Escape from the Glass MenagerieIn Tennessee Williams' play, The Glass Menagerie, none of the characters are capable of living in the real world. Laura, Amanda, Tom and Jim use various methods to escape the brutalities of life. Laura retreats into a world of glass animals and old gramophone records. Amanda is obsessed with living in her past. Tom escapes into his world of poetry writing and cinema. Jim also looks back on his past and remembers the times when he was a hero. Laura retreats into a world of glass animals and old gramophone records. Even when it seems like Laura is finally overcoming her shyness and oversensitivity with Jim, she instantly starts playing the Victrola again once he tells her he's engaged. Unable to accept the truth, she returns to her imaginary world of records and glass figurines. Laura can only live for a brief moment in reality. Amanda is obsessed with her past because she constantly reminds Tom and Laura of that “Sunday afternoon at Blue Mountain” where she entertained seventeen gentlemen (Williams 32). The reader can't even be sure that this actually happened. However, it is clear that despite its possible falsity, Amanda has come to believe it. She refuses to acknowledge that her daughter is crippled and describes her disability as a “little, barely perceptible flaw” (Williams 45). Only for brief moments does she admit that her daughter is “paralyzed,” and then she resorts to denial. She doesn't perceive anything realistically. She thinks this gentleman, Jim, will be the man to save Laura and she hasn't even met him yet. She tells Laura, when Laura is nervous about the gentleman calling her, "You couldn't just stay at home", while...... middle of paper.... .. the main characters in this play are so distorted. and their lives are so distorted and perverted by fantasies that each is left with only broken fragments of what might have been” (Davis 205). Works Cited Thompson, Judith J. Tennessee Williams' Plays: Memory, Myth, and Symbol. New York: Peter Land Publishing, Inc., 1987. Davis, Joseph K. “Landscapes of the Dislocated Mind in Williams' Glass Menagerie.” Tennessee Williams: a tribute. Ed. Jac Tharpe. Hattiesburg: Heritage Printers, Inc., 1977. 192-206. Scanlan, Tom. “Family and psyche in the glass menagerie.” Twentieth-century interpretations of the glass menagerie. Ed. RB Parker. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1983. 96-108. Williams, Tennessee. “The Glass Menagerie”. Concise Anthology of American Literature. Ed. George McMichael. New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1985. 2112-2156