The document discusses themes and symbols in Tennessee Williams' play The Glass Menagerie. It describes how Laura has the weakest grasp on reality and lives in a fanciful world, represented by her collection of glass animals. While Tom can function in the real world, he prefers escape through alcohol and entertainment. Amanda clings to conventional values but fails to see truths about her life. The play examines the conflict between one's obligations to family and one's desires. Laura's glass figurines symbolize her imagination and fragility, with her unicorn representing her peculiarity and loneliness. The fire escape is used as a physical and symbolic representation of feeling trapped or a means of escape.

4. The Difficulty of
Accepting Reality

5. The Difficulty of Accepting Reality
Of the three Wingfields, reality has by far
the weakest grasp on Laura. The private
world in which she lives is populated by
glass animals—objects that, like Laura’s
inner life, are incredibly fanciful and
dangerously delicate.

6. The Difficulty of Accepting Reality
Tom is capable of functioning in the real world, as we see
in his holding down a job and talking to strangers. But, in
the end, he has no more motivation than Laura does to
pursue professional success, romantic relationships, or
even ordinary friendships, and he prefers to retreat into
the fantasies provided by literature and movies and the
stupor provided by drunkenness.

7. The Difficulty of Accepting Reality
Amanda’s relationship to reality is the most
complicated in the play. Unlike her children, she is
partial to real-world values and longs for social and
financial success. Yet her attachment to these
values is exactly what prevents her from perceiving
a number of truths about her life.

9. The play takes an ambiguous attitude toward the
moral implications and even the effectiveness of
Tom’s escape. As an able-bodied young man, he is
locked into his life not by exterior factors but by
emotional ones—by his loyalty to and possibly even
love for Laura and Amanda.

11. In The Glass Menagerie, duty and responsibility
largely arise from family. The play examines the
conflict between one’s obligations and one’s real
desires, suggesting that being true to one may
necessitate abandonment of the other. We also
see that duties are gender specific, and arise
largely from the expectations of societal norms.

16. Laura’s Glass
Menagerie
Laura’s collection of glass animal figurines
represents a number of facets of her
personality. The menagerie also represents the
imaginative world to which Laura devotes
herself—a world that is colorful and enticing
but based on fragile illusions.

17. The Glass
Unicorn
The glass unicorn in Laura’s collection—
significantly, her favorite figure—
represents her peculiarity. Laura too is
unusual, lonely, and ill-adapted to
existence in the world in which she lives.
The fate of the unicorn is also a smaller-
scale version of Laura’s fate in Scene
Seven.

18. The Fire
Escape
The fire escape, a physical symbol, is used
symbolically to represent various aspects of
being trapped or as a method of escape. As
Williams writes, the "huge buildings are
always burning with the slow and implacable
fires of human desperation."

19. REFERENCES:
Play Summary. Retrieved November 1, 2016 from
https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/g/the-glass-menagerie/play-
summary
The Glass Unicorn. Retrieved November 1, 2016 from
https://www.google.com.ph/search?q=glass+menagerie&biw=1366&b
ih=638&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjdmbacjIfQAhXH
zLwKHS6NCe8Q_AUIBigB#tbm=isch&q=The+Glass+Unicorn&imgrc=5W
5xr9Cn8Z60-M%3A
The Fire Escape. Retrieved November 1, 2016 from
https://www.google.com.ph/search?q=themes&biw=1366&bih=589&s
ource=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiMwP2UoYfQAhWGxbwK
HZDyAVQQ_AUIBigB#tbm=isch&q=The+Fire+Escape&imgrc=4RQ-
vL9Ne3UakM%3A

20. REFERENCES:
The Glass Menagerie. Retrieved November 1, 2016 from
http://www.shmoop.com/glass-menagerie/dreams-hopes-plans-
theme.html
The Glass Menagerie. Retrieved November 1, 2016 from
http://debbiejlee.com/the_glass_menagerie.pdf