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The Harsh Realities of The Glass Menagerie

 

        The Glass Menagerie  is a play that is very important to modern

literature.  Tennessee Williams describes four separate characters, their

dreams, and the harsh realities they faced in the modern world.  His

setting is in St. Louis during the Depression-Era.  The story is about a

loving family that is constantly in conflict.  To convey his central theme,

Williams uses symbols.  He also expresses his theme through the characters'

incapability of living in the present.

 

        The apartment that Amanda, Laura, and Tom Wingfield share is in the

middle of the city and is among many dark alleys with fire escapes.  Tom

and Laura do not like the dark atmosphere and their mother always tries to

make it as pleasant as possible.  The two women do not get out much to

socialize.  Amanda sometimes goes to D.A.R. (Daughters of the Revolution)

meetings, but Laura does not like to socialize at all.  She has a slight

limp and is extremely shy with people.  When she does leave the apartment,

she falls.  She is unable to function in the outside world.

 

        As previously stated, symbols play an important role in  The Glass

Menagerie.  Symbols are substitutions that are used to express a particular

theme, idea, or character.  One symbol that is used over and over is the

fire escape.  This has different meanings to the characters.  For Tom, it

is a place where he can escape to.  It is where he goes to escape from his

mother's nagging.  He is open to the outside world when he is on the fire

escape.  It is his way out.  For Laura, it is where the gentleman caller

enters and where the outside world is brought inside to her.  But  to

Amanda, the fire escape is not only where the gentleman caller enters, but

where he will come in and rescue her daughter from becoming a spinster.

 

        Amanda feels that if the gentleman caller comes, then he will

rescue Laura.  The problem is that Jim, the caller, has not even met either

of the two women yet.  Amanda assumes that he will be the one for Laura.

She has a difficult time distinguishing between reality from illusion.  The

same way she refuses to acknowledge Laura's handicap.  She does not refer

to it as a handicap, but rather as a ³little defect,² that is hardly

noticeable.

 

        In addition to the fire escape, Williams uses Laura's glass

menagerie as an important symbol throughout the play.  It represents

Laura's sensitive nature and fragility.  She is very innocent, very much

like the glass that she polishes and looks at.  Eventhough, it is very

fragile, when put in the light the glass shines and produces a multitude of

colors.  This is the same way as Laura.  When Laura is enrolled at the

Business School she becomes very shy and embarrassed, hence causing her to

become ill in the classroom. She can not bare to face those same faces

again the next day and decides to give up on going to her classes.

 

        Laura chooses to spend her time with her tiny glass animals, and

she treasures them more than actually participating in daily contact with

other people.  She does not want to become involved with the world outside

of their apartment.  She prefers the comfort of her home and of her glass

animals.  Laura is just as easily broken and hurt as the glass unicorn, and

she is just as unique.  When Jim accidentally bumps into the unicorn and

breaks it, the unicorn no longer looks unique.  It becomes like all the

rest.  During that time, Laura feels more accepted and less self-conscious.

She begins to open up and glow.  Jim notices this and takes advantage of it

by dancing with her, and, eventually, kissing her.

 

        Part of the innocence Laura has lost is symbolized in the breaking

of the unicorn.  When Jim tells Laura of his engagement she is heartbroken.

She no longer feels that uniqueness she once shared with the unicorn, but

becomes more common  like Jim.

 

        Therefore, when she gives the unicorn to Jim she is giving him her

broken heart.  She gives him something of hers to take with him when he

leaves and, in a way, he has left something with her.  He has only left her

with shattered hopes.  It is clear, at this point, that Laura and her glass

menagerie break when they both become exposed to the outside world,

represented by Jim.

 

        In the same manner, although not very major, the use of rainbows

and cigarette smoking are minor symbols in the play.  The rainbows signify

the hope in the future.  Tom exhilarates Laura when he pulls out the

rainbow-colored scarf and tells her how the magician changed a bowl of

goldfish into canaries.  He is thinking of the time when he will be able to

escape also.  In addition, at the end of the play Tom is speaking about

looking into shop windows and seeing the pieces of glass perfume bottles,

which remind him of Laura.  He sees their rainbow-colored glass and

remembers how his sister used to protect her glass animals.  But, in the

end, the rainbows, which at first were positive, all end in disappointments

to each person.

 

        Tom's use of cigarette smoking is a symbol of his constant strive

for individualism.  He is pursued by his mother to not smoke as much, but

he does anyway.  Neither Laura nor Amanda smoke, leaving this pleasure to

only Tom.  He can go out on the fire escape and smoke his cigarette knowing

that neither of the other two will have a say in his decision.  He escapes

the everyday racket of his mother by smoking.  Although, not as significant

as the other symbols, Tom's cigarette smoking is one way he tries to relate

to the outside world.

 

        All of the characters in The Glass Menagerie  retreat into their

own separate worlds to  escape the harshness of life.  None of them are

capable of living in the present.  Each of them avoids reality in their own

way.

 

        For example, Laura is only able to live in the present very briefly.

She retreats back into her little world of glass animals and listening to

her old phonograph records.  Even when it appears that she is overcoming

her extreme shyness with Jim, she immediately goes back to playing the

records on the Victrola after she finds out that he is engaged.  She is

more comfortable and less vulnerable in her own world.

 

        In addition, Amanda is very obsessed with the past.  She is always

telling Laura and Tom about the time when she was younger and had received

seventeen gentlemen callers.  She considers those times to be better days

than the present or the reality.  She has difficulty in facing the fact

that she is a single mother with two children.

 

        Also, Tom becomes caught up in the past after he leaves home and is

wandering the streets thinking about Laura.  He had gone to movies and

wrote poetry at work to escape the reality of living at home.  It was his

responsibility to support his mother, his sister, and himself with his work

at the warehouse.  He wanted to become a poet, but he was pressured by his

mother to become responsible enough to take care of his sister.  She wanted

him to find Laura a mate that could rescue her.  Actually, this search was

a search for reality.  Without that link to the outside world, they would

continue to live in their world of delusions.  Unfortunately, Tom left home,

as did his father, and continues to be haunted by his memories of Laura.

 

        Jim, on the other hand, tends to try to live his life in the

present.  He is that link to the outside that the family needs.  He only

lives temporarily in the past, only when he enters into the apartment.  Jim

is not happy with working at the warehouse either.  He is taking night

classes and wants to become an executive someday.  He becomes the high

school hero again when Tom and Laura remember his glory days.  They are the

only ones that give him the feel of importance, of self-worth.  Jim talks

about how he was constantly surrounded by women and he feels a bit

disappointed that his future did not turn out like his high school days.

 

        Jim is the only character in the play that still has a sense of

reality.  Eventhough he reminisces about high school, he still remembers

that he is engaged.  As Laura can not handle the outside world, Jim can not

handle Laura's world.  He eventually stumbles  and breaks the glass unicorn.

Neither of them are comfortable.

 

        In The Glass Menagerie, Tennessee Williams wrote about the

struggles of an American family during the Depression-Era.  He presented

the problems of being constrained to monotonous work and how one's dreams

may  not always come true. He also stressed that not everyone is

comfortable with living in the present day.  There were always better times

than the ones that are being lived now.   He acknowledged that there are

those who wish not to participate and are not comfortable living in the

outside world.     Through Williams' genius use of symbols  he was able to

convey his ideas to the reader.  He made relationships with the symbols and

the actions of the characters.  Along with these  symbols he also used the

characters' incapability of living in the present to convey the harsh

realities that they faced in the modern world.