The Glass Menagerie

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Coursework - Empathic piece

Write an empathy piece of 800-1000 words on ONE of the following scenes:

Amanda - Scene 5 after Tom tells her there are to have a gentleman caller. She would be incredibly excited and nostalgic thinking back to her past.

Laura - Scene 7 end - reflecting on what happened with Jim. has she accepted that she is destined to forever live in her fantasy world?

Tom - end of scene 3 after he has argued with his mother and called her a 'babbling old witch' and broken Laura's menagerie. He then goes to a magic show and the movies

Amanda - end of scene 7 attempting to be optimistic despite what happened. She gives her opinion on her children. How does she feel?

Jim - End scene 7 reflecting on what happened with Laura. Thinking about Betty. How does he feel? Maybe he writes a letter or diary entry

Tom - end of scene 7 looking back on leaving OR making the decision to leave. Perhaps he writes Laura a letter?

Research the way the characters speak. Write a list of words and expressions they use.

Tom

Tom would speak about his love for the movies, poetry, his sister. He would complain about Amanda always controlling him. He is torn between staying for the sake of his sister but leaving to escape this life. He hates his job at the shoe factory and wants to leave to join the merchant marines.

Poetic language - blow out your candles Laura

repetition - They call me killer, killer Wingfield

listing

allusion - alludes to various films, gangsters, pirates etc

anaphora - 'Perhaps it was....perhaps I am

hyperbole

Amanda

Amanda would speak about the past and her gentleman callers. She would berate Tom for wanting to leave and worry about Laura. She may also speak of her husband who abandoned her. Amanda tries to sell magazine subscriptions on the phone and this is humiliating for her but the fact she does it shows how much she cares about providing for her family.

repetition eg 'jonquils, sister, Christian martyr, honey
tricolon eg Go, go go to the movies
poetic language I’ll tell you what I wished for on the moon
hyperbole

Laura

Laura does not speak much in the play. However, she does have some particular things she would talk about such as escaping reality through her menagerie, victrola, the zoo. She would certainly talk about Jim, perhaps about the incident of him calling her Blue Roses. She tries her best to appease everyone and help out. SHe cares deeply about Tom and does not like when Tom and Amanda argue. She is quite pessimistic about life. Despite her mother wanting her to get married, Laura knows deep down this won't happen.

Laura is panicky and nervous.

fragmented speech

Jim

Jim is confident radio engineering, power, knowledge, public speaking. He wants to be a success in the business world. He was a high school hero but something happened after he left high school and he now has a job no better than Tom's. He talks confidently at times as if he is actually giving a speech. But there is an insecurity in his voice. He speaks of not being as successful as he wished.

poetic language eg they're as common as weeds but you're...you're blue roses.

WHAT AM I ASSESSED ON?

You are being assessed on:

Knowledge of the play. Mention previous events, memories, characters
You sound like the character. Use the techniques of the character.

Come up with your own question eg

Imagine you are Laura at the end of The Glass Menagerie after Jim has left. Describe your thoughts and feelings on what has occurred.

So how do I structure my empathy piece?

Paragraph 1 - Focus on the immediate event that has just happened. How do you feel? What are your emotions? Go over what happened but do not simply tell the plot.

Paragraphs 2-4 - Now, go back in time and reflect on other events, characters, how you felt.

Paragraph 5 - End with perhaps something very poetic or memorable. If you are writing a letter to Laura, how would you end it? If you are Amanda, you may want to show optimism for the future and how strong you are as a mother.

Laura and Jim

Laura and Amanda

Amanda

Tom

Tom and Amanda

Language

ACTING!!!!

You are going to act out a scene from the play. Think about props, tone of voice, where you will be on stage. Do you need music/sound effects?

