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 disturbances 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.

16
mark for review
in the fifth paragraph, toms description of the gentleman caller has which effect?
a it forces tom to reconsider his attitude toward the other characters in the play
b it prompts tom to admit that he is prone to attaching figurative meaning to
characters.
c it highlights toms refusal to accept reality when it challenges his illusions
d it suggests toms steadfast belief that his father will eventually return to the
family

Explanation:

In the passage, Tom describes the "gentleman caller" as both a realistic character (an emissary from reality) and a symbol (something they live for). This shows that when reality (the "gentleman caller" as a real - world figure) comes in, Tom still uses him as a symbol (an illusion). So it highlights Tom's refusal to accept reality when it challenges his illusions.

Answer:

C. It highlights Tom's refusal to accept reality when it challenges his illusions