The fire escape, a physical symbol, is used symbolically to represent various aspects of being trapped or as a method of escape. As Williams writes, the "huge buildings are always burning with the slow and implacable fires of human desperation." The play then presents Tom's frustrated attempt to escape from his intolerable job, situation, and life. For Amanda, the escape is seen in terms of the gentleman caller who will rescue her daughter from potential old-maidenhood. But then, for Laura the escape is seen as her means of retreating (or escaping) from the outer world. It is her protection from this outside world — a world which stares at her deformity. In other words, whereas for Tom it is an escape to the outer world, for Laura it is an escape from an outer world which she dreads so much. This will be symbolically portrayed later in the play when Amanda forces Laura to go to the store and Laura trips on the fire escape, symbolizing her dread of the hostile outside world.
The technique of using a narrator is often considered a trick by the artist so that he will not have to conceive of imaginative ways to convey exposition — that is, ways of communicating background information necessary to the present understanding of the play. (For example, a traditional technique, used by Henrik Ibsen, was to have two servants — one newly hired and one regular — on stage talking about their master and, in this way, the audience learned all that was necessary in order to understand the present action.)
The use of Tom, however, is integrated into the play. He presents the play as a memory and then steps back into time to become one of the participants in the action.