Group 1 - Scene 1 from ''Amanda and Laura are seated" to "Amanda as a girl" (Amanda, Laura, Tom= Emily, Vencel, Anna)

Group 2 - Scene 3 from ''Where are you going?" to End of scene (Amanda, Laura, Tom = Jan, Yewon, Jaroslaw, Alzbeta )

Group 3 - Scene 6 from "Tom and Jim appear" to "like a frightened deer" (Amanda, Laura, Tom, Jim = Val, David, Robert, Maryam)

Group 4 - Scene 7 from "Crosses to door" to "...the ones that don't have horns" (Laura, Jim = Melek, Alon)

Tom Wingfield

Tom’s double role in The Glass Menagerie—as a character whose recollections the play documents and as a character who acts within those recollections—underlines the play’s tension between objectively presented dramatic truth and memory’s distortion of truth. Unlike the other characters, Tom sometimes addresses the audience directly, seeking to provide a more detached explanation and assessment of what has been happening onstage. But at the same time, he demonstrates real and sometimes juvenile emotions as he takes part in the play’s action. This duality can frustrate our understanding of Tom, as it is hard to decide whether he is a character whose assessments should be trusted or one who allows his emotions to affect his judgment. It also shows how the nature of recollection is itself problematic: memory often involves confronting a past in which one was less virtuous than one is now. Because The Glass Menagerie is partly autobiographical, and because Tom is a stand-in for the playwright himself (Williams’s given name was Thomas, and he, like Tom, spent part of his youth in St. Louis with an unstable mother and sister, his father absent much of the time), we can apply this comment on the nature of memory to Williams’s memories of his own youth.

Even taken as a single character, Tom is full of contradiction. On the one hand, he reads literature, writes poetry, and dreams of escape, adventure, and higher things. On the other hand, he seems inextricably bound to the squalid, petty world of the Wingfield household. We know that he reads D. H. Lawrence and follows political developments in Europe, but the content of his intellectual life is otherwise hard to discern. We have no idea of Tom’s opinion on Lawrence, nor do we have any indication of what Tom’s poetry is about. All we learn is what he thinks about his mother, his sister, and his warehouse job—precisely the things from which he claims he wants to escape.

Tom’s attitude toward Amanda and Laura has puzzled critics. Even though he clearly cares for them, he is frequently indifferent and even cruel toward them. His speech at the close of the play demonstrates his strong feelings for Laura. But he cruelly deserts her and Amanda, and not once in the course of the play does he behave kindly or lovingly toward Laura—not even when he knocks down her glass menagerie. Critics have suggested that Tom’s confusing behavior indicates an incestuous attraction toward his sister and his shame over that attraction. This theory casts an interesting light on certain moments of the play—for example, when Amanda and Tom discuss Laura at the end of Scene Five. Tom’s insistence that Laura is hopelessly peculiar and cannot survive in the outside world, while Amanda (and later Jim) claims that Laura’s oddness is a positive thing, could have as much to do with his jealous desire to keep his sister to himself as with Laura’s own quirks.

Amanda Wingfield

If there is a signature character type that marks Tennessee Williams’s dramatic work, it is undeniably that of the faded Southern belle. Amanda is a clear representative of this type. In general, a Tennessee Williams faded belle is from a prominent Southern family, has received a traditional upbringing, and has suffered a reversal of economic and social fortune at some point in her life. Like Amanda, these women all have a hard time coming to terms with their new status in society—and indeed, with modern society in general, which disregards the social distinctions that they were taught to value. Their relationships with men and their families are turbulent, and they staunchly defend the values of their past. As with Amanda, their maintenance of genteel manners in very ungenteel surroundings can appear tragic, comic, or downright grotesque. Amanda is the play’s most extroverted and theatrical character, and one of modern American drama’s most coveted female roles (the acclaimed stage actress Laurette Taylor came out of semi-retirement to play the role in the original production, and a number of legendary actresses, including Jessica Tandy, have since taken on the role).

Amanda’s constant nagging of Tom and her refusal to see Laura for who she really is are certainly reprehensible, but Amanda also reveals a willingness to sacrifice for her loved ones that is in many ways unparalleled in the play. She subjects herself to the humiliating drudgery of subscription sales in order to enhance Laura’s marriage prospects, without ever uttering so much as a word of complaint. The safest conclusion to draw is that Amanda is not evil but is deeply flawed. In fact, her flaws are centrally responsible for the tragedy, comedy, and theatrical flair of her character. Like her children, Amanda withdraws from reality into fantasy. Unlike them, she is convinced that she is not doing so and, consequently, is constantly making efforts to engage with people and the world outside her family. Amanda’s monologues to her children, on the phone, and to Jim all reflect quite clearly her moral and psychological failings, but they are also some of the most colorful and unforgettable words in the play.

She barely has a grasp on reality. She fabricates memories of gentlemen callers and thinks of what might have been. Amanda can escape back in time to another dimension. Forced with the truth that Laura will not be receiving gentlemen callers, she lashes out at Tom verbally.

