Tennessee Williams' Play, the Glass Menagerie

In Tennessee Williams' play, The Glass Menagerie, each member of the Wingfield family has their own fantasy world in which they indulge themselves.

However, some of the characters had the will to escape from their imaginary worlds, and that escape was represented by many symbols during the play, one of them were the fire escape. The fire escape which represents the one way excursion which Tom needed in order to find a temporary safe haven from the nagging of his mother, Amanda, and the responsibilities he had towards his crippled sister, Laura. Tom was suffocating both emotionally and spiritually and it was the fire escape that represented the bridge between the illusory world of the wingfileds and the world of the reality around him that saved him. Eventually Tom found himself more like his father as he sought adventure in the movies and hung out on the fire escape, this is how he avoided suffocation, and desperately sought the life he always desired; the life of adventure. 

Through the eyes of Tom, the viewer gets a glance into the life of his family. His mother, a southern belle desperately clinging to the past, his sister, a young woman too fragile to function in society and himself , a struggling young poet working at the warehouse to pay the bills , while the men his age are getting married and creating their own present. Tom’s responsibilities increase and his struggle gets larger each time he walks towards that door, were he