The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams, Essay Example

Tennessee Williams produced the written play “The Glass Menagerie” that focused on one particular recurring theme in each of the scenes.  This theme was the inability of the characters to escape from the prison of reality.  This theme was supported by the characters, the setting and the plot numerous times throughout the play.  Williams never fully allows the characters to escape from reality and their dreams are never realized, even when the main character abandons his family and enters into the world outside of the environment within the play.

To begin, each character is living in a fantasy world to help them dream up an alternate reality that does not involve the pain and aguish associated with the current circumstances.  Tom’s sister, Laura has a very serious illness that keeps her from being able to handle the stresses and pressures of the real world.  This is why she is unable to take the courses that her mother has signed her up for at the Business School, and it is also the reason why she is unable to spend time with Jim at the beginning of the climax.  She literally becomes ill whenever reality comes knocking on the door.  Williams implicitly compares her to the glass figures that she loves to play with.  Just as she is very fragile, so are the figurines that break several times during the play.  Each time a figurine breaks, it is caused from a situation where reality is trying to creep into the characters’ lives.  The first time was when Tom threw his coat on the glass figures and they broke after he argued with his mother about going to the movies to escape and experience a little adventure.  The second time was when Laura and Jim were dancing and Jim bumped into the table and broke the horn off of the unicorn.

Tom is the most relevant example of this theme because of his dreams to leave and experience adventure, just as he views from the movies he sees every night.  The movies act as a window to a dream world that Tom cannot encounter, even though that is what he wants in the entire world, so much so that he does not pay the electric bill and makes up his mind to join the Union of Merchant Seamen.  Each time he thinks about leaving and becoming adventurous, something bad happens in the play.  The first time was when his sister’s figurines were broken.  The last time this occurred was when the climax of the story takes place and the family curses Tom for his actions of bringing Jim into the apartment as a suitor and for not paying the electric bill with the money he ultimately used for his escape.  Although Tom finally does abandon his family after he is fired from work, he is plagued with the pain he feels for everything that happened to his sister and his abandoning her.  This is another way that Williams keeps Tom from truly escaping reality.  The pain he feels and the regret forces him to never actually experience the adventure he longed for.

The setting is also used by Williams to emphasize this theme.  Most notably the apartment acts as the prison by which the ladies cannot escape the reality of their circumstances.  Tom appears to be the only character that has the ability to truly leave and enter the world, but the main place he visits is the warehouse where he works, which is another extension of the prison.  Tom visits the movie theater as previously mentioned, but even the movies are not enough to sustain Tom’s desire for adventure and excitement.  The true stairwell into adventure is the fire-escape outside of the apartment.  This appears to offer the characters an opportunity to dream and think outside the parameters of the restrictive apartment.  Laura and Tom wish upon the moon on the fire escape and Jim brings a part of his dreams into the apartment by entering the fire escape.  He shares his dreams of achieving an executive position by taking a speech course, something he suggests that Tom ought to do.  Still, this suggestion disturbs Tom because it would continue to keep him confined in the awful reality.

Many props are used to help assimilate the escape of reality to the audience.  The lighted picture of their father who escaped and abandoned the family implies that he experienced true escape.  Likewise, there is a metaphor mentioned early in the play about the magician that escapes through the coffin and Tom ponders with Laura over how this can be done because he longs to escape the reality that they live in.