The Theme of Escape in The Glass Menagerie The Glass Menagerie, a play by Tennessee Williams, is set in the apartment of the Wingfield family, which is home to Amanda Wingfield and her two children Tom and Laura. The father passed away many years ago and is represented only by a photo on the living room wall. The small and squalid apartment creates a feeling of hopelessness and monotony in the reader. None of the Wingfields have any desire to stay in the apartment, but their lack of finances makes moving impossible. The escape from this monotonous and desperate life is the main theme of the entire work. The different characters in "The Glass Menagerie" have their own individual ways of escaping from their reality. Tom Wingfield, the main character and narrator, probably has what most clearly refers to what we usually call escape. His dream is to move away from the entire place where he currently lives. He's tired of providing for his mother and sister without getting anything but remorse in return. At the beginning of the show we can see this need to escape through his frequent visits to the cinema. For him, films serve as windows into another world, an exciting world full of fun and challenges. Another thing worth mentioning when talking about this is Amanda's attitude towards movies. She thinks he spends too much time at the movies and continues to persecute him for it. I think this is supposed to tell the reader that Amanda has some sort of feeling that Tom will one day follow in his father's footsteps and that she is trying to stop that from happening. For Amanda this is a very natural reaction; with Tom out of the apartment there would be nothing left for her and her daughter to feed on.... middle of paper ...... there is no one way to solve your problems, and only true freedom it can be found by facing your problems, not running away from them. Works cited and consulted: Bloom, Harold. Introduction. Tennessee Williams. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea House, 1987. 1-8. King, Thomas L. "Irony and Distance in The Glass Menagerie." In Tennessee Williams. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea House, 1987. 85-94.Levy, Eric P. “‘Through Soundproof Glass’: The Prison of Self-Awareness in the Glass Menagerie.” Modern Drama, 36. December 1993. 529-537.Thompson, Judith J. Tennessee Williams' Plays: Memory, Myth, and Symbol. New York: Peter Lang, 1989. Williams, Tennessee. The glass menagerie. In Literature: An Introduction to Reading and Writing, 4th ed. Ed. Edgar V. Roberts and Henry E. Jacobs. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1995. 1519-1568.