Laura Wingfield has chosen to hide from reality in the play The Glass Menagerie. She seems to live in a world of her own, and hides from everything and everyone outside of the apartment. Laura is terrified of anything new or different. Her mother sent her to business college, but Laura was so afraid thatThe first time [they] gave a speed-test, she broke down completely was sick at the stomach and almost had to be carried into the washroom.? (p 243). Laura uses her limp as an excuse to hide from the world. She believes that her slight limp makes her crippled and that she cannot be a part of the real world because of it. Laura's glass menagerie and the victrola act as things which protect her from the real world in the play. Whenever she is uncertain or afraid, Laura reaches for one of these two things for comfort. When she finds out that Jim is engaged, and won't come to see her again,she rises unsteadily and crouches beside the victrola to wind it up.? (p 307). The glass menagerie represents Laura to some extent, as she is fragile, like the glass and can be broken easily. The unicorn particularly represents Laura, as it is something that does not belong in the real world, as she does not. When Laura does briefly enter the real world, it is shown through the unicorn losing its horn,the horn was removed to make him feel less freakish Now he will feel more at home with the other horses.? (p 303). Laura will never belong to the real world, as she desperately tries to hide from the reality of it in the play.
In the play The Glass Menagerie, Tom Wingfield has chosen to hide from reality. Tom's reality is that he works in a warehouse, has a nagging mother, a shy,crippled? sister and he lives in a prison of an apartment. In order to escape the reality of his work in the warehouse, Tom often[retires] to a cabinet of the washroom to work on poems when business was slack in the warehouse.? (p 273). Doing this, Tom can hide from his work and co-workers in the reality of his life.
