Question

questions 13 through 18 refer to the following. read the following passage carefully before you choose your answers. this passage is excerpted tennessee williams play the glass menagerie first performed in 1944. tom enters dressed as a merchant sailor and strolls across to the fire escape. there he stops and lights a cigarette. he addresses the audience. tom: yes, i have tricks in my pocket. i have things up my sleeve. but i am the opposite of a stage magician. he gives you illusion that has the appearance of truth. i give you truth in the pleasant disguise of illusion. to begin with, i turn back time. i reverse it to that quaint period, the thirties, when the huge middle class of america was matriculating in a school for the blind. their eyes had failed them, or they had failed their eyes, and so they were having their fingers pressed forcibly down on the fiery braille alphabet of a dissolving economy. in spain there was revolution. here there was only shouting and confusion. in spain there was guernica. here there were wild substances of labor, sometimes pretty violent, in otherwise peaceful cities such as chicago, cleveland, saint louis. this is the social background of the play. (music begins to play.) the play is memory. being a memory play, it is dimly lighted, it is sentimental, it is not realistic. in memory everything seems to happen to music. that explains the fiddle in the wings. i am the narrator of the play, and also a character in it. the other characters are my mother, amanda, my sister, laura, and a gentleman caller who appears in the final scenes. he is the most realistic character in the play, being an emissary from a world of reality that we were somehow set apart from. but since i have a poets weakness for symbols, i am using this character also as a symbol: he is the long - delayed but always expected something that we live for. there is a fifth character in the play who doesnt appear except in this larger - than - life - size photograph over the mantel. this is our father who left us a long time ago. he was a telephone man who fell in love with long distances; he gave up his job with the telephone company and skipped the light fantastic out of town. the last we heard of him was a picture postcard from mazatlan, on the pacific coast of mexico, containing a message of two words: hello - goodbye! and no address. i think the rest of the play will explain itself. the glass menagerie by tennessee williams. copyright © 1945, renewed 1973. the university of the south. reprinted by permission of georges borchardt, inc. for the estate of tennessee williams. which details from the passage would best support a readers interpretation that escape is a central theme of the passage? a the time period that tom evokes and the music of the fiddle in the wings. b the revolution in spain and toms fathers job at the telephone company. c toms use of memories to narrate the play and his admitted weakness for symbols. d toms description of the gentleman caller and his reference to the postcard from mazatlan.

Explanation:

• Option A: The time period and music don't directly relate to escape.
• Option B: Revolution and father's job are not about escape.
• Option C: Using memories (which can be a form of mental escape) and weakness for symbols (symbols can represent escapist ideals) supports the theme of escape.
• Option D: Description of gentleman caller and postcard don't strongly support escape.

Answer:

C. Tom's use of memories to narrate the play and his admitted weakness for symbols