My take on the glass menagerie

I really thought that this play was very modern. Even though it was in the 1930's it still possessed timeless problems that every family in every generation can go through or has gone through. The only difference is in the way the drama unfolds. A picture of the deadbeat father would not light up in a moment of dramatic irony when the son would say something that alluded to the father. Things such as that do not happen. But regardless, the play was really about a dysfunctional family trying to keep everything together. The only one who seemed the most able to, in the end, fled from his family. Tom could not take being in the enclosed space. I think the portrait of the father lighting up when Tom talked was a foreshadowing of how Tom would run out on his family jus like his dear old dad. The only thing I was confused about was the symbolism in Laura blowing out the candle at the end.