Malvolio the Magician in Williams' "The Glass Menagerie" Anonymous College

Tom Wingfield in The Glass Menagerie, by Tennessee Williams, is perpetually attempting to distance himself from his unhappy family situation. The description of a stage show by Malvolio the Magician in Act I provides intriguing insight into Tom’s desire to escape his reality, and how his reluctance to move on traps him in his own personal glass menagerie.

Tom becomes preoccupied with the magician’s ability to exit a nailed coffin “ … without removing one nail,” musing more to himself than to Laura that this ability would be useful to him to “ … get [him] out of this 2 by 4 situation.” Tom directly relates this magic trick to his own life, because just as a coffin is narrow and confining, so is Tom stifled by his responsibilities to his mother and his sister, responsibilities which leave his poetic mind starved of adventure and force him to seek out this type of escapist entertainment in the first place. The idea of magically escaping a situation appeals to Tom because it is instantaneous and painless – in other words if he had the ‘magical abilities’ of Malvolio the Magician, Tom would be able to chase his freedom without taking any sort of action which might cause pain to his mother and sister, or require any serious effort...