The Glass Menagerie Symbolism Analysis

The Glass Menagerie, by Williams, Tennessee is set in 1937 in the city of St Louis. The narrator is Tom Wingfield who supports his sister, Laura, and mother, Amanda. Tom acknowledges that he is the only man in the family and he strives to take care of the two women. Laura is a shy girl who drops out of school due to the challenges that she faces because of her shyness. The relevance of the narrative is deeply engraved in the use of the symbolism of the unicorn whose horn was later broken to resemble a normal horse due to its association with the conversion of the disillusioned Laura into a normal minded woman. Laura keeps the unicorn and other glass animals to be distracted from the normal daily activities that provoke her painful shyness. This paper analyses the use of symbolism in the play The Glass Menagerie. …show more content…
Laura warns that the glass is very fragile physically and she stresses that even a mere careless breath can break it. Apart from the fragility, the glass as well symbolizes the beauty of Laura by its own beauty. The unicorn in totality symbolizes Laura’s delicate, other-worldly, and translucent nature. In the play, it takes a lot of effort for both Tom and Amanda to make Laura meet Jim, who was their proposed fiancé. Nonetheless, Jim as well acknowledges that Laura is different from all the other girls that he has ever met as he tells