It seems that all of the characters of this excellent play
are engaged in some form of escape, one way or another. However, undoubtedly, the
character who is most detached from reality and most wishes to escape it completely is
Laura. She is shown to be unable to have normal interactions with other humans without
physically being sick, as her mother discovers when she discovers the truth about her
typing classes. The focus of all of her energy is an inanimate collection of glass
animals, which of course do not have any reality. Note how this is emphasised by her
special affection for her favourite, the unicorn, which is a mythological creature that
has no basis in reality whatsoever. She has constructed a world for herself in which she
can exist the real world.
However, ironically, what should
have resulted in her return to the real world, the breaking of the unicorn's horn, only
seems to remove her further into her realms of fantasy. Note what Laura says when she
realises that the unicorn's horn has been broken off:
Now it is just like all the other
horses.
However, if we take
the unicorn to symbolically refer to Laura, what could have made her just the same as
other humans, her relation with Jim, is taken away from her, and she is left to retreat
into her escape world once more, but only this time she seems to retreat into it even
further and more deeply.
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