The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams - Research Paper Example

The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams To what do Amanda and Tom escape? How complete is Tom escape at the end of the play? Evaluate the argument that Tom is as much of an escapist as Laura and Amanda . In 'The Glass Menagerie' by Tennessee Williams, Tom Wingfield initiates the play by introducing the principal characters who happen to be his family. Being the play's narrator, he speaks out of sensitive recollections. His memories entail significant portions of life story with Amanda and Laura that lead to his escape.

Tom gives reference to his mother Amanda and crippled sister Laura in a setting and events suggesting personal metaphors. The audience is drawn to understand that the symbolic approach of the play under Tom's perspective signifies how each of them possesses a world distinct from the other to escape into. Amanda is a mother who presses her children to live according to her ideals. On attempting to improve her portrayal of single motherhood, Amanda struggles financially and emotionally after being abandoned by her husband.

She compels her son to work harder to raise the standards of their living and find gentleman callers for Laura. The severity in her maternal role is brought by an escape into remembering desirable circumstances of her youth where she earns admiration of some seventeen gentlemen as a Southern belle. Tom would find himself more detached from the house under the pressure of his mother's escape into one of his own. He spends his time away in the movie theater and bars presenting magic shows to dissolve tensions caused by Amanda.

To this extent, Tom manages to create a dimension that lets loose the repressed yearning for a life filled with wonders and vivacious endeavor far from his dull home. On the other hand, while Laura Wingfield acquires solace from her collection of tiny glass animals, she does not appear to force such escape. Aside from physical disability, her state of insecurity occurs an embodiment that highly contrasts Amanda's height of esteem at that age in the past. Her mother's aggressive pursuit for Laura to have opulent chances of fine courtships and settle with the man of her dreams all the more stresses how frail a daughter she is.

As Amanda remains stuck in her illusions with which she gets obsessed to align the much-favored reality for Laura, the latter proceeds to keep her world with the glass menagerie. This is one ground which Tom is unable to stand so he would watch movies every night where he seeks refuge in colorful dynamic scenes hoping to be relieved of introversion projected through his sister. When Tom exerts effort to bring his factory co-worker Jim O'Connor over in the aim to reconcile his family to confronting the present truth, Jim puts a twist on resolution by having Laura ponder on her inferiority complex and shattering the unicorn glass piece.

Unicorn eventually symbolizes Laura's attempt to share to Jim the idea of her lonely singleness despite the sad realization of his engagement to another. Tom is as much of an escapist as his mother and his sister in the sense that the degree of individual escape by Amanda and Laura bears equivalent impact on Tom's escape. At an instant he leaves home and goes back to impart a concept of magic to Laura through the scarf alludes a certain freedom he wants his sister to yield at. That is to be emancipated from the irrational complacency of weakness at maintaining life with the glass menagerie as if nothing else comes better.

By his own escape into the place outside of the tormenting influence of his family, Tom likely figures how he could be affected by change as opposed to the stagnant living within the realms of Amanda and Laura's dispositions. Toward the end of the play, Amanda pours out her bitter anguish over Jim's leaving at the accusation that Tom knows of his status. Consequently, Tom makes an escape, this time never to return. At successfully completing such act, the audience is left with an open-ended situation for an opportunity to judge how this decision poses a risk that would either empower or further discourage Laura and Amanda on moving past their conflicts.

With the final lines that both depict frustration and total escape, Tom creatively utters for Laura to blow out her candles and as she does so, viewers are made to perceive for Laura the possibility of a transforming journey back from the comfort zone of her glass menagerie and into a more positive and flexible treatment of the rest of history with their mother.