The Glass Menagerie is a play written by Tennessee Williams in 1945. The play takes place in the Wingfield’s apartment in St. Louis. Tom is the protagonist in the play and he stays at home with his mother Amanda and his sister Laura. Tom’s Father left the family when he was younger leaving him as the man of the house. His mother Amanda expects him to do everything a man would do. This included working, paying bills, and taking care of herself and Laura. Laura is disabled and she doesn’t work therefore Tom is left providing for his whole family. Being abandoned by Mr. Wingfield left the family distraught. No one seemed to be able to cope with the fact that he was gone even though he left many years ago. Amanda is constantly treating Tom like a child. She tells him how to eat, when to eat, and what he should and should not wear. Tom eventually gets fed up with everything. He can’t stand his factory job, the responsibility of being the man or being treated like a child by his mother. Tom decides to follow in his father’s footsteps and leave the family. It seems as if Tom thinks that running away from his problems will make them go away but things didn’t turn out that way. Although the play was written many years ago, young adults in this day and age can relate to Tom and his actions. The main theme in the play is escape. All of the character use escape in some way. Laura runs to her glass menagerie or phonographs when she can’t handle a situation, Amanda seems to live in the past, and Tom constantly runs away when things aren’t going his way. Escape is a short term fix for a bigger problem. Running away may seem like the easiest thing to do, but in the end the problem is still there and it may be unforgettable. As time goes on esc... ... middle of paper ... ...e. As time goes on Tom finds it harder and harder to deal with the responsibilities of taking care of his family and the home. He decides to leave his job and his family for the merchant marines. He believes he will find the adventure he’s always been looking for. Instead of being free like he thought he would be, Tom is trapped by the memories of his sister. He says “I tried to leave you behind me, but I am more faithful than I intended to be! Tom is a character many people in this generation can relate to. Although the play was written many years ago Tom is just like any other millennial from this day and age. He basically hates his job because it’s not fun. He can’t cope with the fact that he has to pick up all the slack his father left behind. He even seems to think that running away will fix everything. All of these things are very common in society today.
Tom knows that his project can wait, but he has to have it done so his boss can read it over the weekend. The fact that his work couldn’t wait until he got back from the movies shows what an impatient person he is. When Tom is out on the ledge retrieving his paper, he is forced to be very patient and to take things one step at a time.
At the beginning of the novel Tom has just been paroled from prison serving time for killing a man in a fight. Tom feels he was merely defending himself. He feels no guilt or shame about killing the man and would do it again under the same conditions. Tom's morals allowed him to justify the killing. These morals were instilled in him by his family especially from the strength and love of his mother. Tom is looking forward to "laying one foot down in front of another." At this point in he story Tom has his physiological needs met and is going home to his family to meet his needs of safety and security love belonging.
Later approaching the tragedy of of the book, Tom displays another act of sub-human behavior, nonchalantly brushing off his affairs, “And what’s more I love Daisy too. Once in a while I go off on a spree and make a fool of myself, but I always come back, and in my heart I love her all the time.”(201). Tom in a sense...
