Character Analysis: Glass Menagerie

Character Sketch: The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams

Tom Wingfield
Tom Wingfield is a lot like his absent father. He dreams of adventure and leaves his responsibilities in order to find it as his father did. Being stuck at the warehouse, Tom is disappointed in his life. He’d come home late most days because he was at the movies. In one scene, Tom even speaks of his jealousy towards the actors and how they keep all the adventure to themselves. He wants to be doing everything he has seen in the films. In this part, you see his frustration and his desire to be somewhere else. When his mother suggests a gentleman caller for his sister and says it’ll allow him to leave them, he finds one within the next day. This shows his selfishness and his hurriedness to leave his family behind. Not only that, during the dinner with Jim, Tom and Jim’s conversation shows how prepared Tom was to leave. Tom joined a union rather than paying the light bill. By the end of the play, when he leaves after being fired and he thinks of his sister, confuses me. He feels bad for leaving Laura then goes into a bar to try to forget. This shows Tom’s guilt but his strong will to not go back.

Amanda Wingfield
Amanda is a frustrated mother stuck in the past. Every chance she gets she tell the story of the many gentlemen callers she had as a young women. I think she does it to compensate the fact that the man she chose left her. Having not succeeded as she would have like too, she becomes overbearing towards her children as an attempt to help them succeed. She enrolled Laura in a business school in vain. Laura has trouble socializing and drops out. Amanda also demand too much of Tom. She pressured him to work at the warehouse in order to maintain the family. This backfired on her because Tom ends up leave both of the women just as her husband did. It makes you wonder if her character also led her husband away. Though she was forceful, she did these things for her family. Her constant demands were her method of showing concern.

Laura Wingfield
Laura is a shy, insecure, nervous girl. She’s crippled. Her difference made her feel insecure about herself. She remembers her choir class near the end of the play where she walks into class late and the cast on her foot “sounded like thunder”. She was self conscience about the noise so much that she never completed high school. Her mom gave her a second chance by enrolling her to business school, yet, she was so nervous that she vomited and never went back. Laura is comfortable with herself in the safety of her home listening to old records and playing with the glass menagerie. When Jim comes over for dinner and she explains to him what her hobby was, she lets him hold a glass figuring and tells him not to breathe because it’ll break. Laura is as fragile as a glass figuring. When Jim convinced Laura to dance with him, her favorite piece, the unicorn, broke. But after speaking with Jim, Laura seemed brighter and optimistic. She said it was okay, it was like it had surgery to make it normal. And just like Jim broke it to make it normal, he made Laura feel normal too.