I'm looking for symbols or symbolic representations connected to 'death' or 'fear of death' in The Glass Menagerie.Death in references to proper...

In Scene 2 of Tennessee Williams's The Glass
Menagerie, Amanda asks her family, "So what are we going to do with the rest
of our lives?" With a disgruntled son who hates his job and a frightfully timid daughter
who cannot exist in the working world, Amanda worries about her own and her children's
futures.  And, because the present holds no promise, there is a pall of death over the
days of their lives, symbolized by the portrait of the departed and possibly deceased
Mr. Wingfield that looms over them.

In order to escape this
lack of promise for the future, the personages of Williams's play escape in various
ways; however, these ways hold much of death in them. For instance, Amanda often
revisits the past and alludes to her many gentleman callers, and she frequently turns to
the photograph of her departed husband, a reminder of their past. Clinging to the past,
she even wears his old bathrobe at times.  Even when a gentleman caller comes for Laura,
Amanda emerges in a dress from years ago, coquettishly chattering about her gentlemen
callers and acting as though she herself is young.

With
Laura, all that she holds dear is from the past.  For example, she plays the old records
that her father left behind; she dawdles with the glass menagerie which has been hers
for years.  In fact, she herself is described "like glass" in the Scene 6 stage
directions: "she is like a piece of translucent glass" Any real
life that she has had is in the past:  The only boy that she has liked is one from high
school--Jim--who called her "Blue Roses."  In fact, while he has dinner with the
Wingfields, Jim in Scene 7 says that Laura is an "old-fashioned type of
girl."

But, Jim is "not made of glass" as he tells
Laura; and, unlike her, he has dreams:

readability="6">

"...I've already made the right connections and
all that remains is for the industry itself to get under way!  Full
steam---"

Clearly, the
Wingfields live in the past in a life of desperation with only dreams for a future. 
Constantly, Tom is haunted that he will be like his father; his mother accuses him, "You
live in a dream; you manufacture illusions!" (Scene 7).  And, in this last scene, the
characters sit in a dark apartment, like the darkness of death.  After Tom has left and
he looks in at Amanda and Laura at the end of the play, he tells Laura to "Blow out your
candles, Laura...and so goodbye....