In scene 7 of ‘The Glass Menagerie’, Amanda just knew that Jim was engaged and the family lost one gentleman again. She is mad and spread all anger to blame Tom’s irresponsibility, while Tom decides to leave the family but cannot forgive his beloved sister Laura. Williams creates this intense ending by illustrating the shattering relationship in the family leads the dream of each person to broken.The conversation between Amanda and Tom is violent, as the fury in Amanda’s heart gradually increases, she suddenly attacks Tom, ‘Come in here a minute. I want to tell you something awfully funny’.
The word choice in ‘funny’ indicates she suggests this whole event is ironic as Tom used to tell her Jim is his best friend; however, Tom pushed an engaged best friend to his sister. Amanda censures Tom that ‘You don’t know things anywhere! You live in a dream; you manufacture illusions!’, and quickly comes up with ‘you’ve had us make such fools of ourselves’. Even though she explains that ‘The effort, the preparations, all the expense! The new floor lamp, the rug, the clothes for Laura! all for what?’, she just originally wants Laura to have a husband to satisfy her dream.
At this moment, Williams portrays a woman who is aware of her own mistakes, but fall to face reality. In the audience’s view, when Amanda suggests Tom is living his dream she is the person who lives in her illusion of good-old-days, where a bunch of gentlemen’s callers would appear every day and each woman found a suitable man to marry with. Because of Jim’s engagement, which represents Amanda’s dream to find a son-in-low is broken. In this way, how much anger Amanda vents to Tom exactly describes how much deep she sinks into her illusion. Therefore, Amanda is the person who cannot face the reality and blaming other people at the same time, which gives viewers a great impression that the truth has been revealed and a nagging woman has shown her terrible weakness.
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Tom is enraged by Amanda’s reasonless reproach and leaves the family with ‘smashes his glass on the floor’. The shattered glass is the symbol of the division in the family, which Tom leaves Amanda and Laura to survive by themselves. Also, it represents Tom’s broken love to Amanda as being a son because he finally bursts out the anger of cannot stand her irrational requests by directly depart from her control and leave the family. Tom looks into ‘narrow abyss of the alley’ giving the audience a hint that he will go on and have a long journey to chase his dream.
Similarly, the pantomime between Laura and Amanda projects their different strong feelings. Laura is ‘huddled up on the sofa’, and her ‘dark hair hides her face’. The action of ‘huddled’ indicates she misses the direction of life since she is the only family member who cares about Tom and bonds with him with an intimate relationship. She used to wait for Tom back home in the morning and asked about his experiences outside. However, Tom’s leave makes her life lost a part and she is so helpless that she does not sure what to do in her rest of life. Also, ‘dark’ indicates Laura’s disappointment towards her mother.
The last smile she leaves to Amanda seems to be the symbol of another helpless that she cannot escape from Amanda’s control and illusion forever because of the insecurity of family responsibility. Finally, ‘she glances a moment at the father’s picture’. Father’s picture symbolizes abandonment because he already left the family, while Tom determines to leave the family again, which both of them take concerted action. At this moment, a huge picture of the division family is presented to the audience that they could feel the upset, despair, and helplessness from props and character’s behavior, making the part of scenes full of strong emotions.
In the end, the monologue of Tom expresses that his dream is also broken not entirely achieve. He says ‘I would have stopped, but I was pursued by something.’, which Tom is still trapped by his memory. Wherever he goes, he would think of his beloved sister Laura. Because he imagines seeing ‘The window is filled with pieces of colored glass’ that the ‘glass’ is the signal of Laura as she collects the glass menagerie. Then he shouts out ‘I tried to leave you behind me, but I am more faithful than I intended to be!’, indicating his situation that he does not entirely escape but remains guiltiness to Laura. Tom realizes that there is no such gratuitous freedom in life, but always a terrible cost behind it, which the guiltiness is the biggest cost. Hence, Tom’s shattered dream also makes the ending more influential to the audience that the fact is no one escapes from the dream or illusion successfully.
Overall, this extract from scene 7 portrays a little trigger that ignites the fury in family, and both the structure of family and characters’ inner heart is fragmented. Amanda loses her dream to receive a correct gentleman caller, Laura loses her only brother and possibility to escape from Amanda’s control, and Tom is trapped by the memory, creating an ending with mixed intense feelings with great impression in audience’ heat.
