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The action of The Glass Menagerie takes place in the Wingfied’s apartment in St. Louis, 1937. This play is framed around the memory of its narrator, Tom Wingfield. Tom’s predicament is one of the play’s major themes. This theme can be best described as the conflict between responsibility for one’s family and the need to live one’s own life. The outer conflict lies in the clash of Tom’s hunger for independence and discovery versus Amanda’s archaic, “old south” Christian morality. Tom seethes for freedom and adventure; joining The Union of Merchant Seamen as a scapegoat from a perfunctory, mediocre existence. The fire escape, a prominent entity in the