Play Guide [1.2MB PDF] - Arizona Theatre Company

SYMBOLISM
SYMBOLISM IN THE GLASS MENAGERIE
Tennessee Williams’s plays are known for his use of symbolism and poetic language
used to describe the symbols used throughout. The Glass Menagerie is no exception
to the rule; the play is rife with symbols, though some are more obvious than others.
Below is a partial list of symbols found in the play. Can you fi nd others?
Blue Roses: When Laura meets Jim, she reminds him that his
high school nickname for her was “Blue Roses.” The nickname
came about when Jim misheard Laura say she has “pleurosis” and
believed she said “blue roses.” Blue roses do not occur in nature;
they are therefore set apart from normal roses with colors like
pink, red, white, etc. They are strange and do not fi t in with the
crowd, much like Laura. Blue Roses is symbolically the perfect
thing for Jim to call Laura as he comments how unlike other
young women she is and how he thinks that is a good thing.
Dance Hall: The dance hall across the street provides hours of entertainment for Tom as
he listens to the music drifting up to the apartment and watches young couples leave the
dance hall to kiss in a private corner of the alley. Tom’s unfulfi lled dreams and desires are
represented by the dance hall that is right across the street from his house; like the dance
hall his dream-life is close but just out of his reach. While he
perceives the lives of the dance hall inhabitants as carefree
and full of spirit and love, Tom feels his own life is bogged
down with responsibility and a dead-end job. The dance hall
represents all he is missing in his life.
Fire Escape: The fi re escape that the characters use as an
entrance and an exit to the apartment is a clear symbol of
the escape that Tom plans throughout the play. In his stage
directions, Tennessee Williams writes that the fi re is escape is
“a structure whose name is a touch of accidental poetic truth,
for all of these huge buildings are always burning with the
slow and implacable fi res of human desperation.”
Gentleman Caller: The gentleman caller (eventually called Jim) is symbolic of hopes
and dreams. To Amanda, the gentlemen callers of her past represent all her potential
for happiness in life that faded with her choice of the wrong gentleman caller to be her
husband (who abandoned her). To Laura, the gentleman caller represents her chance at a
“normal” life. He represents all that her mother desperately wishes her to fi nd but that she
has failed at acquiring. In the fi rst scene of the play, Tom describes the gentleman caller as
the symbol for “the long-delayed but always expected something that we live for.”
The Glass Menagerie
Arizona Theatre Company Play Guide 24