From having unfulfilled desires to abandoning loved ones, Tennessee Williams encompasses both aspects in his most successful piece of literature that will be examined for generations to come. The struggles of Laura are displayed perfectly by Tom’s memory in respect to her shyness and incapability of forming into society because of a disability yet this play is much more than just finding likely suitors. In The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams, the characters Tom and his father are compared with each other in a fight against destiny.
Both characters are faced with the struggles of a transitioning South being revolutionized into an industrial movement sweeping the world. Confronted by the same struggles of a typical Southern family, both characters unknowingly elect the same solution. In the beginning of the play, Tom remembers the setting and the main background including the key fact towards the end stating the father ran out of the family and the reason why. According to Tom memory, he states “There is a fifth character in the play who doesn’t appear except in this larger-than-life photograph over the mantel.
This is our father who left us a long time ago” (925). Established from the opening, Tom proceeds into his memory creating a narrative in which he is depressed by because at the end, he too will leave his family. Wanting to have a bit of adventure, Tom leaves Saint Louis during a time when his family depended on him the most just like how his father left leaving only a picture above the mantel and the memories from each of the characters. “I descended the steps of this fire escape for a last time and followed, from then on, in my father’s ootsteps, attempting to find in motion what was lost in space – | traveled around a great deal” (975).
In this soliloquy, Tom explains he is aware of being compared to his father and he should not receive any sympathy for his father leaving him because he does the same to his dependent family. Another aspect in the wanderlust of Tom is the reason behind him leaving. With the desertion of the father, it produces a situation for his family. In return, Amanda finds it difficult for handling the problem of suitors for Laura and Tom is left with no father figure in his life.
Both abandonments leave unresolved issues for those affected by it and is result of destiny tied between Tom and his father. The abandonment of Tom’s father leaves Amanda in array of distress in which she takes a controlling grip on her children, which makes Tom want to leave his family. I haven’t enjoyed one bite of this dinner because of your constant directions on how to eat it. It’s you that makes me rush through meals with your hawk-like attentions to every bite I take.
Sickening – spoils my appetite – all this discussion of animals’ secretion – salivary glands – mastication! (926) With a controlling father and a sister whose having struggles of her own, Tom seeks a better life and ends abandoned just so maybe as his father. Tom then leaves his family to have space in order to pursue his dreams but ends on how incomplete his life is without the support of his family. With the transitioning South, many reasons for the abandonment for Tom and Mr. Wingfield are the movement to Industrialization.
Tom finds life very difficult with the transitioning and the lifestyle as a industrial worker meanwhile a hopeful Jim is pleased to know a better lifestyle to still yet to come in the future. The family loses their father also to the age of technology as explained by Tom in the beginning monologue. “He was a telephone man who fell in love with long distances; he gave up his job with the telephone company and skipped the light fantastic out of town” (925).
With the father falling in love with long distance, ironically Tom goes a long distance to be away from his immediate troubles after eeing this situation solved by times by this method in the movies yet finds the distance to be the root of the problem. Jim who sees the technology of television and radio to bring in good opulence would be brought back in his goals by living with Laura who has her mind only to the past. Devoted to the Old South, only Amanda and Laura see themselves to be stuck in old culture and rebel against the growing industrial revolution. Jointly carried in with the mindset of a better life outside there own, the taste of love and exploration sets them away.
Both character Tom and Mr. Wingfield leave abandoning not only there own family but their responsibilities tied with them. Through the cleverness of Tennessee Williams, each character is trying to escape reality much like the South after the defeat of the Civil War. While Amanda goes back to her glory days and Laura finds refuge in hope of love, only Tom and quite possibly his father do not have a way to escape reality. In hopes of finding a route, both end in deserting their loved ones and following the same trial to escape their troubles.