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In his classic play “The Glass Menagerie,” Tennessee Williams employs the use of glass and the motion picture theater to illustrate the eternal struggle to escape from the reality of life. First, The author places a glass shield around his characters to constrain them in an illusionary world. For example, when Amanda, Laura’s mother, asks her daughter where she spends all of her time, Laura tells her that she visits “the Jewelbox, that big glass house where they raise the tropical flowers”(578). Laura retreats to the glass conservatory to forget about the outside world, to cast away all of her worries. The glass represents the mental wall that the girl has built up in her mind; when she is overwhelmed by the hopelessness of her situation, she runs behind the wall, inside the glass house, to her own private illusionary world; it is in this place that she finds solace. In another example, Amanda ponders on her family’s future; she asks Laura to tell her what they are “going to do now, honey, the rest of our lives . . . amuse ourselves with the glass menagerie?” (578) Amanda rhetorically implies that instead of looking to the future and its challenges, Laura wastes her life away by sitting and foolishly playing with a false reality. Once again, instead of facing the pain around her, Laura props up a glass wall between her inner being and the world outside. Glass represents the barriers that Laura uses to protect herself from reality. Second, Williams takes his characters to the movie theater to ease their mind from the reality of their pitiful lives. While we do not actually witness him there, Tom gives several clues to his reason for viewing so many films. After a long argument with his mother about his future, he abruptly ends the conversation by exclaiming in a bold, agitated voice, that he is “going to the movies!” (582) Rather than facing his mother and his future, Tom elects to visit a place that is filled with illusionary adventures concerning events he will never experience. For him, the movies offer escape; it is a world he can retreat to in which the dreams of his illusion can overcome the grip of reality. A further exhibition of the reality-distorting effect of the movie theater can be witnessed in a conversation Tom has with Laura. Tom is telling his sister about the wonders of a magician he saw at the theater; specifically, the trick of escaping a coffin without removing one nail. Tom remarks that that was “a trick that would come in handy for me– get me out of this two-by-four situation!” (585) The wonders shown by the magician represent the illusions that Tom creates to enlighten his life. Once again, instead of facing reality, he escapes the coffin without removing a nail. However, like the magician, it is only a temporary illusion. Eventually, someone will have to pull a nail out. The theater offers escape for those trapped in a cruel, unforgiving world. By utilizing symbols such a glass and the motion pictures, Tennessee Williams effectively display’s mankind’s yearning to escape from reality into an illusionary world; a man that cannot face the reality of his life is one doomed to perish.