Wingfield's Absent Father in The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams

My parents love to live vicariously through me, especially my mother, and while I understand their inclination to do this, it can make them a bit controlling of my actions. Williams exhibits in The Glass Menagerie the damaging effects of overbearing parents on the mental and emotional growth of their children. In the play, the mother inhibits the development of her children because she tries to control her children’s lives, which takes away the ability to become independent and focus on personal needs. Amanda treats Laura like a child and constantly makes decisions for her, and she and keeps him from enjoying his life.

In The Glass Menagerie, the main character, Tom, lives a life of grave disappointment as he tirelessly works to provide for his mother and sister. However, eventually, at the end of the play, Tom finally loses his nerve and describes how he “descended the steps of [the] fire-escape for the last time and followed from then on, in my father’s footsteps...”(7. Tom) after having a fight with his mother. So, just as Tom’s father had abandoned Tom and his family, Tom deserted his sister and mother. Though there are many causes of Tom’s abandonment of his family, the three main reasons are because of his dysfunctional relationship with his mother, his hatred of his job, and of the absence of Tom’s father.

Tom’s sympathy with Laura and Amanda prevents him from deserting his family, keeping him in his monotonous warehouse job. However, the photograph of Tom’s father compels him to leave, sparking his desperation to quit his job to explore the world. This hesitation to stay or leave is the direct cause of his trips to the movies. When Tom goes to the movies, he can escape reality while also staying and supporting his family. When Tom gets bored of the movies, he no longer has an escape from his dreadful reality, which forces him to leave. The photograph of Tom’s father mocked him for his entire life, and brought out Tom’s true desire which he had hidden for such a long time.

In The Glass Menagerie, Tennessee Williams uses the theme of escape to help drive the play forward. None of the characters are capable of living in the real world. Laura, Amanda, Tom and Jim use various methods to escape the brutalities of life. Laura retreats into a world of glass animals and old records. Amanda is obsessed with living in her past. Tom escapes into his world of poetry writing and movies. Jim also reverts to his past and remembers the days when he was a high school hero. Mr. Wingfield is referred to often throughout the play. He is the ultimate symbol of escape. This is because he has managed to remove himself from the desperate situation that the rest of the family is still

   Tennessee Williams' play, The Glass Menagerie, describes three separate characters, their dreams, and the harsh realities they face in a modern world.  The Glass Menagerie exposes the lost dreams of a southern family and their desperate struggle to escape reality. Williams' use of symbols adds depth to the play. The glass menagerie itself is a symbol Williams uses to represent the broken lives of Amanda, Laura and Tom Wingfield and their inability to live in the present.

In Tennessee Williams’ play, The Glass Menagerie, all four members of the Wingfield family have chosen to hide from reality. Amanda tries to relive her past through Laura, and denies anything she does not want to accept. Laura is terrified of the real world, and choses to hide behind her limp, her glass menagerie and the victrola. Tom hides from his reality by going to the movies, writing poetry, and getting drunk. Mr Wingfield hides from his reality by leaving his family and not contacting them after he has done so. Each member of the Wingfield family has their own escape mechanism which they use to hide or escape from the real world.

In The Glass Menagerie, Tennessee Williams beautifully encapsulates man’s desire to escape from uncomfortable emotional and physical situations. Whether he’s showing a young man trapped in a factory job he hates, an aging single mother who mourns for her life as Southern belle, or a young lady who fears that she’ll spend her life alone, he clearly demonstrates these desires and fears for his audience. Williams shows us through the actions of his characters how humans handle a wide variety of uncomfortable situations, and how these situations dramatically influence one’s ability to thrive. The playwright doesn’t seem to believe in the idea of “bloom where you’re planted”, and the desire to escape becomes a major theme of the play, demonstrated across multiple characters in a wide variety of ways. Creative individuals often do not thrive in noncreative, industrial environments. Williams demonstrates this clearly in this “memory play”, which carries many autobiographical element. Tom Wingfield represents his own character, Williams himself, and also serves as a narrator, making him quite the complex character. Williams’s uses Tom to show how an emotionally complex, creative individual can quickly feel trapped and tied down in a factory job, longing to get out, see the world, and pursue a job with more creative elements. Tom’s escapism, drinking, and evening theatrical adventures all reflect the life of the playwright himself, as Williams was known to struggle with alcoholism

Powerfully built and hailing from a socially solid old family, Tom is an arrogant, hypocritical bully. His social attitudes are laced with racism and sexism, exhibited by “next they’ll throw everything overboard and have intermarriage between blacks and whites” (p.138), and he never even considers trying to live up to the moral standard he demands from those around him. He has no moral qualms about his own extramarital affair with Myrtle, but when he begins to suspect Daisy and Gatsby of having an affair, he becomes outraged and forces a confrontation, (“Let Mr. Nobody from Nowhere sleep with your wife” p.138).

The theme of Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie is conflict. The play contains both internal and external conflict. The absence of Tom's father forces external turmoil and conflict between Tom the protagonist, and his mother the antagonist. The internal conflict is seen within Tom through his constant references to leaving home and his selfishness. The play is about a young aspiring poet named Tom, who works at a shoe warehouse. Tom is unhappy with is life at home mainly because of his overbearing, over protective mother named Amanda. Tom also has a sister within the play named Laura who chooses to isolate herself from the rest of society. During the play Tom's relationship with his mother is filled with very harsh and abrasive

fears that she has lost or is losing him as far as the big things, the

This play is narrated by and based on the memories of a 21-year-old man named Tom Wingfield. It takes place in a small St. Louis apartment in 1937 during the depression. Tom feels that he is forced to live with and support his mother, Amanda, and sister, Laura. This is because his father abandoned them year's ago. He feels trapped because he works a boring job in a shoe warehouse to pay the bills but wants to be a writer. Amanda seems unappreciative of his support and dwells on better times in her life as a Southern Belle and how she wants the same opportunities for Laura. She sets a lot of rules for Tom to follow that prevents him from enjoying life, even nagging about the way he chews his food! Tom turns to liquor, movies and literature to escape and for the adventure and excitement he desires. Throughout the play Tom's emotions as narrator are not portrayed the same as what he really feels as the character. To add to the family's misery, the father's picture still hangs on the wall in the apartment!

Throughout the play, Tom Wingfield was torn by the responsibility to provide for his mother and sister and the need to be his own man. He used the fire escape frequently in the play. He went outside to stand on it when he smoked, to escape the nagging from

' so what are we going to do the rest of our lives? Stay home and

Written in 1944, Tennessee Williams wrote a play during World War II when people were barely making ends meet. Centering on the Wingfield family, the story consisted of five characters: Amanda Wingfield (the mother), Laura Wingfield (the daughter), Tom Wingfield (son, narrator, Laura’s older brother), Jim Connor (Tom and Laura’s old acquaintance from high school) and Mr. Wingfield (father to Tom and Laura, and Amanda’s husband)- who abandoned the family long before the start of the play. The title, “The Glass Menagerie”, represented a collection of glass animals on display in the Wingfields’ home. At one point or another, these animals then represented each character when they couldn’t accept reality. The theme of this play were about the

Tom Wingfield has a dual role in The Glass Menagerie. The first Tom is the narrator, who introduces his second self, the character. In his fifth soliloquy, Tom the narrator indicates that time has detached him from the drama, "for time is the longest distance between two places" (Williams 1568). In the closing soliloquy Tom recounts how he lives and re-lives the story in his memory, though he is detached from the participants in the original affair. Like his father, "a telephone man who fell in love with long distances," (Williams 1523), Tom has fallen in love with the long distance that is time.