Another theme of ‘escape and confinement’ is shown by Tennessee Williams through the use of monologue, with dialogue and imagery. Tom narrates at the start of the play that his father was “a telephone man who fell in love with long distances”. This shows that Tom sees his father’s departure as essential to the pursuit of ‘adventure’, his taste for which is halfly satisfied by the movies that he attends nightly. However, Tom finds it impossible to escape. He is confined at work and at home and is stuck with a boring and repetitive life. He talks about escaping to Jim, and says, “I’m tired of the movies and I am about to move”, which reinforces his passion to travel and see the world outside of his confined area. “I’m like my father. The bastard, son of a bastard”, further proves that Tom knows that what his father did was wrong and for him to follow in his footsteps would be terrible for Amanda and Laura. However, he also feels that it is unfair on him to be restricted in a place, where he cannot enjoy or do
the things that he cherishes. An example of this restrictedness is in the dialogue when Amanda returns Tom’s library book. In her view, the literature he reads is regarded as ‘filth’ that ‘controls the output of diseased minds’.
Tennessee Williams also uses the imagery of the musician to further enhance the theme of confinement. Tom happily accounts the proceedings of a magic show to Laura wherein a magician manages to escape from a nailed-up coffin. Clearly, Tom views his life with his family and at the warehouse as a kind of coffin, as it is cramped and suffocating. He is unfairly confined. In the end, he does choose to free himself from the confinement of his life. Symbolism is also used here, to further reinforce the idea of escape. Leading out of the Wingfield’s’ apartment is a fire escape with a landing. The fire escape represents an escape from the fires of frustration and disfunction that rage in the Wingfield household, mainly between Amanda and Tom.
Laura slips on the fire escape in Scene Four, which highlights her inability to escape from her situation. Tom, on the other hand, frequently steps out onto the landing to smoke, anticipating his eventual getaway.
However, the play presents moral implications to Tom’s escape. Unlike his sister, Tom is an able-bodied man and is trapped in a life not by physical factors but by emotional ones. He is the provider and the loyal protection for the family. He does this out of pure love for Amanda and Laura. If he were to escape he would feel guilty and suppressed as it means doing great harm to them.
Once again the imagery of the magician continues. The magician is able to emerge from his coffin without upsetting a single nail, but the human nails that bind Tom to his home will certainly be upset by his departure. Thus, it cannot be said that leaving home for Tom is the true escape.
Tennessee Williams not only uses symbolism in the theme of escape. In the theme of ‘fragility of life’, symbolism is used heavily. Laura’s collection of glass animal figurines represents her fragile nature. The menagerie also represents the imaginative world to which Laura devotes herself. It is a world that is colourful and enticing but based on fragile illusions. The glass unicorn in her collection is her favourite, which represents her peculiarity. As Jim points out, unicorns are ‘extinct’ in modern times
and are lonesome as a result of being different from other horses. Laura too is unusual, lonely and not adapted to the world outside. The fate of the unicorn symbolises Laura’s fate in Scene Seven. When Jim dances with and then kisses Laura, the unicorn’s horn breaks off, and it becomes just another horse. This symbolises Laura’s uniqueness and new normality, which makes her seem like she is not crippled. However, the violence with which the ‘normalcy’ was thrust upon Laura means that she cannot become normal without somehow shattering. Eventually, Laura gives Jim the unicorn as a ‘souvenir’. Without its horn, the unicorn is more appropriate for him than for her. The broken figurine represents all that he has taken from her and destroyed in her fragile heart.
Another theme that is inherent in the play is that all of the characters have difficulty in ‘accepting and relating to reality’. This is shown through the repeating contrast of the main characters-Amanda, Tom and Laura. Each member of the family is unable to overcome this difficulty, and each, as a result, withdraw into a private world of illusion. Of the three Wingfield’s, reality has by far the weakest grasp on . The private world in which she lives is populated by glass animals, objects that, like Laura’s inner life, are incredibly delicate. Unlike his sister, is capable of functioning in the real world, as he is holding down a job and talks to strangers. But, in the end, he has no more motivation than Laura does to pursue professional success, romantic relationships, or even ordinary friendships, and he prefers to retreat into the fantasies provided by literature and movies. Amanda’s relationship to reality is the most complicated in the play. Unlike her children, she is partial to real-world values and longs for social and financial success. Yet her attachment to these values is exactly what prevents her from perceiving a number of truths about her life. She cannot accept that she is or should be anything other than the pampered woman she was brought up to be, that Laura is peculiar, that Tom is not a businessman, and that she herself might be in some ways responsible for the sorrows and flaws of her children.
As we can see, the use of dialogue and monologue are used to an extent. Tennessee Williams mainly uses the technique in the themes of ‘power of memory’ and ‘escape and confinement’. Although plays are mainly consisted of talking, there are other devices that are used to enhance the themes of the play. Tennessee Williams has done this through the use of other literary features such as contrast, symbolism and imagery.
