The characters in The Glass Menagerie rely on two themes, Illusion and Escape, to confront the harsh realities of life. Tom Wingfield employs both of these themes in his quest for a content and fulfilling existence. While working and traveling, Tom is able to maintain a separate life outside of his home, where he indulges in literature and reading to sustain his fantasies. Similarly, Amanda Wingfield, another character in the play, also employs illusion and escape as coping mechanisms to face life’s painful truths.
The Wingfields share a common trait of having weak connections to reality, but they are not the only ones who indulge in illusions. The outside world is also prone to falling into illusions. Tom, for instance, discovers illusions in the movies he watches. He believes that fellow moviegoers replace real-life experiences with on-screen adventures, thus satisfying their own illusions rather than seeking real-life excitement.
Amanda’s relationship to illusion is complex in the play as she is partial to real world values and desires social and financial success. However, her attachment to these values prevents her from seeing certain truths about her life. Unlike her children, Amanda’s retreat into illusion is not a deliberate and creative imagination, but rather a sad distortion of reality. Tom also seeks escape due to his father’s absence, with the Merchant Marine Service and the fire escape outside the apartment haunting him at the beginning of the movie.
The play presents ambivalence towards the moral consequences and effectiveness of Tom’s escape. Rather than being held back by external circumstances, Tom is trapped in his own life due to his emotional ties to Laura and Amanda, possibly even love for them. Escaping for Tom would mean suppressing and renouncing these emotions, which would cause significant harm to his mother and sister. Ultimately, Tom’s escape does not lead to freedom but to a fugitive existence. In summary, illusion and escape are the central themes explored in both the movie and book adaptations of The Glass Menagerie.
However, individuals who desire to utilize it should take responsibility for it, and we should simply perceive it as a characteristic of being human. In its time, The Glass Menagerie highlights the dominance of illusion over reality as a significant and expanding facet of the human condition.
