I cant see the rest of the passage, but im taking a guess that it is no.2!
1) The glass menagerie in the play mostly represents Laura, because she lives in an imaginary world and her glass animals keeps her active.
2) Tom is confined to the horrors of his life in the family and Laura has a private world that she claims not to share in reality and Amanda, a pampered woman with unrealistic dreams. These conflicts eventually affect the lives of each characters in concluding that the cannot accept the reality that has been given to them. They purposely dodge their problem into a solution that seems to have created another problem.
The correct answer is B. was. Dollars are considered a singular unit here in the U.S. and thus follow the was/is rule.
