Tom also tells us that he is going to give the audience truth disguised as illusion, making the audience conscious of the illusory quality of theatre. By playing with the theme of memory and its distortions, Williams is free to use music, monologues, and projected images to great effect. This soliloquiy opens the play to the audience and prepares them for the experience. The Americans of the thirties lived in relative peace, but as the play was first produced in 1944, the thirties would have been seen as the calm before the storm of World War II.
In scene 5 Tom delivers a speech to the audience about Paradise Dance Hall, across the alley from the Wingfield apartment. Tom shows a perverse nature in watching these couples, and maybe a longing for the excitement of such a relationship. Tom describes the music that emanates from the hall, and the rainbow colored lights that are visible from the fire escape. Tom speaks of the carefree world of the dancers, who drank and danced to swing music while the atrocity of Guernica unfolded in Europe. Those dancers, says Tom, could not have known that change would be coming for them, too.
Each character in The Glass Menagerie is trying to escape from reality in his or her own way: Laura retreats into her imagination and the static world of glass animals and old records, Amanda has the glorious days of her youth, and Jim has his dreams of an executive position. Only Tom has trouble finding a satisfactory route of escape. Movies are not a real way out, as he comes to realize. Watching the dancers is no way out either, this is a time when we see him openly wishing to leave for the first time.
At the end of scene 7, Tom, as narrator, then addresses the audience from the fire escape, telling us that soon after that night he went down the fire escape one last time and left St. Louis forever. As he gives this final speech, Amanda and Laura are visible through a transparent fourth wall that drops down into place in front of them. This closing speech is one of the most famous moments in all of Williams' work, and indeed one of the most haunting and beautiful moments in all of American theatre. He talks about time being the "longest distance between two places," and his long search to find something that he himself seems unable to name. He tells the audience that for all of the years since he left, he has been pursued by the memory of Laura. Though he tried to leave his family behind, his memory of his mother and sister continues to haunt him. He finishes by imploring his memory of Laura to blow out her candles, "for nowadays the world is lit by lightning." He says goodbye, although in the script it is unclear whether he is bidding goodbye to the audience or to his sister. Behind him, visible through the transparent wall, Amanda comforts Laura silently throughout Tom's speech. When Tom has finished speaking, Laura blows the candles out, ending the play.
Even though he has left his family, he cannot seem to shake the memory of them, and they are clearly visible to the audience as he gives his speech. It is clear that he has not been able to fully shake the guilt from the decision that he made. The cost of escape has been the burden of memory. For Tom and the audience, it is difficult to forget the final image of frail Laura, illuminated by candlelight on a darkened stage, while the world outside of the apartment faces the beginnings of a great storm. This parting solioquiy ties some ends of the play together, but many questions still remain about the life the characters lead from this point which gives the audience something to contemplate as they leave the experience of this piece of theater.
Overall, I do agree that these speeches are the most important in the play. No other character leads the audience in the way Tom does. He provides a bond between scenes, introducing the new scene and setting the background for the action. Without his narration the audience could be lost in between scenes, and left very much ‘in the dark’ at the end of the play. The lack of action in the play means that the speech and imagery in the play needs to have many layers of meaning, Tom explains some of this with his soliloquiys. As the audience should generally come away with a feeling that the play has rounded and explained itself, the soliloquiy at the end of scene 7 is very important.
