Alone with Laura after dinner, he begins to charm her with his warmth and confidence. Their following conversation reveals Laura’s insecurities during high school because of her slight limp, but her self-consciousness soon dissolves in their discussion of experiences in choir and the memory of the incident about Laura’s nickname “Blue Roses”. Jim gradually builds her confidence, insisting that her minor physical defect should not be a barrier and proves this to her by asking her to dance. As he takes her into his arms, “a fragile, unearthly prettiness has come out in Laura: she is like a piece of translucent glass touched by light”. As they dance they accidentally knocks over Laura’s glass unicorn and breaks its horn. Jim sees this as a tragedy, but Laura sees this as a newly discovered life for the horse, “I’ll just imagine he had an operation. The horn was removed to make him feel less –freakish! Now he will feel more at home with the other horses, the ones that don’t have horns.” The glass unicorn is clearly a symbol of Laura herself, and by breaking the horn off to make the unicorn feel “less freakish”, Jim affects Laura in a similar way, allowing her to momentarily emerge from her world of introversion and illusion.
Laura no longer needs assurance that she is now part of this new world, but Jim, driven by his own desire and overconfidence, and kisses her. She regards this as an extra benefit, one she dared not hope for, only to have her hopes shattered when realizes his mistake and awkwardly apologizes for his actions, revealing that he is already engaged to a girl he loves. Laura is devastated, “the holy candles in the altar of Laura’s face have been snuffed out. There is a look of almost infinite desolation.” Her only chance of self-fulfillment is destroyed and she gives the broken unicorn to Jim as a “souvenir”, almost as a reminder of her broken world. This also signifies Laura’s final retreat into her isolated world, obliterating any further social role in the outside world.
Amanda soon discovers of Jim’s engagement and having her plans and hopes for the future ruined, she reacts violently, blaming Tom for his ignorance. She is broken out of her carefully weaved illusions and in anger admits Laura’s disability. Her anger and confusion only serves to destroy the only thing she has left, her family. Tom, amidst his feeling of guilt for subjecting Laura to such an ordeal and overwhelming frustration at Amanda, blindly charges through the door. The inevitable abandonment of the family has finally happened, and Tom wanders around “attempting to find in motion what was lost in space”, haunted by regret and memories of his sister. There is nothing heroic or even positive and challenging in his departure. Tom is just like the other characters in the play, trapped in the ordinary and terrifying situation of struggling to survive in a world that gives them no sensible reason for existence.
Clearly the seventh and final scene of “The Glass Menagerie” is the most eventful and important scene of all. Hence the arrival of the long awaited gentleman caller Jim, the introverted young girl is given the chance to emerge from her illusionary world of glass, and the already strained bonds of the family receive the last shattering blow with the departure of Tom. The audience discovers that the “emissary from the outside world” is a state equally illusionary to that of the Wingfield family, and that Tom’s search for adventure and self-fulfillment is futile. Through these realizations in this last significant scene, Williams reveals to the audience the frustration of humans trying to find their place in the harsh reality, the struggle to exist in such a world.