Paper Two - Final Draft

Escaping from The Glass Menagerie

When in a tight situation, the instinct is to immediately think escape. Sometimes, permanent escape is the goal. This is what prisoners who launch a jail break, or leaders of a revolution desire – they wish to leave behind forever that which is containing them. Often times, their efforts are successful and they are permanently freed from that particular danger. However, there are many situations in everyday life from which ordinary people which to escape, even if just for a little while. Drug use is a prime example of this – although the “high” of being on a drug may cause one to forget their troubles, this escape is only temporary. Another way some people escape is by writing plays or fiction, and living through the emotions and lives of their characters. Others act on stage or in films, leaving reality behind for a short time by allowing themselves to become engrossed in their make-believe role. Many people go through life in denial, choosing not to think about the things that bind them and, in some cases, pretending they don't even exist. In The Glass Menagerie, the Wingfields are in a somewhat hopeless situation, and they each find different ways to escape from it. Amanda escapes by reliving her past. Laura escapes in the present, to a world apart from others. Tom escapes into dreaming about the future. Each of them meets with varying results and satisfaction, but all use time as their temporary escape. For, as Tom states, “. . .time is the longest distance between two places” (Williams 1025).

Amanda is a typical example of someone who lives in the past. She constantly relives her formative years in the South, and frequently relates to those around her what her courting days in “Blue Mountain,” were like. Tom and Laura's reactions to her make it is obvious that these stories are not new, nor is it unusual for them to be subjected to listening about her many gentlemen callers. It is noted by Williams that there is an image on the screen of “Amanda as a girl on a porch greeting callers” and the stage directions say, “She (Amanda) flounces girlishly toward the kitchenette” – both of these things show that, in her own mind and manner, she is still that attractive young lady from Blue Mountain (974-5). Amanda also has fooled herself into believing that Laura to will experience an onslaught of gentlemen callers, something that is obviously not the case. When she hears that Laura has not been attending business college as she thought, Amanda becomes even more intent upon finding Laura a suitor, reliving her past by trying to replicate the settings of her own courting days. This obsession grows within Amanda, and reaches its climax with the arrival of Jim, the gentleman caller. While he is on the scene, Amanda lives in a strange mix of the past and the present. While she still acts as though she is the young, southern belle that she used to be, even shocking Jim and Tom with her appearance and words, she also firmly believes that Jim is the real answer to their present and future situation. When it is revealed that Jim is not the savior Amanda had been waiting for, she seems to lose all pretense of southern charm. The final remarks she makes to Tom as he storms out of the house are somewhat ironic: “You don't know things anywhere! You live in a dream; you manufacture illusions!” (1024). To say such, when she herself has lived the entire play in the dream and illusion of the past, shows how truly disillusioned she is.

But it is also this incident with the gentleman caller that serves to open Amanda's eyes to the reality of the here and now. As she comforts Laura at the end of the play, the final stage directions tell us that “her silliness is gone, and she has a dignity and tragic beauty” (1024). Rather than closing her eyes the truth she before her, she has learned to accept the fact that Laura is a much different person than she was at that age. She is now ready to stop escaping to the past, and start living in the present and for the future. Although she and Laura live out their lives without Tom, and perhaps without anymore gentlemen callers, they do find that they can cling to each other.

While Amanda spends her time reliving the past, Laura, her daughter, has nothing in the past that is worth reliving. As Tom tells Amanda, she is painfully shy, and has never gotten along with the other young people they know. Laura reminds Jim that she was never noticed, or had many friends when in high school, and admits that hasn't changed much since high school. Now, after dropping out of business college, she has very little hope for her own future. Her simple words “I'm – crippled!” indicate how uncertain she is in herself, and in the prospect of having gentleman callers (980). Although Laura does not escape the bleakness of her life by reliving the past or dreaming of her future, neither does she live in the present as most people do. Rather, she spends her days in a different reality, as she plays her phonograph and takes long walks in the city of St. Louis. There, she frequents the animals at the zoo, and the glass walls of the Jewel Box – however, the bulk of her time is spent at home, where she is occupied by her glass animals, a mere shadow of those real places. When visiting with Jim, her affection and personification of these trinkets is clearly seen. She tells him, “He (the unicorn) stays on a shelf with some horses that don't have horns and all of them seem to get along nicely together” and “I haven't heard any arguments among them!” and “They all like a change of scenery once in a while!” (1017). Her figurines symbolize this world she has created, and they have become her way of hiding from the reality she would otherwise have to live in.

As Williams tells us in the introduction of characters, “. . . Laura's separation increases until she is like a piece of her own glass collection, too exquisitely fragile to move from the shelf” (970). Laura learns to escape by continually retreating into this world – but, as with her glass ornaments, Laura's world is fragile, and easily broken. She seems to return to reality for a moment when she is talking with Jim. As she begins to step out of her insecurities and fears, she starts to hope that Jim may be a real way to escape from her hopeless future. These hopes however, are dashed when Jim tells her of his fiance, and makes it clear that he cannot be a part of Laura's life. When she gives the broken unicorn to Jim as a “souvenir,” she takes a step toward letting go of her world, rather than retreating back into it. And as she blows the candles out in the closing scene, Tom says “. . .anything that can blow your candles out! - for nowadays, the world is lit by lightning!” (1025). She has extinguished her old life and the imagined world she created, and has chosen to face the future, along with the lightning that illuminates it.

In contrast, Tom has always lived for the lightning of the future. He would be more than happy to leave his past behind forever, although the memory of his father casts a shadow on him, much as the painting of his father seems to loom over the entire family. Tom's daily life is also something he wishes to escape from. Working at a shoe factory, he longs for the adventure and freedom he would have if he left his family and responsibilities behind. He tells Amanda that, “For sixty-five dollars a month, I give up all that I dream of doing and being ever!” (983). It is quite evident that he does not wish his future to lie at the warehouse, or with his family. Therefore, he escapes by dreaming about what his future could be. He goes to the movies to watch the adventure of the actors on the screen, for this is the only adventure he gets to experience. He writes poetry and reads books, both of which serve to make him feel temporarily removed from his present situation. And, while Tom does escape into his imagined future in this way, he is also the only character who literally escapes. When he shows Jim his membership in the Merchant Marines, and admits that he failed to pay the light bill this month, his plans for escape are firmly set in motion. As he leaves the house in the very last scene, these words shouted to Amanda tell it all: “All right, I will! The more you shout about my selfishness to me the quicker I'll go, and I won't go to the movies!” (1024). He makes his final escape, through the fire-escape, and in his last monologue, he shares that he never returned to his family. Although it seems that Tom has made a permanent escape from the dreariness of his situation, the opposite is true. For while he has put time and space between himself and his former life, the things of his past remain with him. He did not succeed in truly escaping, and his memories will be there, peering over his shoulder, for the rest of his life.

Whether it be a literal constraint, a physical place, or an emotional or social situation, every person at some time in their life will come to the point of desiring an escape. Escaping to the past will result in lack of forsight, and escaping to a different reality may mean they will never get an opportunity to learn from their past, or to dream about their future. While escaping into dreams about the future or running away from the problem may seem like a permanent solution, they may miss out on chances to solve their problems right now. Rather than escape, that person would be better off facing their challenges head on. They should not run from their problems, as Tom did, but learn to deal with reality as it comes, just as Amanda and Laura finally chose to do. For it is only by taking on the situations of the present that one is able to have hope for a new and different future.

Works Cited
Williams, Tennessee. The Glass Menagerie. Backpack Literature. X.J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia. New York: Pearson Longman, 2008.