Free Glass Menagerie Essays: Hopelessness, Futility and Escape :: Glass Menagerie essays

Hopelessness, Futility and Escape in The Glass Menagerie The Glass Menagerie is set in the cramped, dinghy apartment of the Wingfield family. It is just one of many such apartments in this lower-class neighborhood. Not one of the Wingfield family members desires to live this apartment. Poverty is what traps them in their humble abode. The escape from this lifestyle, this apartment and these relationships is a significant theme throughout the play. These escapes may be related to the suggest escape, the dance hall, the absent Mr. Wingfield and Toms inevitable departure. The play opens with Tom addressing the audience from the fire escape. This transport into the apartment provides a different purpose for each of the characters. Overall, it is a symbol of the passage from freedom to being trapped in a life of desperation. The fire escape allows Tom the opportunity to get out of the apartment and away from his nagging mother. Amanda sees the fire escape as an opportunity for gentlem an callers to enter their lives. Lauras popular opinion is different from her mother and her brother. Her escape seems to be hiding inside the apartment, not out. The fire escape separates reality and the unknown. Across the street from the Wingfield apartment is the Paradise terpsichore Hall. Just the name of the place is a total anomaly in the story. Life with the Wingfields is as far from paradise as it could possibly be. Laura appears to find comforter in playing the same records over and over again, day after day. Perhaps the music floating up to the apartment from the dance hall is divinatory to be her escape which she just cant take. The music from the dance hall often provides the background music for certain scenes, The Glass Menagerie playing quite frequently. With warfare ever-present in the background, the dance hall is the last chance for paradise. Mr. Wingfield, the absent father of Tom and Laura and husband to the shrewish Amanda, is referred to often throughout t he story. He is the ultimate symbol of escape. This is because he has managed to remove himself from the desperate situation that the rest of his family are still living in. His picture is featured prominently on the wall as a constant reminder of better times and days gone by. Amanda always makes disparaging remarks about her missing husband, yet lets his picture remain.