The Glass Menagerie
Tennessee Williams
"Yes, I have tricks in my pocket, I have things up my sleeve. But I am the opposite of a stage magician. He gives you illusion that has the appearance of truth. I give you truth in the pleasant disguise of illusion," (Williams, 1236).
With the opening line of the play, Tom introduces himself as a magician, but a magician of a different sort. Tom's magic occurs through his narration of the play as well as his participation in its action. However, I had forgotten of Tom's supernatural connection until the opening of Scene 4 which portrays Tom coming home from the show of Malvolio the Magician. As marveled as he was at the main coffin trick of the illusionist, Tom indeed is also in his own coffin. Just as his father was restricted by his home life, Tom, too, is confined within the coffin of his family. Connecting the two men together, the stage directions call for the portrait of Tom's father to answer his rhetorical question: "Who in hell ever got himself out of [a coffin] without removing one nail?" (Williams, 1249).
Symbolically, the fire escape is one method of freeing himself from this coffin that so tightly constricts Tom's dreams and ambitions. In reality, a fire escape is used to safely escape a building in case of an internal fire. On the other hand, Tom's fire escape offers him the ability to escape the firery nonrealism of his family within the apartment. It offers him a connection to the outside world, to his dreams beyond his current situation. Also, it is the only entrance to the apartment, symbolizing that Tom only has one option to release himself from his shackles.
Just as Malvolio had done so, Tom was able to escape his coffin in the end of the drama. By leaving his family behind and exiting the apartment by the fire escape, Tom ultimately fulfilled his father's shoes in leaving the family that had held him down.
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