Glass of Menagerie Essay Example

as one who reads literature, writes poetry, and has future thoughts of escape, adventure, and higher things. On the other hand, he seems intimately bound to the nasty, petty world of the Wingfield household. It is clearly seen that Tom reads D. H. Lawrence and follows political advancements in Europe, but the content of his technical life is otherwise hard to separate. The play does not give us a clear idea of Tom’s opinion on Lawrence, nor does it give any suggestion of the ideas discussed in Tom’s poetry. All the information discussed here is what the character thinks about his mother, his sister, and his warehouse job and these are things that Tom precisely he claims he wants to run away.

In the play, Tom’s attitude toward Amanda and Laura rises critics whether he cares. He is frequently unconcerned and even cruel toward them. At the close of the play, his speech demonstrates his strong feelings of affection Laura when he asks her to blow out the candles, yet we see him cruelly deserting his sister and Amanda. Not a single day in the course of the play does he behave kindly or lovingly toward Laura even when he knocks down her glass menagerie.

We can clearly suggest that Tom’s complex behavior indicates an incestuous feeling toward his sister and his shame over that feeling. This casts an interesting light on certain moments of the play like when Amanda and Tom talked about Laura at the end of Scene Five. Tom’s insisted that Laura was hopelessly peculiar and could proceed with his activities in the outside world, while Amanda (and

later Jim) explained that Laura’s oddness is a real ideology, could have as much to change with his jealous desire to keep his sister to himself as with Laura’s quirks.

Tom is industrious and selfless. He works in a shoe warehouse doing his best to support his family, a place where he seems not comfortable working at but perceivers to ensure that his family is well supported. At times we see him being sleep-deprived by the dullness and boredom of everyday life while at the same time he struggles to write. Tom's denial of his family was not a selfish, self-centred escape. Tom recognized that he needed to escape to save himself. It was a way of self-preservation.

The play portrays Tom as an intelligent and a creative person. Throughout the play, we see that Tom is an original character who has his independent life composed of those things that he considered important to him like poetry, his freedom, his adventure, and his illusions. All these things are the opposite of what his mother thinks the world should resemble. Therefore Tom is in the conflict between his world and the realistic world.

He realized that the movies and drinking were only temporary psychological activities. Tom relied on movies as a type of adventure to make a substitute for his dull life and to go away from the nagging reminders of his daily lives. As time went by, Tom realized that he needed freedom from demanding instructions from her mother. He had sought escape from his mother’s nagging interrogations and commands by going to movies almost every night. It marked his ideas and desire

for adventure. Later, Tome realized that he was watching experience rather than living it.