The Glass Menagerie

The Glass Menagerie shows many attributes of modernism, such as perspectivism and an open ending. Tom Wingfield is having a flash back to the mistakes he has made in his life. He is a silent character telling the story through the flash back. Tom is a man who lives with his mother and sister and is the sole provider for the family. His mother, Amanda, is an annoying loud mouthed woman who’s only objective in life is to get a “gentleman caller” for her daughter. The daughter, Laura, is a shy quite girl who feels her flaws hold her back from society. She was scared to make friends even in high school.Laura was scared to make a mistake in life period. That was her only real flaw. Tom loves his sister very much and through it all loves his mom too but he just can’t seem to take Amanda anymore:

“On those occasions they call me – Ell Diablo! Oh, I could tell you things to make you sleepless! My enemies plan to dynamite this place. They’re going to blow us all sky-high some night! I’ll be glad, very happy, and so will you! You’ll go up, up on a broomstick, over Blue Mountain with seventeen gentlemen callers!” Tom says this to Amanda in a fit of rage.
“Every time you come in yelling that God damn ‘Rise and Shine!’ ‘Rise and Shine!’ I say to myself, ‘How lucky dead people are!’” (Tom, Scene Three)

“You think of yourself as having the only problems, as being the only one who is disappointed. But just look around you and you will see lots of people as disappointed as you are.”

Tom shows that Laura lives in an imaginary world where she really lives inside her head because she never fit in throughout her life. She would keep glass ornaments that were her prized possessions in her life which symbolized her fantasy world. But her mother pushed her back into the real world with her obsession to get her a gentleman caller. Her mother is trying to recreate her younger years through her daughter. Amanda always talks about her callers and how wonderful they were. Now that she sees Laura has no one and is getting older she pushes her to look and has Tom look too. It has become Amanda’s fetish in life:

“She lives in a world of her own-a world of-little glass ornaments.” Tom

“All of my gentlemen callers were sons of planters and of course I assumed that I would be married to one and raise my family on a large piece of land with plenty of servants. But man proposes-and woman accepts the proposal!-To vary that old, old saying a little bit-I married no planter! I married am man who worked for the telephone company!” (Amanda, Scene Six)

Tom looks at how he used to just get away from the house for a while and go to the movies. He used the movies as his escape from the world. It gave him peace for a while so that he wouldn’t go crazy. His mother didn’t like him going there because he would stay out late and go to work on a few hours of sleep. But without the movies he would not have had his sanity. The only bad thing about the movies was it gave him the idea to run away and make it big just like the movies he watched:

Yes, movies! Look at them- All of those glamorous people-having adventures-hogging it all, gobbling the whole thing up! You know what happens? People go to the movies instead of moving! Hollywood characters are supposed to have all the adventures for everybody in America, while everybody in America sits in a dark room and watches them have them! Yes, until there’s a war. That’s when adventure becomes available to the masses! Everyone’s dish, not only Gable’s! Then the people in the dark room come out of the dark room to have some adventures themselves-Goody, goody!-It’s our turn now, to go to the south Sea Island-to make a safari-to be exotic, far-off!-But I’m not patient. I don’t want to wait till then. I’m tired of the movies and I am about to move!” (Tom, Scene Six)

Tom regrets giving his mother what she asked for a gentleman caller. Tom brings his friend Jim over to meet his sister Laura, who has had a crush on him since high school, and have dinner with them. Tom brings him in and Laura gets sick because she sees her dream man in her house for her. Later after diner Jim and Laura talk in the dark because Tom didn’t pay the electric bill to buy a ticket out of town. They start talking about high school and life and are laughing and having fun. Once Laura feels comfortable with him he shows him her Glass unicorn, her most prized possession, and let’s him hold it. He puts it down and later when they were dancing they broke off the horn. This shows how the whole great evening is coming an end as he mentions he is getting married. Tom breaks his sisters heart and shatters his mothers dream by doing this:

I descended the steps of this fire escape for a last time and followed, from then on, in my father’s footsteps, attempting to find in motion what was lost in space. . . . I would have stopped, but I was pursued by something. . . . I pass the lighted window of a shop where perfume is sold. The window is filled with pieces of colored glass, tiny transparent bottles in delicate colors, like bits of a shattered rainbow. Then all at once my sister touches my shoulder. I turn around and look into her eyes. Oh, Laura, Laura, I tried to leave you behind me, but I am more faithful than I intended to be!

Through the whole memory in the end Tom can’t take back what he did because he is to afraid of going back and beging for forgiveness. He doesn’t know whats better to leave them forever or to go back. His venture has been nothing like he thought it be and through it all he can’t blow out the candle light he left them in so he can forget them:

I reach for a cigarette, I cross the street, I run into the movies or a bar, I buy a drink, I speak to the nearest stranger—anything that can blow your candles out! —for nowadays the world is lit by lightning! Blow out your candles Laura—and so goodbye… (Tom, Scene Seven)

A lot of questions are left unanswered in this play. What ever happened to his mother and sister? Where did he go? Where did his father go? What did his mother and sister do without him providing for them? Forever these questions will be asked but only the characters themselves will ever know.

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