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, rowboat apartment of the Wingfield family. It is just one of many such apartments in this upper-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 flying from this lifestyle, this apartment and these relationships is a significant theme throughout the play. These chips may be related to the fire lose, the dance anteroom, the absent Mr. Wingfield and turkey cocks inevitable departure. The play opens with Tom addressing the audience from the fire escape. This entrance into the apartment provides a different think for each of the characters. Overall, it is a symbol of the passage from freedom to being pin down in a life of desperation. The fire escape allows Tom the hazard to get out of the apartment and away from his nagging grow. Amanda sees the fire escape as an opportunity for gentleman callers to enter their lives. Lauras view 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 Dance Hall. yet the name of the place is a total anomaly in the story. carriage with the Wingfields is as far from paradise as it could possibly be. Laura appears to find solace in play the same records over and over again, day aft(prenominal) day. Perhaps the music floating up to the apartment from the dance star sign is supposed to be her escape which she just cant take. The music from the dance hall much provides the background music for certain scenes, The Glass Menagerie playing quite frequently. With war ever-present in the background, the dance hall is the stand chance for paradise. Mr. Wingfield, the absent father of Tom and Laura and husband to the shrewish Amanda, is referred to often through out the story. He is the ultimate symbol of escape. This is because he has managed to remove himself from the horrendous situation that the rest of his family are still living in. His picture is have prominently on the wall as a constant varan of better times and days gone by. Amanda always makes disparaging remarks more or less her missing husband, yet lets his picture remain.