Glass Menagerie
The Glass Menagerie “The Glass Menagerie” is set in the apartment of the Wingfield family. ... The music from the dance hall often provides the background music for certain scenes, “The Glass Menagerie” playing quite frequently. ... Crippled with one leg shorter than the other, she lives her life through her collection of glass animals. ... One particular glass animal, the “fragile and rare” unicorn, symbolizes Laura’s suffering and expresses her emotional anguish. Only when the unicorn loses its horn and becomes like the other glass horses, is Laura able to break free from her fantasy world and come back to reality where she realizes she is not a “freak” as she once thought herself to be. The obsession that Laura has with her glass ornaments is made eminent in scene two where she is sitting in her chair, washing and polishing her glass collection. It is also in this scene that it is made obvious that her mother has criticized her many times for her unusual fascination glass animals. ... Because Laura does not have the courage to live a normal, sociable life, the glass animals in this scene represent her hopes and dreams of another life. ... Laura screams “my glass!—menagerie” (24), covering her face and turning away. The shattered glass symbolizes Laura’s shattered feelings as her family is in turmoil. She turns away from the broken glass as she often turns away from reality. In scene four, Amanda tells Tom that Laura can not spend the rest of her life playing the Victrola and fooling with the pieces glass. The reference of glass by Amanda suggests that she believes her daughter is wasting her life by continuing to hide in her own world. Amanda’s fear is exposed when she ridicules Laura about how she will stay at home and amuse herself with the glass menagerie and eternally play the worn out phonograph records for the rest of her life. Like the glass menagerie, Laura is a fragile and frail individual. ... Like the glass, a light has been shined on Laura and her colors are beginning to show, too. ... Laura escapes within herself and her glass menagerie for comfort and hiding from the outside world. ... Laura’s way of escaping reality is by focusing her attention on the music she plays and the glass pieces she cherishes.