Escape In Tennessee William's The Glass Menagerie

Author’s always find a way to add characters to a story that are trying to run away from something. Whether it be an emotional escape, like doing something that relieves the character of stress, or a physical escape of leaving someone or something and never looking back. The author will throw in tiny examples that at the surface may not seem like a getaway, but turns out to be a very clear moment of the character using whatever it is to forget about their stresses. In Tennessee William’s playwright The Glass Menagerie, each character has their own way of escaping from reality and finding a way to cope with their chaotic life. Since every character has his/her own way of somewhat abandoning the problems in life, Williams made the mother Amanda’s the least evident. She finds a way out of the troubles in her life by throwing herself into her children’s even though they are uneventful. …show more content…
She likes to retreat to what she feels frees her from this stress, admiring her glass menageries. Whenever she gets the chance, she stares at them, giving them their own individual personalities. “I’ll just imagine he had an operation. The horn was removed to make him feel less—freakish!...Now he will feel more at home with the other horses, the ones that don’t have horns…” (7.5-9). Laura making up the lives of the figurines shows that she spends more time with them than she should. Tom angrily, but accidentally hits the table that the glass figurines are on and breaks one. This is devastating to Laura, “Laura cries out as if wounded ‘My glass!—menagerie’…she covers her face and turns away” (3.26-29). Her time is consumed by imagining this life with these glass objects. She finds comfort in them and they are basically her only friends that she feels safe around. Many people can relate to this type of escape, absorbing themself in an object they find interesting and