Character Analysis: “The Glass Menagerie”
Tom Wingfield Tom is Amanda’s son and Laura’s young brother. He wishes to be a poet someday, and is employed at a shoe store to sustain the household. He is aggravated by the deadening schedule of his work and breaks out from it by watching movies, reading, and drinking. Tom has a twofold character in the play; both as a person who reminiscences the play scenes and as a character who performs in those memories. This role emphasizes the play’s pressure between independently acted spectacular reality and memory’s misrepresentation of truth.
His double character can aggravate our perception of Tom, since it is difficult to choose whether he is a person whose evaluations must be relied upon or one who lets his feelings to influence his decision. This can be well illustrated in Scene one, when Tom says,”I give you truth in the pleasant disguise of illusion.”It as well illustrates how the personality of remembrance is itself challenging: recollection frequently entails tackling a historic event in which one was not as upright as they are now. Even viewed as a distinct person, Tom is full of inconsistencies. Partly, he reads texts, constructs poems, and imagines of running away, doing exploration, and advanced things.
Alternatively, he appears to be inextricably bound to the filthy, insignificant environment of the Wingfield family. We do not know Tom’s attitude concerning other characters like Lawrence, neither the subject of his poetry. All we find out is what he believes in relation to Amanda, Laura, and his store work; specifically, the objects from which he says he desires to get away. Tom’s feelings toward his mother and sister have bewildered reviewers. Although he obviously loves them, he is often unconcerned and yet mean toward them.
His dialogue at the end of the play reveals his deep emotions for his sister. However, he brutally leaves her and his mother, and not on one occasion in the line of the play does he act benevolently or affectionately toward his sister; not even when he throws down her glass figurines. Tom’s puzzling actions point to an incestuous pull toward Laura and his embarrassment over that attraction. Amanda Wingfield Amanda is Tom and Laura’s mother; abandoned by her husband years ago leaving her to nurture her two children by herself. Amanda gets away the truth of the actual world by having a double life; partly, in the world of her early life and gentlemen visitors: In scene seven, Amanda asks, “Which of you gentlemen can provide a match?” She is an egotistical, energetic woman, who adheres passionately to reminiscences of a gone, courteous past. She is concurrently commendable, attractive, disgraceful, and ridiculous.
Amanda has had a customary background and has experienced a turnaround of financial and public destiny sometime in her life. This presents her with a difficult time getting accustomed with their latest position in community and certainly, with the overall contemporary culture, which ignores the community differences that they were trained to esteem. Her associations with men and her children are chaotic, and she steadfastly protects the morals of her past. For Amanda, her preservation of refined behavior in an extremely unrefined environment can come out disastrous, humorous, or absolute fantasy. She is the play’s most fussy and dramatic character, and one of the contemporary American theater’s most desirable feminine characters. In scene five she tells Tom, “Comb your hair! You look so pretty when your hair is combed!” This shows she is a caring and organized woman, who is also very much concerned with how Tom presents himself.
Amanda’s regular harassing of Tom and her denial to see her daughter for who she actually is definitely to blame, but Amanda also discloses a compliance to give up anything for her family that is in many ways unparalleled in the play. The best conclusion to make is that Amanda is not wicked but is profoundly imperfect. Actually, her mistakes are basically accountable for the misfortune, humor, and dramatic style of her personality. Similar to her children, Amanda pulls out from the real world into fantasy. However, for her, she is persuaded that she is not doing that and, therefore, is persistently creating attempts to connect with individuals and the external world.
Laura Wiingfield Laura is Amanda’s twenty-three-year old daughter, and Tom’s older sister. She has a slightly bad leg, which makes her to walk with a limp and wear a brace. Laura is glaringly shy, and has basically separated herself from the outside world. She dedicates most of her time collecting and listening to old gramophone records and tending to her collection of little animals made of glass. The emotionally and physically crippled Laura appears to be the only character in the play who never meddles with other people.
In spite of her own tribulations, she demonstrates pure empathy – as in the scene, where she cries over Tom’s unhappiness – that stands in bare distinction to the grudging sacrifices and selfishness that set apart the Wingfield household. Laura’s impression of selflessness is further characterized by having the least lines in the play, although the plot revolves around her. The most outstanding symbols such as a glass unicorn, the glass menagerie and the blue roses, in all ways, symbolize her.Laura is said to be as exceptional and as strange as a unicorn or a blue rose, and she is as fragile as a glass statuette. She tells Jim, “I shouldn’t be partial, but he is my favorite on.” This implies that she likes very fragile things.
She even tells Jim to be careful since his breath, might break the unicorn glass menagerie! She definitely has a sweet sense of humor. Other characters appear to imagine that, similar to a section of clear glass, which is pale until a beam shines upon it, Laura can employ whatever shade they desire. Therefore, Amanda uses the difference between herself and her daughter to highlight the glory of her adolescence and to stimulate her anticipation of reconstructing that childhood through Laura. Tom and Jim both observe Laura as an interesting being, totally and slightly peculiarly distant from the entire humanity. She has feelings for her high school hero, Jim and spends most of her time taking lonely walks on the streets instead of going for classes. Through proceedings like these, Laura constantly exhibits a determination of her own that disregards others’ opinions of her, and this willpower continually goes unappreciated.
