The Glass Menagerie is a memory play that centralizes around the idea of escape. The play is about a family's tension during the 1940's and their dreams for one another and dreams for themselves. Tom who has become the breadwinner for the entire household, due to his father leaving, who lives with his mother Amanda and handicapped sister Laura. Tom looks up to his father because his father actually had the courage to leave which he wants to do, but instead Tom just goes out every night after work and drowns his sorrows in alcohol. Amanda is a strange character who comes across very child like in the way that she thinks and she is obsessed with the past and spends most of her time withdrawn into her own memories of a young lady. Amanda is obsessed with her daughter Laura finding a man who will come and take care of her and so they will not have to worry about their future. Laura is the most pitiful character in the play because not only has she been labeled as a cripple, but she has let that label define her character. She is constantly playing with her little glass menagerie of animals, whom she relates with because they are also so breakable. Laura's character does however rise above this inferiority complex when an old crush, Jim, gets invited to dinner by Tom as her gentleman caller and tells her that she need feel that way. Just when you think though that the play just might have a happy ending, you find out that Jim is engaged to be married and leaves. Even though this play is kind of a downer because of all the pity of the characters, it does give a slight hope for change at the end and gives readers an insight to how life must have been like then.
Word Count:318
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