Shattered Realities: The Glass Menagerie

The Glass Menagerie by Tennesee Williams highlights the consequences of regret, resentment, and the pain of living in the past. The motifs of the dreamers and the disillusioned, and the role of Tom as an unreliable narrator throughout the play contribute to the development of Williams’ prevailing theme of familial responsibility and its oftentimes harsh contention with personal desires. From the onset of the play, readers are introduced to Tom as the narrator, who recounts the production as a memory play. Tom provides duality from his past behavior and thought to his present retelling of the tale. By stepping forward as both a character within the play and as a narrator, Tom provides personal context as the events unfold. Henceforth, Tom’s self-sacrifices for his family are spotlighted, emphasizing his altruism in serving his mother and sister on behalf of his individual aspirations. Accordingly, Tom’s interceding role initiates significant impact in the way the narrative is perceived. Without the advantage of an unbiased third party, the truth of the story is diminished in lieu of Tom’s narrative. Thus, his influential position as a storyteller generates bias, personally connecting his struggles beyond a third person perspective and forcing the audience to grapple with his struggles past the confines of the story. As a narrator, Tom indirectly reaches out to the audience, signalling his intense inner turmoil and lingering guilt still present at the conclusion of the play. Through Tom’s mediation between past and present events, the audience comes to understand how memory distorts truth, shaping the narrative to emphasize regret and unfulfilled desires. Consequently, the tension between what was in the past and what is occurring in the present serves to highlight The Glass Menagerie’s prevailing theme of the inescapable conflict between personal dreams and the obligations one carries to family. 

By interjecting as a narrator from the opening of the play’s first scene to its resolution, Tom is provided with the opportunity to foster sympathy for his circumstances. His role in the play generates intense emotional appeal and sympathy for his regard. As opposed to a third person narrator, Tom’s firsthand involvement in the story allows the audience to experience his private struggles and inner turmoil on a deeper level. His relationship with his father, through his own narration, showcases its nuanced nature. Tom’s bitter and nostalgic tone in detailing his father’s absence, a man who “skipped the light fantastic out of town” contributes to a sense of resignation throughout the story (Wiliams, 1.1.28-29). Through Tom’s delineation of his family’s background and the context of the play, a feeling of abandonment and intense resentment is introduced from the production’s commencement. Conversely, if Williams had used an unbiased, third-person narrator, the complex understanding between Tom’s family dynamics would have been lost through the narrator’s neutral voice. Although the rest of the play proceeds with rare interference from Tom as a storyteller, his role in the play actively dilutes the truth behind events as they unfold. Rather than telling the story of his family as a whole, Tom narrates each beginning scene to illuminate a specific instance where Amanda’s impositions overshadow the needs of her children, forcing Tom and sometimes Amanda to shoulder the burdens of family life. Scenes I, II, and III all open with Tom’s narration, each revealing the family’s ongoing conflicts. As Tom eats dinner with his family in Scene I, Amanda’s obsessive behaviors force him to leave the table early. In Scene II, irony is used to highlight Amanda's overbearing nature as she questions Laura about her absence from Rubicam’s Business College. Ultimately, in Scene III, Tom expresses his frustration with Amanda’s domineering behavior, claiming that, as an adult, he still has no privacy. Tom’s narration in all three scenes serve as a way for him to rationalize the guilt he feels for leaving his family at the play’s conclusion. While Tom is overwhelmed by Amanda’s compulsive need for control, he still feels remorse for leaving her and Laura to face their struggles alone. Tom’s firsthand experience thus causes his exposition of the plot to be distorted as he struggles with the emotional turmoil that accompanies memories of his family. Thus, Tom’s reflection of his past experiences with Amanda clearly conveys his own frustration and Amanda’s controlling actions, while leaving her and Laura’s perspectives to imagination, in order to defend his actions leaving his family. 