Laura Wingfield

The physically and emotionally crippled Laura is the only character in the play who never does anything to hurt anyone else. Despite the weight of her own problems, she displays a pure compassion—as with the tears she sheds over Tom’s unhappiness, described by Amanda in Scene Four—that stands in stark contrast to the selfishness and grudging sacrifices that characterise the Wingfield household. Laura also has the fewest lines in the play, which contributes to her aura of selflessness. Yet she is the axis around which the plot turns, and the most prominent symbols—blue roses, the glass unicorn, the entire glass menagerie—all in some sense represent her. Laura is as rare and peculiar as a blue rose or a unicorn, and she is as delicate as a glass figurine.

Other characters seem to assume that, like a piece of transparent glass, which is colorless until light shines upon it, Laura can take on whatever color they wish. Thus, Amanda both uses the contrast between herself and Laura to emphasize the glamour of her own youth and to fuel her hope of re-creating that youth through Laura. Tom and Jim both see Laura as an exotic creature, completely and rather quaintly foreign to the rest of the world. Yet Laura’s crush on the high school hero, Jim, is a rather ordinary schoolgirl sentiment, and a girl as supposedly fragile as Laura could hardly handle the days she spends walking the streets in the cold to avoid going to typing class. Through actions like these, Laura repeatedly displays a will of her own that defies others’ perceptions of her, and this will repeatedly goes unacknowledged.

Laura’s retreat into the world of her glass animals provides her only imaginative escape. Laura is positioned alongside her animals on the shelf due to her complete shyness and vulnerability. Her withdrawal from the outside world insulates her from further chaos.

Jim O’Connor

Nice, ordinary young man who aspires to normalcy. First of all, Jim is the only character to break through into Laura’s secret world. That’s pretty impressive. But what makes him so special, anyway? Well he’s pretty much the most sincere person in the play. He’s very honest, friendly, chipper – the man has freckles, for heaven’s sake. He’s completely trustworthy and, as such, we the audience get to trust him. Which is cool because, since Tom is the one telling the story, everything he says is a little biased; after all, he’s probably trying to convince us he’s not a total jerk at the end of the play. But back to Jim again.

We were totally in Jim’s corner until the whole engaged thing. Who goes around kissing girls when they’re engaged? It is interesting, though, the attitude that Jim takes towards the whole situation. At first we thought he was hitting on Laura, but then he kept talking about her self-confidence, and at one point says that he wishes she were his sister. Which means (hopefully) that his interest in her isn’t actually sexual or even romantic in nature. You know, aside from the kissing. Jim simply has an honest desire to help. But at the same time, he’s obviously very drawn to Laura – and yes, in a romantic sense. He admits this to her, poetically describing her beauty, how she makes him feel different than any other girl. And then he tries – and fails – to talk about his love for his fiancé. In discussing Betty, Jim is forced to resort to abstracts and exclamations, suggesting that what he has with Betty isn’t love at all. Poor Jim – such a nice, ordinary, young man.

The audience is forewarned of Jim's character even before he makes his first appearance. Tom tells Amanda that the long-awaited gentleman caller is soon to come. Tom refers to Jim as a plain person, someone over whom there is no need to make a fuss. He earns only slightly more than does Tom and can in no way be compared to the magnificent gentlemen callers that Amanda used to have.

Jim's plainness is seen in his every action. He is interested in sports and does not understand Tom's more illusory ambitions to escape from the warehouse. His conversation shows him to be quite ordinary and plain. Thus, while Jim is the long-awaited gentleman caller, he is not a prize except in Laura's mind.

The ordinary aspect of Jim's character seems to come to life in his conversation with Laura. But it is contact with the ordinary that Laura needs. Thus it is not surprising that the ordinary seems to Laura to be the essence of magnificence. And since Laura had known Jim in high school when he was the all-American boy, she could never bring herself to look on him now in any way other than exceptional. He is the one boy that she has had a crush on. He is her ideal.

In the candlelight conversation with Laura, he becomes so wrapped up in reliving his own past that he seems once again to think that he is the high school hero who swept the girls off their feet. He becomes so engrossed in the past that he not only breaks Laura's favorite piece of glass, but he also breaks Laura's dreams and hopes. He was so engrossed playing the role of high school hero and amateur psychiatrist that he failed to see what emotions he was building up in Laura. His most accurate description of himself is when he refers to himself as a "stumblejohn."

