lows Jim to come into the apartment and prevent Laura from becoming a spinster. For Laura, Tom's sister, it is her door to the inside world in where she can hide. It is ironic that when Laura does leave the security of her apartment, she falls. This symbolizes Laura's inability to function properly in the outside world. Another major symbol is the title “The Glass Menagerie,” which represents Laura's hypersensitive nature and fragility. Laura is just as easily broken as a glass unicorn and just as unique. When Jim accidentally bumps into the unicorn and breaks it, the unicorn is no longer unique. When Jim kisses Laura and then shatters her hopes by telling her that he's engaged, she becomes broken hearted and loses her innocent being, which made her unique. Both Laura and her glass menagerie break when they are exposed to the outside world, represented by Jim. When Laura gives Jim her broken unicorn as a souvenir, it symbolizes her broken heart that Jim will take with him when he leaves and it also provided her with a new confidence. Now the unicorn is no longer unique, like her, but rather as common as a horse, like him. Therefore, she gives the unicorn to Jim, giving him a little bit of her shattered hopes to take with him. The Glass Menagerie also uses a rainbow to symbolize hope and each mention of rainbows in the play is associated with a hopeful situation. A good example is when Tom talks about his rainbow colored scarf that he got at the magic show. He talks about how it changed a bowl of goldfish into flying canaries and just like the canaries, Tom hopes to fly away too; to escape from his imprisonment of himself and his family. The chandeliers, that create rainbow reflections at the dance hall, foreshadow the dance between Jim and Laura, which also gives leaves hope within her. At the end, when Tom looks at pieces of colored glass like bits of a shattered rainbow, he remembers his sister and hopes tha...
