Home > The Glass Menagerie Summary & Study Guide > The Glass Menagerie Group > Discussion Board

"The Glass Menagerie" by Tennessee Williams

Since there is a family of three, Tom in "The Glass Menagerie" is the base on which the others depend.  So, he cannot afford to dream as the women do and dwell in illusions of glass animals or days gone by.  He must be practical and not run as his father has done; instead, he needs to find a less confining job.  If he will be more like his friend, Jim O'Connor, he probably can better himself. So, rather than sitting at home in the evenings or going to a bar, he should take Laura out with him to social areas where they can meet people.

It is apparent that Laura can be drawn out from her shyness since Jim was able to in just one evening.  As her dependence upon Tom is one of the reasons that Tom feels so repressed at home, if she can grow as a person, Tom will be able to focus more upon his own self-improvement. 

With his mother, Tom must establish an adult relationship, not one that is still mother-scolding-the-child-for-not-eating- correctly, for reading the wrong books, etc.  Amanda must become realistic enough to allow Tom to eat as he wants, etc., for he is a grown man. 

For life to be meaningful to Tom, he must attain some independence without abandoning his family. (At the end of the play, Tom expresses his emotional attachment yet:  "I was pursued by something.")  If he can nurture the women of his family enough that they can become less dependent upon him, then he can feel freer at home.  He cannot be husband and brother both.

I don't see any positive aspects in the play. Tom wasted his life at a job he didn't like, and wasted more time watching movies in cheap theatres. To show how cowardly Tom is in dealing with life and facing it head on, he ends up leaving the family and never going back. The worst thing anyone can do is leave.

This is a "what if" question, putting ourselves in Tom's situation and imagining what might have been done differently. What the Wingfield family of three lacks is leadership. Many families like the Wingfields suffered economically during the Depression and survived, the family unit intact, because they pulled together and someone in the family took the point to lead the way. Tom and Laura live in worlds of their own making, and Amanda doesn't lead--she attempts to control, a big difference. Tom could have assumed leadership in his family and let his mother stand down in her destructive attempts to ensure their survival. This would have required being emotionally present in his home. (Even when Tom was home, he wasn't home. He was burning with resentment and figuring out ways to escape.) This change in Tom's attitude alone would have impacted his family significantly, creating the sense that "We're all in this together, and we will make it through." Changing his attitude about their circumstances would have required Tom to grow up and deal with reality. Leaving home served no purpose for him anyway. He "escaped" only to keep running, trapped by his memories.

Theirs was an emmeshed and dysfunctional family consisting on enabelers (the mother), co-dependents (the daughter) and individuals with unresolved life stages and unfinished businesses (Tom, and Jim although he was not part of the family).

To make life more beareable in an environment where the elephant is right in the middle of the living room and nobody cares to address it, the only thing I could see happening for Tom is to do exactly what he did: Separate, and severe the ties. Each individual in that family needed an equal amount of help. There is not one of them who could save the other unless they saved themselves first. Even Jim basically told Laura that SHE had to overcome HER OWN insecurities and her inferiority complex HERSELF.  No doctor, no therapy-she simply "had to do it". All the people in that family also "have to do it"- they all need to help and save themselves. Unfortunately, leaving a toxic environment that only continues to poison itself over and over is the only antidote to not getting poisoned oneself.