But Jim's function in the play is more important then his seemingly ordinary character would allow. Since Laura lives in a world of illusion and dream, Jim, as the ordinary person, seems to Laura to be wonderful and exceptional. He is so different from her own world that he appears to be the knight in shining armor

Structure

Seven scenes. The casual loose structure mirrors the way in which the narrator’s memory works. Past, present and future seem inter-related. Tom begins and ends the play by looking back in time. He steps out of time to deliver his narratives about Amanda and Jim in scenes 3 and 6. He skips time when it suits him, focusing on key moments rather than a straightforward, linear narrative. We are being offered snapshots of the truth.

Three distinct periods of time that Williams bridges through his use of narrator:

the Second World War – during which Tom was a merchant seaman

the Depression – main action takes place

Amanda’s childhood in the South before First World War

By linking these periods through Tom, Williams is suggesting that the cycles of history will continue to trap humanity. All periods are negative.

Nothing resolved at the end of the play. Tom remains haunted. We are not told what happens to Laura, Amanda or Jim after the fateful visit.

Music

Music is used often in The Glass Menagerie, both to emphasise themes and to enhance the drama. Sometimes the music is non-diegetic—coming from outside the play, not from within it—and though the audience can hear it the characters cannot. For example, a musical piece entitled “The Glass Menagerie,” written specifically for the play by the composer Paul Bowles, plays when Laura’s character or her glass collection comes to the forefront of the action. This piece makes its first appearance at the end of Scene One, when Laura notes that Amanda is afraid that her daughter will end up an old maid. Other times, the music comes from inside the diegetic space of the play—that is, it is a part of the action, and the characters can hear it. Examples of this are the music that wafts up from the Paradise Dance Hall and the music Laura plays on her record player. Both the extra-diegetic and the diegetic music often provide commentary on what is going on in the play. For example, the Paradise Dance Hall plays a piece entitled “The World Is Waiting for the Sunrise” while Tom is talking about the approach of World War II.

The Glass Menagerie theme

Laura’s music. Recurring. Sad, delicate and light.

Laura and Tom linked through music – shows strong emotional bond between brother and sister

First played during opening narration. It is designed to draw attention to significant moments in the characters’ lives. Heard in every scene. It is associated with something said about Laura or something happening to her. In scene 1, it plays faintly when Laura leaves the room after the painful discussion about receiving gentleman callers. In scene 6, it plays when the legend is on screen, ‘This is my sister, celebrate her with strings’. In scene 7, it plays when Jim and Laura handle the glass unicorn, prior to their waltz. This is the final appearance – shows that life is over for Laura when her unicorn is shattered.

Paradise Dance Hall music

Hot swing, waltzes, tango music play. Laura is out of her element. She cannot relate to this. When Jim asks her to dance to the Mexican waltz, ‘La Golondria’, she is very uncomfortable. She attempts to block out the music by moving towards the victrola.

Tango music is threatening. In scene 5 Tom tries to get his mother to face the fact that Laura is peculiar. In the middle of the conversation, the music changes to the tango.

When Tom smashes the glass and leaves through the fire escape, the dance hall music goes up, punctuated by a scream from Laura.

Lighting

The stage is dim because this is in keeping with the atmosphere of memory. When pools of light are used, often on Laura, they are much more noticeable. In scene 3, while Amanda and Tom argue, Laura’s figure is highlighted. Her silent agony is as important as the other characters’’ exasperation. Lighting foreshadows the supper scene when Laura will sit huddled on the sofa.

Neon lights of the Paradise Dance Hall are garish symbols of the modern world in which the Wingfields are uncomfortable. The delicate rainbow colours of the chandeliers provide an atmosphere of fake romance.

Even the moon, normally a powerful symbol of light, seems fragile in the play – described as a ‘little silver slipper of a moon’.

Scene 7 takes place by candlelight. Because is so easily extinguished, we know Laura’s moments of happiness will not last long.

Portrait lit up at several points during play – highlights Amanda’s marital happiness was short-lived. The portrait is a reminder of the foolishness of trusting in appearances

In scene 1, spot of light on Amanda suggests the power of her memories.

In scene 3, the argument takes place in a turgid smoky red glow – links to anger, threatening etc

In scene 5, all the Wingfields seem fragile as they move about as pale and dilent as moths.

