Analysis Of Tom Wingfield in The Glass Menagerie Essay

Analysis of Tom Wingfield

In Tennessee Williams play the glass menagerie Tom Wingfield was the creative/artistic character, which is in contrast to his mothers character and needed to leave St. Louis entirely so that to be out from under the dark cloud of his mother. Even the gentleman caller Jim and his own sister Laura are much unlike Tom. Tom channeled much of his creativity into the writing poems and to him the arts and adventure were very important. However, mother, as well as the realistic world, saw very little importance in the more creative aspect of the human intelligence.

Tom is trapped in a very conventional and materialistic world during the late years of the Great Depression and just prior to the Second World War. This world is mother personified by Toms mother and the fights that Tom has with her and the demands that she puts upon him are the same as the fights Tom has with the ways of the world and the demands that the great wide world places upon him and everyone elses shoulders. Tom is ready for the world to make a change and to move forward (whatever it is that Forward means). He wonders why and how it is that in other parts of the world like Spain, where there is revolution, and yet nothing at home after a decade marked by large amounts of unemployment, breadlines and hardships. Tom was the free spirited one, and though obviously not the only character that had to make the many sacrifices of life; he had to out of necessity take up work at a horrible job in a shoe warehouse which he hated. He did this for an undisclosed amount of years; in-order to pay the rent provided some means for his mother and sister, But, Tom had not given up his longing for adventure. Tom created his own world and life at night apart from his life with his mother and sister at home. A world comprised more than like of plenty of alcohol, and also the movies which he claimed it exclusively was to his mother.

Toms longing for adventure and hatred of the warehouse for its lack of adventure seemed to his mother to be an unrealistic expectation of the world. It would be harsh though to say that Tom was unrealistic and uncaring when it came to his family. Tom was more realistic than his mother when it came to the reasons for his sister's predicament, where as his mother would not openly acknowledge it until she stops deceiving herself towards the end of the play. He was also more realistic than his mother when it came to the fact surrounding her fantasies of gentlemen callers for Laura, which were indeed purely only dreams that would in the end require the work of Tom actually occur. But, above all he was realistic enough to recognize that he did not have a future working at the warehouse.

For years, Tom had sought escape from Amanda's delusions, nagging demands, constant questioning and commands by attending the movies each and every night. He had for that time used the movies as his substitute for adventure and to escape from his mothers instructions on how to eat, when to eat, what to eat, how and why to quit smoking, how to improve himself, and even what he was allowed as a grown man to read which seems above all to be Toms last straw. It seems that at the point when Amanda confiscated and returned one of his books which he had brought home, is the point when Tom finally comes to the realization that his life as it had been was intolerable and that the movies could not/should not be an adequate substitute for the adventure that he craved.

When Tom confronts his mother over the confiscated books Tom tries to make her aware that he and she do not hold the same ideas. That she must give him his space and respect his points of view; something made clear that she does not do by confiscating his book. Tom was defiantly of a newer mind set which was displayed in an argument with Amanda when he contended with her that "man is by instinct"(Tennessee, 990). To which Amanda responded from her older perspective that it [instinct] belongs to animals! Christian adults dont want it!(Tennessee,990). Again this was another ideological difference between Tom and his mother, but also between Tom and the world as a whole.

Tom, therefore, in the act of leaving both his mother and his sister behind while he sought adventure elsewhere was a necessity for him to live his own life. Tom was aware that he needed to act quickly or else be stifled by his environment. He knew that his creative abilities were suffering the worst attack under his current environment and that is what he held above all. Whether that is righteous to be placed before family is debatable, but in Toms eyes after he sets his sister up with a gentleman caller which his mother demanded for him to fetch he had preformed enough for his and it was now time for him to look out for his own needs for once which there is nothing wrong with.

If Amanda had handled things better and seen the other side of the coin, but instead allowed some alterative option for tom to leave home in the proper manner she had the family structure set up in such a way that left Tom very little to work with when it came to finding some way to branch out on his own as all must do at some point in life. What would Amanda expect, for Tom to stay at home for life? That is just another one of Amandas many illusions and delusions about life.

Tom realized that he had to escape in order to save himself, it is not that he meant hurt his family, and it is not as if he inflicted upon them anymore hardship than they had inflicted upon him while he was providing for them.

Works Cited

Williams, Tennessee. The Glass Menagerie. Literature: A Portable Anthology. Boston: Bedford/?St. Martins, n.d. 970-1025. Print.