Tom's Symbol Of His Own Escape example essay topic

As human beings, we all experience the need for a temporary break from the complexities of daily life, whether it be through some sort of external diversion or from the depths of our own imagination. But this flight from reality is only momentary and slight. Complete and permanent escape through these means is not possible. The impossibility of true escape is a resounding theme of Tennessee Williams' play, The Glass Menagerie.

Through various dramatic elements, Williams paints a realistic portrait of a family of three characters- Tom, Amanda, and Laura Wingfield- each trying to find their own means of true escape- and ultimately failing. Williams' character Tom, in The Glass Menagerie, is constantly seeking out forms of escape from the lackluster and unadventurous existence he has working in a shoe warehouse and living in a tiny apartment in St. Louis with his nagging mother, Amanda, and crippled sister, Laura. Tom finds some escape in going to the movies and reading books. But the freedom Tom finds is fleeting. Movies end, and books are merely words, not a place where a living being can flesh out an existence. Tom's desire for escape is symbolized by the fire escape from which he finds fragments of relief from the imprisonment of the apartment.

The fire escape represents the possibility of "a way out". It is here that he tells Amanda of the man he has invited to dinner as a bargain he has made: his freedom for finding a husband for Laura. But he has only produced one gentleman caller. He has not fulfilled his end of the bargain, yet he leaves anyway, only to be haunted by what he leaves behind and his guilt over his failed responsibility to Laura. We see the results of Tom's "flight" foretold with the magic show, where Tom sees a magician free himself from a nailed-up coffin without removing a single nail. Tom recounts this illusion to Laura: "You know it don't take much intelligence to get yourself into a nailed-up coffin...

But who in the hell ever got out without removing one nail". Tom knows escape is possible, but not without "removing nails" and causing damage. At one point, after a fight with Amanda, Tom storms out of the apartment, breaking some of Laura's collection of glass animals- a symbol of Laura herself. We see foreshadowed, the greater harm that will come when Tom leaves for good, the harm that will keep him from finding true release.

In the end, Tom seems to have only physically escaped, remaining a prisoner of his own memories. Indeed, all the audience has just seen is nothing more than a fabrication of Tom's mind, sprung from his inability to truly break free of his life with Amanda and Laura. The character of Amanda Wingfield in Tennessee Williams' Menagerie, is a that of a stereotypical Southern belle living in the days of her youth. She relives pieces of her past with vocalized reminiscence of her glory days with her "seventeen gentleman callers". But each story ends with the remembrance of her marriage to Mr. Wingfield- the man who displaced her to a strange urban city from a more simple country life before abandoning her- signaling the end of her nostalgic eluding of the present reality. Amanda also attempts escapism by trying to live vicariously through her daughter when Tom invites a gentleman caller, Jim O'Conner, to dinner to meet Laura.

The night Tom tells her, on the ever-symbolic fire escape, that he has invited a man over, she makes a wish on the moon, describing it as a "little silver slipper", alluding to some Disney fairy-tale. But no one can live inside of a fairy-tail forever, and Amanda seems to be in line for a rude awakening. She spends money she cannot afford to redecorate the apartment and spends the evening in a dress from the days of her girlhood. She appears obliviant of Laura's innate shyness and, in essence, the truth.

When the night dissolves into a disaster after Jim's engagement is revealed, Amanda's last hope for her daughter to have a normal life crumbles. The last disillusions she has about her daughter are shattered, and she breaks her own rule by referring to her daughter, for the first time, as a cripple. She also seems resigned to the fact that Tom will soon leave, leaving her without any defenses against reality and, therefore, no means of escape. Laura Wingfield's character lives in a world of her own making- trapped there by her own awkwardness and shyness. Her escape would come in breaking from her loneliness and inverted existence. Yet each attempt she makes to go beyond the confines of the apartment fail.

The typing classes she takes make her physically ill with nervousness. When she goes out for butter, she stumbles on the stairs and, later, on the fire escape- Tom's symbol of his own escape without her. These events foreshadow her inability to be a part of the outside world. But Laura does find a taste of freedom- and normalcy- in the form of Jim, who is labeled at the beginning of the play, as the chief symbol of the real, outside world.

He is her hope of freedom from her world into his. But Laura's flattery and his own vanity instead cause Jim to momentarily retreat into the kind of world Amanda lives in- the escape to the past. Laura shares her world with him, showing him her glass unicorn, both fragile and unique- the ultimate symbol of herself. But when they set the unicorn on a different table for a "change of scenery", Jim clumsily bumps into the table, breaking off the its horn and foreshadowing the breaking of Laura's heart just as carelessly. Just as the unicorn, Laura gets a glimpse of a life different from the one she knows but not without a severe price. Laura gives the now "normal" horse to Jim as a souvenir, which he takes with him along with Laura's chance of ever living in- or escaping into- the "real" world in which Jim daily resides.

With the breaking of the prized possession of her menagerie, Laura immediately falls back into her world of Vitrola music and glass. But even this world she has created, which is in itself is a kind of escape, is made up of material things that, as proven, are easily broken. Tom will soon leave, and even the escape of her music and menagerie will not sustain what harsh realities are sure to come. She is too delicate and vulnerable to break free by herself, but her family is too caught up in their own means of escape while the rest of the world is unable to understand her. Sometimes escape from everyday realities can be vital to one's sanity. But complete immersion into these personal fantasy worlds can prove destructive when, at last, one is forced to see the truth.

Reality cannot be avoided forever, and each member of the Wingfield family attempted to do just that. The play then, not surprisingly, ends tragically. The Wingfield are forced to comes to terms with the responsibilities and realities they tried to evade. The "unicorn" is broken and the light tunes of the dance hall are replaced by the sad music of the Vitrola. A light is literally blown out, signaling the end of the dream, the end of the play, and the end of escape. As the curtains are drawn, a storm, figuratively and physically, is brewing outside..