leave you behind me, but I am more faithful than I 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