He is a family man after his father and takes care of his reclusive sister and delusional mother. When he is having trouble keeping a level head he leaves for a show. Tom explains it to the audience like this, ”I go to the movies because—I like adventure. Adventure is something I don’t have much of at work, so I go to the movies.” At the movies, anything is possible, contrary to Tom’s home and work life, which seems repetitive and mechanic. Nothing new happens in real life and that is just about as opposite to adventure as you can get. Depriving someone of their basic wants and likes will tear them apart mentally because they will encounter zero enjoyment without them. The movies seem to get old, fast for Tom. Near the end of the novel, during a fight between Amanda and Tom, Amanda chastises Tom’s behaviour and yells, ”[...] People don’t go to the movies at nearly midnight, and movies don’t let out at two A.M. Come in stumbling. Muttering to yourself like a maniac![...]” His mother implies that Tom had not been taking nightly trips to the movies, but to the bar instead. Substance use is something that comes up for Tom more than once during the play, therefore the movies are not enough to help Tom leave his reality. He needs to go on real adventures to experience the feeling he has been lusting after, but never quite grabbing ahold of, for so long. Tom lets the audience know his creative side clashed poorly with his heavily repetitive job, saying, ”Not long after that I was fired for writing a poem on the lid of a shoe-box. I left St. Louis.” Craving to be his own character, away from the manufacturing world, Tom releases his responsibilities and moves on with life. Tom finally leaves because his need for happiness was so great, movies, poems, art, alcohol, and literature were not enough
The Glass Menagerie was set in a St. Louis apartment after the Great Depression. The Wingfields had old records and a typewriter to show connections between the play and the time period. The way of life influenced playwrights to write about real life subjects. Tennessee Williams was trying to communicate to everybody that everybody is unique in their own way, that’s what makes them beautiful on the inside. It is what is on the inside that counts.
Tom has been living for thirty years, hiding and scared of his Vietnam incident. He's scared of facing his fears. It made him live a dead, hidden life for all these years and
After killing the man Tom and his family sneak out of the peach farm and find their way to a government funded safe haven; filled with running water and toilet, sinks, and stoves the camp is everything the family could imagine. However soon work must be found elsewhere to survive. It is during this time that Tom decides he has caused his family enough trouble and knows he must now leave. He explains to his ma that he will spend the rest of his life fulfilling Casey’s dream of helping the workers fight the employers. Tom will then give his famous I will be there speech, which Tom explains how every strike there is, ever dark his family finds, avery fight, every everything he will be there. He tells his family not to worry about for he will be there with them spiritually. Tom knows he must leaves he knows his family has suffered enough from him, and once again Tom shows the audience he is bigger than the situation. Tom eventually leaves to his and his ma’s despair, but he does what's right and he knows it was the right thing to be done. In the end Tom shows the audience again his loving care for more than just himself. Tom knows if he stays with his family his life will be easy, but his family will suffer; Tom shoes he is the bigger man by leaving. He may suffer, but at least his family
Tom Brennan is the centrepiece for J.C. Burke's characters' transitions. Through Tom, we see the perspective of someone who has gone through a traumatic experience. We experience the struggles firsthand of dealing with a different environment through Tom. Tom in the beginning is depressed and has no will for social interaction because of his past, “In the dark I could see the grime… I could feel it pasted crawling on my skin,” this emphasises Tom's desolation and a sense of apathy. Tom's state of mind is symbolised through Tom being stationary and getting no physical exercise, a motif that is used throughout the novel for Tom's inability to adapt due to a lack of courage and egoistically avoiding the truth "I tried to smile but it didn't come
Generally when some one writes a play they try to elude some deeper meaning or insight in it. Meaning about one's self or about life as a whole. Tennessee Williams' "The Glass Menagerie" is no exception the insight Williams portrays is about himself. Being that this play establishes itself as a memory play Williams is giving the audience a look at his own life, but being that the play is memory some things are exaggerated and these exaggerations describe the extremity of how Williams felt during these moments (Kirszner and Mandell 1807). The play centers itself on three characters. These three characters are: Amanda Wingfield, the mother and a women of a great confusing nature; Laura Wingfield, one who is slightly crippled and lets that make her extremely self conscious; and Tom Wingfield, one who feels trapped and is looking for a way out (Kirszner and Mandell 1805-06). Williams' characters are all lost in a dreamy state of illusion or escape wishing for something that they don't have. As the play goes from start to finish, as the events take place and the play progresses each of the characters undergoes a process, a change, or better yet a transition. At the beginning of each characters role they are all in a state of mind which causes them to slightly confuse what is real with what is not, by failing to realize or refusing to see what is illusioned truth and what is whole truth. By the end of the play each character moves out of this state of dreamy not quite factual reality, and is better able to see and face facts as to the way things are, however not all the characters have completely emerged from illusion, but all have moved from the world of dreams to truth by a whole or lesser degree.