In scene 6, Laura’s delicate beauty is emphasised by the ‘lemony light’ in the apartment. This suggests that the girl is like a piece of translucent glass.

Glass Menagerie

This represents fragility of all the characters, especially Laura. She transfers her desire through the animals. She loves and protects them as if they were children or a husband. The animals are an outlet. The exotic, extinct unicorn is her favourite and she had had it since she was a child. Just like her heart is easily broken, the figurine is easily broken. It is an enormous moment for Laura when she allows Jim to handle the unicorn. She is inviting someone into her life. Like the figurines, Laura is delicate, fanciful, and somehow old-fashioned. Glass is transparent, but, when light is shined upon it correctly, it refracts an entire rainbow of colours. Similarly, Laura, though quiet and bland around strangers, is a source of strange, multifaceted delight to those who choose to look at her in the right light. The menagerie also represents the imaginative world to which Laura devotes herself—a world that is colourful and enticing but based on fragile illusions.

Amanda is frustrated by the menagerie. For her, it is a symbol of her daughter’s failure. In scene 2, she gives a speech about it, linking it to ideas about dependency. Tom has more respect for her menagerie and her feelings. When his coat accidentally hits the shelf the collection is on, he knows he has wounded Laura. This accident foreshadows the glass shattering in scene 7. Jim expresses interest in the glass menagerie when he is talking to Laura. He seems genuinely concerned when the unicorn is broken. Just as she gave Jim her heart long ago, she gives him the unicorn. The menagerie without the unicorn symbolises Laura as being incomplete and broken and the hopeless dreams of the characters.

Unicorn

Unicorn - only one unicorn represents her heart which is easily broken, the menagerie without the unicorn represents Laura:

incomplete and broken.

The glass unicorn in Laura’s collection—significantly, her favourite figure—represents her peculiarity. As Jim points out, unicorns are “extinct” in modern times and are lonesome as a result of being different from other horses. 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. When Jim dances with and then kisses Laura, the unicorn’s horn breaks off, and it becomes just another horse. Jim’s advances endow Laura with a new normalcy, making her seem more like just another girl, but the violence with which this normalcy is thrust upon her means that Laura cannot become normal without somehow shattering. Eventually, Laura gives Jim the unicorn as a “souvenir.” Without its horn, the unicorn is more appropriate for him than for her, and the broken figurine represents all that he has taken from her and destroyed in her.

Telephone

Symbolises deception. The father worked for the telephone company. Amanda phones customers but is very false

“Blue Roses”

Like the glass unicorn, “Blue Roses,” Jim’s high school nickname for Laura, symbolizes Laura’s unusualness yet allure. The name is also associated with Laura’s attraction to Jim and the joy that his kind treatment brings her. Furthermore, it recalls Tennessee Williams’s sister, Rose, on whom the character of Laura is based.

The Fire Escape

Leading out of the Wingfields’ apartment is a fire escape with a landing. The fire escape represents exactly what its name implies: an escape from the fires of frustration and dysfunction that rage in the Wingfield household. Laura slips on the fire escape in Scene Four, highlighting her inability to escape from her situation. Tom, on the other hand, frequently steps out onto the landing to smoke, anticipating his eventual getaway.

Victrola

Reminder of the past, nostalgia.

Form of escapism for Laura as well.

She plays the victrola when

Jim first arrives.

Picture of father

reminder of foolishness of believing in true love and appearances

Typewriter

guilt for Laura not attending class. Represents the outside world which Laura is afraid of.

THEMES

The Difficulty of Accepting Reality

Among the most prominent and urgent themes of The Glass Menagerie is the difficulty the characters have in accepting and relating to reality. Each member of the Wingfield family is unable to overcome this difficulty, and each, as a result, withdraws into a private world of illusion where he or she finds the comfort and meaning that the real world does not seem to offer. 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. Unlike his sister, 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. 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. She cannot accept that she is or should be anything other than the pampered belle she was brought up to be, that Laura is peculiar, that Tom is not a budding businessman, and that she herself might be in some ways responsible for the sorrows and flaws of her children. Amanda’s retreat into illusion is in many ways more pathetic than her children’s, because it is not a willful imaginative construction but a wistful distortion of reality.

