This causes Tom to lose his patience and intentionally hurt his family by spending this money on the movies and smoking rather than paying the electric bill. Amanda eventually begins to nag Tom by calling him selfish for constantly escaping to the movies and drinking instead of taking care of his family like he should be doing. He feels that the actors in the movies are having all the adventures while he is trapped taking care of his family. He does this by escaping into fantasy and adventure through the movies he sees in the theater to briefly experience what he longs to have in his life.

The love that Tom has for his shy sister, Laura, and the guilt that he feels because of his mother is what kept Tom from running off like his father did for a long time.Īt this point, Tom becomes a more selfish character when he begins doing everything that he can to avoid his family and going home. She illustrates this when she says What right have you got to jeopardize your job? Jeopardize the security of us all? How do you think we’d manage if you were- (Williams, 2013, Scene 2, p.1044). Amanda, Tom’s mother senses that Tom wants to leave home, which results in conflict between the two of them because she believes it is his duty to support their family since her husband left. This leaves Tom feeling trapped in a battle between wanting to run off and abandon his family like his father did and staying to support his broken family. While all he could think about was the day that he would get to leave home and purse his dream of being a play writer. He supported his family by working in a shoe factory. He eventually found himself the only man supporting his family when his father abandoned him, his mother and sister. As a child, Tom and his father did not spend much time together, which resulted in an unpleasant relationship between the two of them. The play is from the perspective of Tom’s memories by addressing the audience directly, but also participating in it as a character within his own recollection as well.

The glass menagerie drama