But Amanda also feels the strain of having a daughter that she will always have to care for, and this is the fear that motivates her desperate search for a husband on which to foist Laura. Tom struggles the most with his role as the breadwinner and caretaker of the family, as it keeps him from expressing himself and living his own life. The principal tension in the Wingfield family is responsibility – who is accountable for, and to whom. Ultimately, Tom realizes that escape cannot come without an internal price - that there is no such thing as freedom without a terrible cost. Laura and Amanda, on the other hand, have no possibility of escape - they are both trapped in that coffin by financial insecurity and lack of social opportunity, but Amanda feels it most acutely because it is she who has known and can imagine the outside world. Tom escapes, but he remains haunted by the memory, a bent nail forever poking at his conscience. Tom's goal is to likewise extricate himself from his life without damage to the coffin that is his family – Amanda and Laura make him feel buried alive – but in the end this turns out to be impossible. He is most impressed by the magician's ability to escape without destroying the box or removing a single nail, and he marvels that anyone can accomplish such a feat. Tom wishes to escape from his life, just as the magician escaped from the coffin.
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