Although the Wingfields are distinguished and bound together by the weak relationships they maintain with reality, the illusions to which they succumb are not merely familial quirks. The outside world is just as susceptible to illusion as the Wingfields. The young people at the Paradise Dance Hall waltz under the short-lived illusion created by a glass ball—another version of Laura’s glass animals. Tom opines to Jim that the other viewers at the movies he attends are substituting on-screen adventure for real-life adventure, finding fulfillment in illusion rather than real life. Even Jim, who represents the “world of reality,” is banking his future on public speaking and the television and radio industries—all of which are means for the creation of illusions and the persuasion of others that these illusions are true. The Glass Menagerie identifies the conquest of reality by illusion as a huge and growing aspect of the human condition in its time.

Abandonment

The plot of The Glass Menagerie is structured around a series of abandonments. Mr. Wingfield’s desertion of his family determines their life situation; Jim’s desertion of Laura is the center of the play’s dramatic action; Tom’s abandonment of his family gives him the distance that allows him to shape their story into a narrative. Each of these acts of desertion proves devastating for those left behind. At the same time, each of them is portrayed as the necessary condition for, and a natural result of, inevitable progress. In particular, each is strongly associated with the march of technological progress and the achievements of the modern world. Mr. Wingfield, who works for the telephone company, leaves his family because he “fell in love with [the] long distances” that the telephone brings into people’s consciousness. It is impossible to imagine that Jim, who puts his faith in the future of radio and television, would tie himself to the sealed, static world of Laura. Tom sees his departure as essential to the pursuit of “adventure,” his taste for which is whetted by the movies he attends nightly. Only Amanda and Laura, who are devoted to archaic values and old memories, will presumably never assume the role of abandoner and are doomed to be repeatedly abandoned.

The characters live out secret horrors, trying to conceal their demons from each other. They each struggle with their own version of hell, seeking escape from the gravity of each other’s pathologies. Every character seeks flight: Mr Wingfield was the first to escape and his smiling photograph suggests he suffers no regret over his departure. Tom’s adventures at the movies allow him to escape for a while but ultimately he will leave through the fire escape to join the Merchant Marines. Yet he finally realises that Amanda’s and Laura’s confinement will force them into their worlds even further.

The Unrelenting Power of Memory

According to Tom, The Glass Menagerie is a memory play—both its style and its content are shaped and inspired by memory. As Tom himself states clearly, the play’s lack of realism, its high drama, its overblown and too-perfect symbolism, and even its frequent use of music are all due to its origins in memory. Most fictional works are products of the imagination that must convince their audience that they are something else by being realistic. A play drawn from memory, however, is a product of real experience and hence does not need to drape itself in the conventions of realism in order to seem real. The creator can cloak his or her true story in unlimited layers of melodrama and unlikely metaphor while still remaining confident of its substance and reality. Tom—and Tennessee Williams—take full advantage of this privilege.

The story that the play tells is told because of the inflexible grip it has on the narrator’s memory. Thus, the fact that the play exists at all is a testament to the power that memory can exert on people’s lives and consciousness. Indeed, Williams writes in the Production Notes that “nostalgia . . . is the first condition of the play.” The narrator, Tom, is not the only character haunted by his memories. Amanda too lives in constant pursuit of her bygone youth, and old records from her childhood are almost as important to Laura as her glass animals. For these characters, memory is a crippling force that prevents them from finding happiness in the present or the offerings of the future. But it is also the vital force for Tom, prompting him to the act of creation that culminates in the achievement of the play.

The Impossibility of True Escape

At the beginning of Scene Four, Tom regales Laura with an account of a magic show in which the magician managed to escape from a nailed-up coffin. Clearly, Tom views his life with his family and at the warehouse as a kind of coffin—cramped, suffocating, and morbid—in which he is unfairly confined. The promise of escape, represented by Tom’s missing father, the Merchant Marine Service, and the fire escape outside the apartment, haunts Tom from the beginning of the play, and in the end, he does choose to free himself from the confinement of his life.

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. Escape for Tom means the suppression and denial of these emotions in himself, and it means doing great harm to his mother and sister. The magician is able to emerge from his coffin without upsetting a single nail, but the human nails that bind Tom to his home will certainly be upset by his departure. One cannot say for certain that leaving home even means true escape for Tom. As far as he might wander from home, something still “pursue[s]” him. Like a jailbreak, Tom’s escape leads him not to freedom but to the life of a fugitive.

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