In Tennessee Williams' play The Glass Menagerie; he uses symbols to represent the reoccurring theme of the failure to accept reality and Tom's theme of escape. Like his narrator, Tom, Williams has a poet's "weakness for symbols" and the most prominent of these symbols is Laura's glass menagerie, which is very central to the play and links all the themes together. The first symbol, presented in the first scene, is the fire escape. This represents …
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…reality by illusion as a huge and growing aspect of the human condition in its time. It can definitely be argued that symbolism is indeed one of the foundations in the play. The Glass Menagerie is a theatrical piece filled with spectacular hidden meanings or symbolisms. This is very effective on the part of Tennessee Williams, because this allows each character's inner struggle to be deeply felt by the reader or, most importantly, the audience.