The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams is a touching play about the lost dreams of a southern family and their struggle to escape reality. The play is a memory play and therefore very poetic in mood, setting, and dialogue. Tom Wingfield serves as the narrator as well as a character in the play. Tom lives with his Southern belle mother, Amanda, and his painfully shy sister, Laura. According to Margaret Thornton:
“William wrote to himself about himself” (1). Thus, Glass Menagerie’s plot closely mirrors actual events in the author's life. Because Williams related so well to the characters and situations, he was able to portray the play's theme through his creative use of symbolism.
The Glass Menagerie reflects Williams's own life so much that it could be mistaken from his autobiography. The characters and situations of the play are much like those found in the small St. Louis apartment where
Williams spent part of his life. Williams himself can be seen in the character
Tom. Critic writer Andrea Peterson states: “The third Williams child, a boy named Dakin was born after the family moved from Columbus to St. Louis, Missouri, when Thomas was eight. It wasn’t long before the general malaise and unhappiness in young Thomas Lanier’s life would lead him to writing as an escape” (1). One not so obvious character is Mr. Wingfield, who is the absent father seen only by the looming picture hanging in the
Wingfield's apartment. Tom and Williams both had fathers who were, as
Tom says, "in love with long distances." Amanda, an overbearing mother who cannot let go of her youth in the Mississippi Delta and her "seventeen gentleman callers" is much like Williams own mother, Edwina. Both
Amanda and Edwina were not sensitive to their children's feelings. In their attempts to push their children to a better
