Most Responsible For Poverty In The Glass Menagerie

The film, The Glass Menagerie is a drama about a family of three people that live in poverty. The characters consist of a mother Amanda, the daughter Laura, and the son Tom. The family was abandoned by the father of Laura and Tom and they don’t know anything about him. The mother struggles to motivate her two children to reach out for a better future while the two children lack motivation. In this play, she would be considered the character with the least fault of their poverty. Tom is the character most blamable for the poverty that the family lives in since he is an adult and the man of the house.
The character that is the most responsible for the poverty that the family in the film, The Glass Menagerie, faces is Tom the son. He is a young
man who hasn’t married yet and lives with his mother and daughter in a very poor house. Every morning instead of waking himself up for work, his mother has to wake him up.
He is always dragging himself out of bed and hating his mother for waking him up every morning. He even hates the expression that his mother says while waking her children up, “Rise and Shine” (Williams) and always response with the phrase, “I will rise but I will not shine” (Williams). Tom lacks ambition and nothing seems to motivate him to do something in life or at least something to help the family’s situation. Instead, Tom starts to plan about quitting his job. At one point in the film he doesn’t pays the light bill and the lights get cut off due to his irresponsibility. The only thing that inspires Tom a little is the movies. Every time he has problems at home with his mother, he leaves off to the movies or whenever he arrives late to the house, his excuse is that he was at the movies. His sister is crippled and has an inferior psychological problem but Tom only demonstrates love towards her. He never tries to set an example or even inspire her to do something out of her life. As a brother he should stimulate her to not be so self-unconfident and to lose the shock of shyness she encounters while trying to communicate with other people than her family. Tom’s friend states that if Laura was his sister he would encourage her to
stop being so shy and would persuade her to reach out to the world without being afraid of it. Unfortunately, Tom only knows how to show Laura affection and cares for her when she suffers her attacks or falls due to her limping. At the end of the film, Tom decides to quit his job and leaves the house and the family to their luck. He decides that he is going to pursuit in the theatre life. He is selfish and he doesn’t care about how his mother and sister will survive without him providing for them. All he thinks about is changing his life and leaving far away where he doesn’t have to put up with his mother. The mother is the least blamable for the poverty the family faces but does deserves some of the blame. The mother is the lady of the house who is in charge of waking up her grown up children. Every day, the mother tries her best to keep a positive mind and input it into her children as well. She is ambitious and dreams for the day that their misery will end and their life would fill with fortune. Like any mother, she is always scolding her children for not improving their lives. All this mother desires, is for her children to have goals and go after them. She desires for her children to be someone and have something in life. The mother pays for the education of her daughter so that the daughter can pursuit a professional life. At one point of the movie, after the family finishes eating dinner, Laura tries to wash the dishes and her mother stops her from doing so and encourages her to instead, practice on typing which is part of the career. Later the mother is disappointed after discovering the truth that her daughter only went to one class session and dropped out of college. The more she attempts to embolden her children the more she fails and all she gets in return is the cursing of her son. As the mother of the two children, she has some fault because as a single mother she could have strived to get a better future for herself and her kids or she could have remarried and had someone help her for the future of her children. As woman of the house she is responsible to set a good example for her children to follow. Another reason is that she deals with the laziness of her children instead of kicking them out so that they can learn how to survive in life since they don’t do nothing to help her out. She worries too much about them and treats them as if they are still kids that need instructions for life and she doesn’t realize she is not helping them out with this action. Like any mother, she loves her children and wishes the best for them and never gets tired of urging them to build up a decent future.
As you can see, the situation of the family is financially, physically, and psychologically terrible. The son Tom is the only man in the house and is the one responsible for the poverty the family lives in. He only brags about life, his job, and his mother but never does something positive. The son doesn’t try to do anything for the family and at the end he just walks out of the house leaving his mother and daughter survive on their own. Indeed, it is not his fault that his dad left them in awful circumstances but as the next man of the house he should grow up and act as an adult and provide for the family. The mother is old but she tries her best to push her children into having goals and something in life but neither one ever pay attention to her. The son only brags about life, his job, and his mother but never does something positive.