Glass Menagerie Essay

In Tennessee William’s play of The Glass Menagerie, the characters have difficulty accepting reality and the impossibility of escape. Amanda Wingfield, the mother, unlike her children, she is vulnerable to real-world values and longs for social and financial success. Her attachment to these values is what prevents her from finding out a number of truths about her life. Laura, Amanda’s daughter, finds herself in a private world in which she lives is populated by glass animals—objects that, like her inner life, are incredibly fanciful and dangerously delicate. Unlike his sister, Tom is capable of functioning in the real world, as we see in his holding down a job and talking to strangers. But, in the end, he has no more motivation than Laura does
Laura’s collection of glass figurines brings out a few key pieces of her personality. Laura is considered old fashioned and delicate which reflects back to her figurines. It also brings out the imaginative world that she dreams of and the reality that she hopes to escape from. Glass is transparent, but, when light is shined upon it correctly, it refracts an entire rainbow of colors. It can be compared that Laura is very similar to the glass menagerie based on the idea that Laura may seem boring to people who don’t know her, but appears lively to those who are close to her. The glass menagerie also represents the vulnerability of memory and of the harsh reality that one wrong move can lead
The glass unicorn is significantly her favorite figurine, which matches her unique personality. Jim O’ Connor, an engaged man who has an interest in Laura, points out that unicorns are “extinct” in modern times and are lonesome as a result of being different from other horses. As Jim begins to dance with Laura one day, the horns off the unicorn fell off. “I won’t speak to you – until you apologize” (1665). After the unicorns horns had broken off, Laura changes. Now that the unicorn resembles just another horse, it saddens Laura. It reminds her that the uniqueness of the unicorn is now gone. Laura decides to give the unicorn to Jim as a “souvenir”. The normalcy of the once polished unicorn, Laura believes, would be more suited for Jim. The glass unicorn proves to be the defining symbol as to what reality really means to