The quotation from Tom Wingfield comes in the first scene of The Glass Menagerie. Tom, who is both the play’s narrator and a character in it, speaks directly to the audience and explains the play’s basic structure. Tom emphasizes that this is a “memory play,” which is thoroughly suffused with his sentimental views of his family as it was before he left home. He draws a clear contrast between sentimental and realistic approaches. The “gentleman caller” to whom he refers is the character of Jim O’Connor, but Tom does not provide his name at this point in the play. It is later shown that Tom’s mother, Amanda, is the one who uses this phrase to refer to Jim. When she was young, male visitors to her home were referred to that way.

Along with identifying the gentleman caller as a messenger from the “world of reality,” Tom also says that he is “the most realistic character in the play.” This clearly distinguishes him from Tom and his sister, Laura, as well as their mother. Tom further states that the character is a symbol as well; Jim stands for what might happen in the future: “He is the long-delayed but always expected something that we live for.”

As the play develops, the audience sees that Tom, who is a writer, creates his own world through his words. Laura immerses herself in the make-believe world of her glass animals, while Amanda tends to live in the past. Jim is practical, unimaginative, and confident. He embodies optimism about the American dream, in which Tom has little faith.