How does glass menagerie end

Laura and Jim leaf through the high school yearbook, The Torch. Laura admits that she had wanted Jim to sign her copy of the program from the light opera he starred in, which he does now. Jim asks Laura what she has done since high school, and she starts to explain that her glass collection takes up much of her time.

Jim launches into a long speech about inferiority complexes. He tells Laura that she lacks confidence and that all she needs to overcome her shyness is to think of herself as superior. He announces his goal of becoming a television producer. Laura tells Jim about her glass animals. She hands him the unicorn , her favorite, to hold. He says, lightly, that since unicorns are extinct in the modern world he must be lonesome.

Jim puts the unicorn on the table, as Laura directs him to do, away from the rest of the collection. Laura tells Jim that the unicorn likes the change, leaving unspoken the subtext that she does, too. Jim and Laura hear waltz music from the Paradise Dance Hall. They suddenly bump into the table, and the unicorn falls.

Its horn is broken off. As Jim leads Laura in the waltz, she lets herself trust him. Jim tells Laura that she is as uncommon as blue roses and says that someone ought to kiss her.

He turns her toward him and kisses her on the lips. As Laura sinks into the sofa, Jim immediately curses himself for what he has done and lights a cigarette. The accident makes Jim more aware of Laura as a woman, and her peculiarities are attractive to him. His impulsive kiss, however, breaks the spell. Jim confesses to Laura that he is engaged to Betty, an Irish Catholic like himself. Laura is disconsolate, but Jim does not notice the depths of her despair. She places the broken unicorn in his hand, telling him to keep it as a souvenir.

The broken unicorn souvenir becomes a memory that Jim can carry into the reality of his everyday life, but it now also symbolizes the normal woman that Laura will never become.

Amanda waltzes in with lemonade, and Jim becomes awkward and tense. Amanda tells Jim that he will have to be a frequent caller in the future. Jim says that he has to leave and tells her about Betty, and though Amanda maintains her poise, the atmosphere suddenly changes.

Jim says goodbye to everyone and leaves. Amanda still sees the scene through her deluded eyes until Jim tells her about Betty, whereupon her vision shatters. Wingfield - Amanda's husband and Laura and Tom's father. What happens to Laura in The Glass Menagerie? She possesses a glass menagerie which she cares for with great tenderness. And she has withdrawn from the world — a withdrawal from what is real into what is make-believe.

Laura has a slight physical defect — a limp — but she has magnified this limp until it has affected her entire personality. What is the main idea of The Glass Menagerie? In The Glass Menagerie, the themes of illusions and impossible dreams offer an escape from reality, but they cannot be sustained. The past informs the present, and the possibility of escaping the past is only an illusion. Where was The Glass Menagerie first performed? March 31, What is the role of The Glass Menagerie in the play?

The glass menagerie in the play mostly represents Laura, because she lives in an imaginary world and her glass animals keeps her active.

The glass unicorn resembles Laura's frail delicacy and frail emotions. It also resembles how she is different than the people surrounding her. Is The Glass Menagerie a tragedy? The Glass Menagerie is a modern tragedy because its characters are ordinary, middle-class citizens whose central conflicts are mundane, realistic problems.

The Wingfield family of The Glass Menagerie all suffer from their unfulfilled dreams and feel burdened by each other's presence in their lives. How is Glass Menagerie a memory play? The Glass Menagerie is a memory play because both its style and its contents are shaped and inspired by memory. Tom is the narrator of the play. Awkwardly, he admits to Laura that he is engaged. Laura's face reveals terrible desolation. She gives him the broken unicorn as a souvenir. Then she goes to the Victrola and winds it up.

Amanda rushes in, only to hear Jim's announcement that he has to leave. When Amanda tells Jim that he should come again, he tells her about his plans to marry his current girlfriend.

He also mentions that no one at the warehouse knows about the engagement. He leaves. Amanda, furious, calls in Tom. She is visibly shaken; the evening has been expensive for the Wingfields, and her dreams for her daughter have been shattered. Angered by her accusations and not willing to put up with her foolishness, Tom tells her that he is going to the movies.

She accuses him of selfishness, and says that he never thinks of them, "a mother deserted, an unmarried sister who's crippled and has no job. Tom, as narrator, then addresses the audience from the fire escape, telling us that soon after that night he went down the fire escape one last time and left St. Louis forever. As he gives this final speech, Amanda and Laura are visible through a transparent fourth wall that drops down into place in front of them. This closing speech is one of the most famous moments in all of Williams' work, and indeed one of the most haunting and beautiful moments in all of American theatre.

He talks about time being the "longest distance between two places," and his long search to find something that he himself seems unable to name.

He tells the audience that for all of the years since he left, he has been pursued by the memory of Laura. Though he tried to leave his family behind, his memory of his mother and sister continues to haunt him. He finishes by imploring his memory of Laura to blow out her candles, "for nowadays the world is lit by lightning.

Behind him, visible through the transparent wall, Amanda comforts Laura silently throughout Tom's speech. When Tom has finished speaking, Laura blows the candles out, ending the play. Although a great deal depends on the actor's interpretation, Jim's enthusiasm is selfish and empty-headed. He shamelessly leads Laura on, not maliciously but also without any careful consideration.

He enjoys her company because, like Tom, Laura remembers his glory days. His speeches praising self-improvement and night classes are symptomatic of the most unimaginative and vapid interpretation of the American dream - culminating in his appalling praise of the lust for money and power as the cycle on which democracy is built.

As Tom said in the opening of the play, Jim is more a part of the real world than anyone in the Wingfield family. He is fully a creature of the world and worldly pursuits.

He knows what no one else does - that he is engaged - and he still gives Laura the kiss that raises her hopes before he tells her the truth. Their different memories of school reveal how fatally self-conscious Laura is. The sound of her brace mortified her back in high school, but Jim cannot remember it at all. Jim tries to convince Laura that she is worthwhile and unique.

A more gracious interpretation of his character would argue that part of his motivation is a desire for Laura to see how beautiful she is. The glass unicorn, of course, is a clear symbol for Laura. She, like the unicorn, is odd and unique.