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In the Glass Menagerie Tennessee William s presents us with a Family whose lives seem to be trapped in avoiding reality instead of facing it. The play, which is much like our own lives, is constantly pointing out ways of escaping. The characters in the play each try to find there way to escape but find that they continue to tangle themselves into there problems even more. Escaping is a main theme in the play.
Each member of the Wingfield family can not live in the presents. Each escape into a separate world to avoid the problems of life. Laura is presented to us as the very fragile daughter of Amanda. She finds herself escaping life often. She fakes sickness in her typing class and also when the Gentleman caller Jim comes for dinner, she does this to escape situations she does not want to be in a part of life.
She is unable to deal with these problems. Laura spends her days going to the zoo waste time instead of going to typing class. She is frightened to interact with people and instead goes to the zoo were she does not fear being accepted or not. Laura also makes a world within her home as a place of acceptance, she develops a Glass Menagerie as a place were she can feel free from rejection be accepted. Laura sticks to the fear that she is different because of her crippled leg, she magnifies her problem not allowing her real beauty from within to come out. This is how Laura hides from a world she fears.
Tom faces the sad fact of working every day at the factory and having to return home every day to a family who can not understand his problems and insecurities. He goes to the movies instead of facing his problems. He uses the movies and his dreams of going away and joining the merchant marines as a way of avoiding the bitter fact that at the moment he has nothing. His dreams can come true for a time being when he is in the big dark theater, yet when he has to go home to a little apartment he has nothing to look forward to.
Even when he escapes to the fire escape he is not free because it still leads him back into the apartment he dreads. He tries to act masculine and big as a way to justify his insecurity of being the male figure in the Wingfield family Amanda lives in a world largely based on her imagined past. She may have added some memories from her past. This is meant to hide from the reality that her husband left and from her children who are both lost in there. She lives her life through her children, this is to help her avoid the true fact of how sad her life has become. Whenever Amanda bothers Laura and Tom about Gentlemen Callers she is going back to a time when her biggest decision was which Gentleman Caller should she pick.
When Jim comes to dinner she puts on a show as if they were all living in the south. She acts as a typical southern hostess and she acts with southern manners trying to make a nice southern house out of a tiny cramped apartment. Under all her act lies a women who refuses to age and who cant face the fact that she was left by her husband to a life of poverty. The efforts of the Wingfield family to escape turns out making their problems worse. Laura is still a shy, self-dependent and sad girl who fears acceptance and lives in a world of glass animals. Tom though he does run away in hopes to find his dream still ends up in a dreaded life.
Amanda still can t support herself and she continues to live in a fantasy world imposing it upon Laura. The attempts made to escape a life of avoiding reality fail and all are still trapped.
Free research essays on topics related to: glass menagerie, wingfield family, amanda, gentleman caller, laura
Research essay sample on Gentleman Caller Glass Menagerie
