compassion. At the play's end, he tells us he has never been able to escape the memory of Laura's stunted life, her crushed hopes. And yet, to some degree he has escaped. A frustrated poet no longer, he has given us this play. If Laura's act of blowing out the candles signifies the snuffing of her hopes, it also hints at the extinguishment of her memory's grip on Tom's life. The play itself is Tom's way out, an attempt at exoneration, a catharsis of memory through the act of creation. But a deep ambivalence imbues the play's conclusion, and one is tempted here to note the lifelong recurrence of the rose image in Williams's writings (and even paintings). Has Tom made it out unscathed? Does art erase all pain? There are survivors in Tennessee Williams's world, but they invariably bear ugly scars.
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