Loneliness. In the modernist period of American Literature new topics came into focus for the literary folk of the Era. With the end of the Great War(WWI)the literary minds of America became consumed with thoughts of isolation, with the concept of the end of days, and the beleif that what If god does not exist. These Beliefs express themselves as immense isolation and loneliness. The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams might as well be one of the defining works on this feeling of Isolation. The entire focuses on the isolation individual members of a family feel. this isolation expresses itself in different ways, however the main focus of the story is that as the members of this family effect each other, eventually those bubbles break and there forced to see the world for what it is, not as the idealistic dream worlds they created for themselves

Tom, the principle character, is consume with his own world, his night world. during the day he goes through the motions alienating everyone else hating the world long for the opportunity to return to his night world. The eternal wake up call of his mothers “Rise and Shine!” is the constant reminder of the hell hole that he lives in. When night comes, and he is able to leave his hell and live life he goes to the movies, choosing to live through the adventures of men like Clark Gable, he chooses to live a false life.

Tom: Yes, movies. Look at them– All of those glamorous people–having adventures–hogging it all, gobbling the whole thing up! You know what happens? People go to the movies instead of moving! Hollywood characters are supposed to have all the adventures for everybody in America, while everybody in America sits in a dark room and watches them have them! Yes, until there’s a war. That’s when adventure becomes available to the masses! Everyone’s dish, not only Gable’s! Then the people in the dark room come out of the dark room to have some adventures themselves–goody, goody! It’s our turn now, to go to the South Sea Island–to make a safari–to be exotic, far-off! But I’m not patient. I don’t want to wait till then. I’m tired of the movies and i am about to move!

From the beginning of our story Tom has grown fed up with his manufactured reality choosing instead to leave and have his own adventures. This belief eventually becomes his escape, for as the reality he lives in becomes too much to bear he cracks, and the last vestiges of his bubble are incinerated, and he leaves.

Laura, his sister lives in the most pronounced bubble of them all, it permeates her entire life. She fears the world and isolates herself from it, choosing instead to live through her glass figurines. This this irrational fear is caused by her own perceptions about her minor disfigurement, one leg being longer than the other. as she raps herself within her isolated cocoon she becomes more and more detached not going to work, going to the park and movies instead, her isolation becomes such that Amanda and Tom are forced to find her a husband. However even her isolation is not impenetrable. When Tom brings Jim to visit Jim breaks through her cocoon and even pulls her out a changed person, free from the debilitating control her deformity holds over her. saying things like

Jim: You know what I judge to be the trouble with you? Inferiority complex! Know what that is? That’s what they call it when someone low-rates himself!

as well as

Jim: Just look about you a little. What do you see? A world full of common people! All of ‘em born and all of ‘em going to die! Which of them has one-tenth of your good points! Or mine!

Later on he breaks her favorite figurines horn off, it was a glass unicorn.

Laura: Now it is like all the other horses.
Jim: It’s lost its–
Laura: Horn! It doesn’t matter. Maybe it’s a blessing in disguise.
…
Laura: Now he will feel more at home with the other horses, the ones that don’t have horns.

This horn symbolized the differences that made her inferior in her eyes and by him breaking it off it tantamount to removing her deformity, it broke her free of its control.

Amanda’s bubble is the most problematic of all. It binds her to a false reality, and because of her personality she is forced to press that reality onto others, most often her daughter Laura. She grew up in a genteel country society and grew accustomed to it and since her present life is anything but genteel she is forced to dwell in her past

Amanda: This is the dress in which I led the cotillion. Won the cakewalk twice at Sunset Hill, wore one Spring to the Governor’s Ball in Jackson! See how I sashayed around the ballroom, Laura?

Amanda: Sometimes they come when they are least expected! Why, I remember one
Sunday afternoon in Blue Mountain–
Tom: I know what’s coming!
Laura: yes. But let her tell it.
Tom: Again?

Amanda: One Sunday afternoon in Blue Mountain- your mother received seventeen gentleman callers! Why, sometimes there weren’t enough chairs to accommodate them all! We had to send the nigger over to bring in folding chairs from the parish house

Throughout the whole story she presses her past on her daughter and doesn’t see what her children want. This illusion proves to be the most diabolical, for not only is she unable to escape it, but it is this very belief structure that drives Tom away as early as it does and destroys he r daughters chances for survival.

There all alone, and As Tom/Tennessee says at the end he never finds peace, and is damned to remain forever trapped to his loneliness, the irony being while he left to live a real life free from illusions, he was trapped in a world more lonely than the one he left, and never managed to escape.