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The Glass Menagerie

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Sometimes life does not go as planned and reality does not meet expectations. When faced with an issue, one may react in many different ways. Some may confront their problems and do their best to make their life as enjoyable as possible. Others will put off their troubles and do whatever they can to escape reality. This is evident in Tennessee Williams’ play, The Glass Menagerie. Through the symbols of the glass menagerie, the Victrola, and Amanda’s memories of Blue Mountain, Williams emphasizes how Laura and Amanda live in their own fantasy worlds rather than deal with what is going on around them.
To begin, Williams uses the Victrola to accentuate how Laura is antisocial and how she refuses to converse with the people around her. Throughout …show more content…

For instance, Tom tells his mother that Laura “lives in a world of her own - a world of little glass ornaments…” (Williams 48). This refers to the fact that Laura does not have much of a social life and how she spends most of her time playing with her glass animals. Instead of confronting her fears and insecurities about social interactions, Laura stays home and polishes her glass. Also, there is a deeper meaning behind Laura’s obsession with her glass menagerie. Williams could have Laura captivated by anything, yet he chooses a glass menagerie. The significance of having Laura be obsessed with glass is to represent her fragility. Like glass, Laura is beautiful and fragile. In addition, she is crippled and weak, therefore easily broken, just like glass. To summarize, both the Victrola and the glass menagerie are symbols for Laura’s inability to deal with the situations around …show more content…

Both characters do this in varied ways. While Laura distracts herself with objects, Amanda, on the other hand, entertains herself with memories of her youth. Furthermore, both of these methods are very effective and are successful in aiding the characters to avoid their current situations. Without a doubt, many people try to escape reality to make their lives more bearable. Whether or not confronting the problem is a more effective approach versus avoiding it remains a

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However, the author includes two specific scenes where glass is falling and breaking: “…he tears the coat off again splitting the shoulder of it, and hurls it across the room. It strikes against the shelf of Laura’s glass collection, there is a tinkle of shattering glass.” (Williams, 18). While I was reading these scenes, I could think of the Wingfield family because their relationships are also very fragile like glass. Therefore, the symbol of the fragile glass menagerie, represents the fact that the relationships between the Wingfield family members are precariously linked by extremely thin strings that will easily snap apart.

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