Dreams and Escape in The Glass Menagerie The dream of escape is the focal point of the play, The Glass Menagerie, by Tennessee Williams. Although each character wants to escape from a different reality, they all feel the need to escape. The father manages to escape better: he leaves the family and doesn't look back. Laura, Amanda, Tom and Jim are not so lucky, they seem to be stuck throughout the play. Jim seems to be the only one with a real chance to detach himself from his reality. Tom seems to free himself, but we discover that his escape attempt fails because he cannot forget Laura. Over the course of the show, each person escapes their reality in some way and succeeds in some way. Through dreams or by actually walking away, everyone manages to free themselves. Tom is, by far, the biggest dreamer. Tom dreams of leaving the “…urban centers overcrowded with lower-middle class populations” (Williams 1267). Tom envies his father who actually had the courage to leave. Tom expresses this when he tells Amanda, "...Mom, I'd be where [the father] is!" (Williams 1277). Tom wants to leave so desperately that he “…paid his [Merchant Navy] dues this month, instead of the electric bill” (Williams 1295). Tom would rather think of himself and let his mother and sister sit in the dark, alone, than take responsibility for his family. Tom says he is “…tired of movies” (Williams 1294), meaning he is ready for his adventures. He "...[retreats] to a bathroom cabinet to work on poems when business [is] slow in the warehouse" (Williams 1289). In this way, Tom is looking for yet another escape from the reality of working in a job he hates. Tom also detests his mother in some... half of the paper... and they have a chance are the people least connected to the Wingfield family. Just like the glass unicorn, this family is transparent, pitiful and broken. They never succeed in anything except dreaming of a better reality that will never come. 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, December 36, 1993. 529-537. 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.