Symbolism is used in every great literary work. In the dramatic play, The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams there are three major symbols.
One major symbol presented in the story is the fire escape, a symbol that has a different meaning and function for each character. For Tom, it is a way of escape from fire, not the normal type of fire that would need a fire truck, but "the slow and implacable fires of human desperation." This is especially true of Tom's apartment. His mother, devastated after her daughter Laura's failure to cope in Business College, becomes obsessed with finding her a gentleman caller so that she can marry and be well supported. When this caller finally comes, and it seems like it was meant to be, as they dance and kiss, he announces he is engaged, and destroys their hopes. The ever-fragile Laura, temporarily drawn out of her dream-world shell of her glass collection and the victrola, draws further back into herself. Now a terrible desperation fills the apartment, and Tom decides he must escape the suffocating environment to follow his own calling. The fire escape to him represents a path to the outside world. For Laura, the fire escape is exactly the opposite--a path to the safe world inside, a world in which she can hide. Especially symbolic is Laura's fall when descending the steps to do a chore for her mother, after leaving the security of the apartment. This fall symbolizes Laura's inability to function in society and the outside world. For Amanda, the fire escape is symbolic of her hopes and dreams--hopes and dreams that a gentleman caller will arrive to marry her daughter and leave her well supported. This is the way Jim comes into the apartment, at the time when Amanda's hopes have been peaked. It is symbolic that Laura does not want to open the door when Jim arrives. It shows her reluctance to let a messenger from the world of reality, symbolized by Jim, invade the comfortable non-existence of the apartment, and her insecurity in dealing with the outside world.