the long delayed but always expected something that we live for.

Consider a couple of elements we see about Tom right from the first scene.  The idea that the family is "set apart" from reality is one level of understanding that Tom gives.  Seeing that he is now apart from this level, it is another distance from which Tom speaks.  At the same time, Tom's "poet's weakness" helps us see a predilection for melancholy, something that is reemphasized throughout the drama and indicative to us that Tom is not entirely happy with everything in the drama and that which followed it.

Over the course of the play, Williams brings out Tom's fundamental conflict with Amanda.This is a chasm that widens over the course of the drama.  Williams makes it clear that Tom's hatred of his mother exists almost in the same magnitude as his loyalty towards his sister and his desire to not be like his father.  This is how we first see Tom.  As the drama unfolds, it becomes apparent that the wedge of disdain grows in intensity and power, superseding the bonds of loyalty and the fear of repeating the past.  Williams constructs Tom to be increasingly resentful of Amanda and as the play progresses, with her fears increasing, Tom recognizes that he can no longer endure being with his family.  As the play reaches its end, Williams has Tom leave.  This is what makes the development of Tom so intensely powerful.  On one hand, he has left the family that was the source of so much self- hatred.  Williams has given Tom independence.  Yet, Williams was wise enough to make the argument that freedom and independence do not automatically guarantee happiness.  In the end, we have to come back to Tom at the start of the play.  The melancholy we see within him at the start of the drama concludes Williams' development of him as one who possesses freedom and independence and cannot seem to find happiness because of it.

Tom is a character that faces a serious dilemma in this play. How can he achieve the escape from his mother and sister that he desires without causing pain to both himself and to them? Tom seems to experience a kind of symbolic life-in-death experience in his family life and work. Tom is also haunted by the "trick" his father played in deserting his family, clearly having a sense of admiration for his father in spite of moments when he displays anger towards him. For example note how he refers to himself as "the bastard son of a bastard" to Jim, yet shortly after, speaking about his father's photograph, he says:

See how he grins? And he's been absent going on sixteen years!

Thus Tom feels a compulsion to follow in the footsteps of his faithless father, but not necessarily for the same reasons. It is clear that the apartment where he lives with his mother and his sister and/or the warehouse where he works is slowly sucking the life out of this fledgling poet. Amanda makes it impossible for Tom to devote himself to his writing, and Tom feels dehumanised and alienated by his work. There is a constant conflict between the adventure that Tom desires in his life and the monotony of his job with its tedious mind-numbing tasks. We see his sense of frustration culminating at the end of scene 6 when he says:

I'm not patient... I'm tired of the movies and I am about to move!

Living life as a spectator sport is not enough for him. He wants to be an actor in his own movie, living new experiences and adventures rather than watching them second-hand.

Note how Williams describes this character he has created:

A poet with a job in a warehouse. his nature is not remorseless, but to escape from a trap he has to act without pity.

Williams presents Tom in this incredible play as a poet who is engaged in a battler for his own spirit. The only way he can achieve self-fulfilment is to reject society and its conformism and materialism, symbolised through Amanda's endless stories of Blue Mountain and "plans and provisions." Tom feels he has to leave after the action in the play to be true to himself, but he is always haunted by his memories, trapped in a kind of no-man's land of his own creation. Exile may have been what he wanted, but there is certainly a price to pay.

Tom's character arc throughout the play is a circular one, since Tom is looking back on a story that has already taken place. Tom cautions the audience that his memory may be faulty, but he will try his best to tell the story as it happened. At the end of the play, we may conclude that Tom is seeking absolution or, at least, forgiveness for his actions, even though leaving his family was an act of self-preservation.

Within the memory portion of the play, which takes up the bulk of the action, Tom is seeking an escape from his life, and particularly from his mother, Amanda. He finds any excuse to go out late at night, and is on edge whenever he is at home. While Tom knows his mother is right, that Laura's best chance for a normal life is through marriage, they also both seem to acknowledge that Laura will never marry.

Tom is petulant with his mother, but consistently kind to his sister. By the end of the memory, it is clear that Tom must leave his family if he is to make anything of the life he has remaining. However, through Tom's final narration, it's clear he has always wondered if he did the right thing, as he knows Laura's life was filled with suffering because he left.

In Tennessee Williams's play The Glass Menagerie, one place in which Tom's character is significantly developed is during the quarrel between him and his mother in scene III. During this quarrel, we learn just how trapped Tom feels. As he expresses it, he has not one thing "no single thing-- ... [he] can call [his] own."

What's more, he feels he slaves away at the shoe factory just to pay rent and provide for his mother and sister, which is why he gets so angry when his mother calls him selfish. We also learn that Tom has ambitions; he wants to be a writer but doesn't feel he can be when he has to provide for his family. He also feels influenced by his father; there is nothing better he would like than to do as his father did--leave and pursue his own desires, as we learn in his important following lines:

I give up all that I dream of doing and being ever! And you say self--self's all I ever think of. Why, listen, if self is what I thought of, Mother, I'd be where he is--GONE! (I.iii)

The cinema is also a significant symbol for Tom. Tom frequents the cinema because he can watch other people accomplish things in movies, things that he would like to accomplish himself. Therefore, the cinema symbolizes the illusions Tom has of what his life could be like instead of what it is now.

In The Glass Menagerie, Tom Wingfield allows his trials and difficulties to overwhelm him and take control of his life. Tom is caught up in a situation that seems beyond his control. He works in a warehouse job that he hates, and he lives with his mother and sister, both of whom have hang-ups that Tom must deal with every day. His father left the family years ago, so there is no support for Tom from that angle.

Tom does not deal well with this situation. He tries to escape into liquor and literature. He goes to the movies frequently. He argues with his mother almost constantly. Instead of doing anything creative, Tom plunges himself into activities that are either potentially destructive (the drinking and the arguing) or at least not helpful in excess (as Tom uses literature and film).

By the end of the play, Tom allows himself to be completely overcome by both his trials and his desire to escape. He takes the money set aside to pay the family's light bill and joins the merchant marines. He will leave his family and go off to seek adventure. This is really quite a cowardly and selfish act. Tom is leaving his mother and sister with no support and actually robbing them of the money they need to keep the lights on. Yet he follows through with his plans.

Tom soon learns, however, that he has not overcome his difficulties by running away. His guilt follows him. He knows that he has let his mother and sister down, and no matter how far he travels, he will not truly escape.