The Great Repression.
A Literary Analysis of Tom Wingfield in The Glass Menagerie.
“There is always a time for departure, even when there’s no certain place to go.” -Tennessee Williams
The human spirit is incredibly strong. Even when everything feels impossible, the mind fights hard against the weary body to find hope on every possible horizon. It holds fiercely to visions of freedom from the chains of today as well as beauty in the elusive tomorrow. In the American Drama The Glass Menagerie, Tennessee Williams character Tom Wingfield seeks freedom from the repressive and mediocre life he feels systematically enslaved by.
Set during the Great Depression, the world Tom is a part of is one of dire uncertainty. People are being confronted with a failed economy, the ripples of which spread tension throughout all facets of daily life.
Tom describes “the huge middle class of America [as] matriculating in a school for the blind.” Nobody can see what is really going on, they just hang on and ride the waves of financial collapse. Tom seems to almost resent the placidity of America even against the sharp ache of mass decay. “In Spain there was revolution,” but Tom explains, “Here there was only shouting and confusion.”
Tom’s family is no stranger to hardship. Williams describes their apartment building as
“one of those vast hive-like conglomerations of cellular living-units that flower as warty growths in overcrowded urban centers of lower-middle-class populations” (1381). Such confinement is “symptomatic of the impulse of this largest and fundamentally enslaved section of American society.”
Tom supports himself, as well as his mother Amanda and sister Laura, on a mere sixty-five dollars a month. Amanda refers to her son as her “right-hand bower”. Tom must “make a slave of himself” to keep everything afloat.
Tom has been born into a perfect trifecta of family circumstances that make feelings of suppression and servitude inevitable. He has an overbearing mother and a dependent sister.
His father “left [them] a long time ago,” leaving his son the head of household. While Tom’s father never physically appears in the play, his presence looms as a “larger-than-life-size photograph over the mantle”. This not only renders the father an invisible “fifth character”, but it also alludes to Tom’s own inherent restlessness and choices he will have to make to stay true to his nature. Tom somewhat rhetorically asks Laura “…who in the hell ever got himself out of [a nailed up coffin] without removing one nail?”. Williams conveys “As if in answer, the father’s grinning photograph lights up”.
Amanda constantly worries about Tom “taking after his [father’s] ways”. Her incessant nagging and “hawk-like attention” to Toms every move is suffocating. Despite being financially dependent on Tom, Amanda withholds respect and clings to control. “…I’ve got no thing, no single thing … I can call my OWN,” Tom angrily laments after his mother confiscates his books that she found inappropriate. Amanda loves Tom and Laura, but the struggles of their lives cause her “devotion to make [herself] hateful to [her] children”.
Laura is a timid, vulnerable girl for whom Tom cares deeply. His mother appeals to him through this weakness, insinuating that “plans and provisions for her” must be made before Tom can break free from his household responsibility.
Williams introduces Tom as “a poet with a job in a warehouse”. This menial position is anything but fulfilling. Working at Continental Shoemakers makes Tom “boil inside”. He tells his coworker Jim,
“Whenever I pick up a shoe, I shudder a little thinking how short life is and what I am doing!”
Tom struggles to find any meaningful stimulation within the constraints of his daily grind. He speaks almost pleadingly to his mother, “Man is by instinct a lover, a hunter, a fighter, and none of those instincts are given much play at the warehouse!”
Tom has a “poet’s weakness”. He is passionate and soulful, absorbing the world around him with a depth that few would care to succumb to. He reflects on the people who steal away into the alley from the neighboring dance hall, “kissing behind the ash pits and telephone poles,” referring to such frivolities as “the compensation for lives that pass like [his], without any change or adventure”.
Amanda prods for insight by asking “Why do you go to the movies so much Tom?”. Tom replies, “I like adventure, adventure is something I don’t get much of at work, so I go to the movies”. He manages to find some relief from the abject nature of his day-to-day. He gives “every night to the movies,” escaping momentarily to a more gratifying illusory world.
During the working day, Tom has developed a “secret practice or retiring to a cabinet of the washroom to work on poems”. Although Amanda is also unable to live fully in the present, she is highly critical of Tom’s “dreamy” attitude. She scolds, “You live in a dream; you manufacture illusions!” Indeed, Tom must live in a “dream” world if only as a requiem for the brighter life his heart holds onto. At times, Amanda may call him a “selfish dreamer,” but Tom reminds her that “…if self is what I thought of, mother, I’d be where [Tom’s father] is — GONE!”.
“[L]eaning over the fire escape rail, speaking with quiet exhilaration”, Tom announces that he is “planning to change”. He knows that the life he has now cannot bring him happiness; he knows he is no longer satisfied with the passive pipe dreams handed down to him from Hollywood. Tom is beginning to recognize the “movies” almost as a provocateur of the complacent, muted mentality of the populous he so intimately detests. “[Americans] sit in the dark,” they escape, they “go to the movies instead of moving!”
Tom mulls over his position, expressing to Laura that a magician’s “trick might come in handy … in order to escape from this two-by-four situation”. Williams notes that Tom “is not remorseless, but to escape from a trap he has to act without pity”. His loyalty, to his sister in particular, compels him to stay. However, Tom is “not patient”; he is “tired of the movies and … about to move!” “I’m like my father,” Tom explains, “Did you notice how he is grinning in his picture … and he’s been absent going on 16 years!”.
Tom is ready to “come out of the darkroom”. Soon he gets “fired for writing a poem on the lid of a show box,” and finally makes a choice. “Descending the steps of the fire escape,” Tom leaves his family behind and “follows from then on, in [his] father’s footsteps”.
He hops from place to place, “attempting to find in motion what was lost in space”. Tom claims that he would have settled somewhere “but … was being pursued by something”. Haunted by the memory of his sister, Tom proves “more faithful [to her] than [he] intended to be”. Finally free from under the pressure of his former household, Tom must run from a new oppressor: the past.
Tom shows that true freedom is just another dragon to chase. One battle, one victory ultimately leads to another struggle. While he breaks free from the chains of his original “trap”, he enters a new world where he must still seek solace from the haunting memories of what he left behind. Williams skillfully highlights through all his characters that a certain detachment from reality is inevitable given the nature of humanity and the world we inhabit; Tom reminds the reader that everyone is running from something.