Tom can now start to show his maturity everywhere, including at home. In the beginning, Tom is running from Aunt Polly's punishments, hurries through chores, and plays hooky from school. When he convinces kids to do his job of whitewash the fence for him, it shows immaturity. Also when he runs away from home to the island, he doesn't leave a note.
Only until that person dedicates their life for a group of others, who have a great enough cause, will the effect be grand. He realizes he can no longer stay devoted to his family, because his actions are only helping them and not others. Tom finds his passion through the teachings of Casy and through his findings. He kicks out three rabble rousers who were spies at the Weedpatch. Then while at the peach farm, he wants answers of those picketing outside the gate. These are only a couple of his findings. Casy shares with Tom many of his ideas. His ideas of having another person to help someone up when they fall, because two is greater than one. Then the other idea, of creating much more heat when with someone, than by oneself. It is also much harder to stop two than to stop one. He wants to be like Casy and help orchestrate the workers’ campaign and fight inequality. Tom finds his passion and purpose in life. To help the migrants and the next generation of workers get a better future. This is when Tom makes his final transition. He learns to forget his philosophy of “living for today”, carpe diem, and becomes devoted to creating a better
In Tennessee William's play, The Glass Menagerie, the character of Tom is both a son and a brother. Tom has also been forced into the role as the man of the house because of his father's departure. He is very unique and somewhat unpredictable in his words and actions. Tom is selfish, yet caring, and he has a strong need for adventure. Without doubt, Tom is the most round and dynamic character in the play.
The Glass Menagerie is a story of a family of three: a mother and two grown children, who live in a St. Louis apartment (xvii). The daughter, Laura, is slightly crippled, very shy, and spends most of her time cleaning her collection of small glass figures. The mother, Amanda, constantly reminisces about her life in the south, where she was called upon by many young men and enjoyed an active social life. She eventually married a man who deserted her to travel the world. She is worried that her daughter will never be married, and that she will not be able to take care of herself. Tom, the son, is described as a poet working in a warehouse (xviii), who wants to get away from his family and start a new life. The play is about the efforts of Amanda to get a "gentleman caller" (Williams 10) for Laura. Amanda tries to get Tom to bring one home from work, and when he does, it turns out to be someone Laura knew in high school. Eventually, Laura gets over her shyness, and becomes romantically interested in the gentleman caller, Jim. However, her hopes of a relationship with Jim are crushed when she finds that he is engaged to be married. Soon after, Tom signs on with the merchant marines, and leaves his family behind, much like his father.
The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams was a memory play written in 1941. The small cast of characters included Amanda, a southern belle who still lives in the past of her younger days. Tom, the dedicated son who took over his father’s role as the man of the house once his father left. Laura the timid, shy daughter who with a mild physical defect lived a self-induced secluded life and the one gentleman caller Jim, who later in the play we find out that he was not really a caller for Laura at all.
The role of abandonment in The Glass Menagerie can best be described as the plot element that underlies the overall tone of despondence in the play because it emphasizes the continuous cycle of destruction and hardship that the Wingfield family experiences; indeed, abandonment in the play is a reiterative element that strips the excesses from the three main characters in the play and leaves them in their barest forms, united by a sorrowful reality and clutching each other through the ever-present need to sink into a self-constructed oblivion. The first, and perhaps the most notable and most frequently discussed, example of abandonment in the play would be that of Amanda Wingfield’s husband’s abandonment of his family; he left them at an unspecified time in the past because “he fell in love with long distances,” and evidently forsook any obligations and emotional affiliations that he may have had with his wife and offspring (Williams 5). Having been abandoned by a man who was both husband and father affected Amanda, Tom, and Laura in that it established many of their familial dynamics...