As a single mother in the 1930s, Amanda is constrained by her social class and gender. Throughout the play, Amanda is seen constantly berating Tom, from forcing him to sacrifice his desire for adventure to work at the Continental Shoemakers to Tom’s forfeiture of his personal freedoms and belongings, Tom bases a majority of the play on negative experiences in his family due to Amanda’s oppression of him and Laura. However, much of the narration for Amanda is lost in the process. Ergo, a lack of understanding and empathy between Tom and Amanda is evident throughout the play as Amanda’s suspicion of Tom becomes extreme, climaxing the point of irrationality. This lack of commiseration is translated in Tom’s recount of the production, where much of Amanda’s actions are unexplained save for behaviors that reflect her irrational and compulsive behavior. As a result, Williams utilizes Tom’s role within the play to reinforce his experiences of sacrifice, frustration, and inner turmoil, painting the narrative in Tom’s favor and deepening the theme of the conflict between personal aspirations and familial responsibilities. Withal, the motif of the dreamers and the disillusioned frequently emerges as Tom struggles with the discord between his personal desire and his duties to his family. Living as a man in the 1930s, Tom has access to far greater opportunities than Amanda and Laura. However, despite his relative freedom, Tom’s aspirations are hindered by the necessity of providing for his family’s survival. As the head of the household and primary source of income, Amanda and Laura rely heavily on Tom for their well-being. While Tom acknowledges his role, he remains conflicted by the burden it imposes on him, as it forces him to renounce his ambitions and yearning for adventure for the sake of familial responsibility. This tension is further exacerbated by the absence of his father, whose abandonment casts a long shadow over the family. Tom struggles to mediate his complex family dynamic and the absence of his father, comparing his father’s abandonment to his own nature and foreshadowing the idea that his departure is inevitable later in the play. In Scene 6 lines 6-7, Tom states “I’m like my father. The bastard son of a bastard!” Tom sees himself following in his father’s footsteps, an outcome he despises yet feels powerless to avoid. His growing resentment thus showcases the influence of his role as a narrator. As Tom mediates between past and present, he alludes to the unpreventable parallel between him and his father. His attempts to pair his eventual departure with his father’s nature can be seen as a way for him to intercede in the audience’s interpretation of events within the play and build sympathy for his subsequent actions. Consequently, Tom’s role as both a character and a narrator illustrates his unreliability, emphasizing the impact of memory in the way the performance is interpreted. Further, Amanda and Laura are disillusioned with their reality, clinging to inanimate pieces of glass or memories of a better past as a means to cope with their unfulfilled lives. Amanda’s desperate attempts at seizing a gentleman caller for Laura is seen as obsessive by Tom, yet it stems from a deep-rooted fear of her circumstances and genuine love for her children. Ultimately, this behavior becomes the tipping point that drives Tom to abandon the household and consequently, his family. In using Tom as both a narrator and a character within the plot, Williams emphasizes the divide Tom faces between his dream for adventure and the exploration of life beyond his family. Tom, at a dissonance between his future and his family, struggles to make the choice between relinquishing his commitment to his loved ones and preserving himself. Furthermore, in narrating the scenes, Tom effectively builds sympathy for his situation, using his perspective as the guiding voice of the plot, attempting to justify his late departure as something inevitable, a reflection of his father’s nature, his innate desire for adventure, and his mother’s obsessive behavior; factors all out of his own control. 

Conclusively, Tom’s dissension between his role as a family provider and his dreams and freedom as an individual showcases the psychological dichotomy that illuminates the prevailing theme within The Glass Menagerie. Tom’s ambitions are stunted on behalf of his love for his family. However, by acting as a narrator within the play, Tom copes with his present abandonment of his family, and his subsequent pursuit of his dreams, by recounting past events through a distorted and biased perspective. By referring to his father’s absence and his family’s broken dynamic, Tom generates sympathy from the audience and plays into the idea that as the son of someone who forsakened his wife and children, he is bound to do the same. Furthermore, in serving as the voice of the narration, Tom’s chronicle of Amanda’s behavior and his transition to settings within the play serve to benefit his own character and point of view. Thereby, Tom’s account of his frustrations and sacrifices are punctuated while Amanda’s struggles remain without perspective, effectively building empathy for Tom leading up to his eventual leave. By illustrating his desire for adventure as an innate longing for experiences, Tom’s escapism serves as prevalent motifs that result in a clash between his position as a dreamer and his family’s status as those disillusioned with reality. Regardless, Tom’s justification of his absence creates an apologetic, regretful tone throughout the storytelling of the play, suggesting his desertion of familial obligations at the conclusion. Moreover, Tom’s regretful tone conveys the conflict he feels between leaving his family and choosing himself, a decision that plaques his consciousness persistently. Thus, through Tom’s role as an unreliable narrator, Williams spotlights The Glass Menagerie’s pervasive theme of the ever-present conflict between familial duties and one’s dreams.

Works Cited

Williams, Tennessee. The Glass Menagerie. New Directions, 1999.