Tom Wingfield's Character in Tennessee Williams' Play The Glass Menagerie

In the memory play The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams, the main character Tom Wingfield struggles with choosing between his own personal dreams versus accepting the reality of his families situation. Tom and his family live in an alley apartment and survive mainly on Tom’s salary from a shoe factory. Tom often seems uninterested in self improvement tasks such as attending night school courses, and he frequently presents himself as a dreamer. 

Tom’s aspirations are to write poetry and escape the daily drone of the factory and a struggling family. Throughout the course of this drama the reader must ask himself: is Tom an admirable figure in this play in which he abandons his family? Tom indeed is not an admirable character because the responsibility he has to his family, the loss of reality he experiences, and the fact that he cannot even forgive himself. 

To examine Tom Wingfield’s admirability in this play, the reader must first account for the responsibility that Tom has toward supporting his own family. Since the father left the family, the dependency of his mother Amanda and his sister Laura on Tom’s salary is a major reason Tom has a responsibility to take care of them. Because Tom chooses to leave and abandon this responsibility, he cannot be considered an “admirable” character. Although it can be said that Tom tried to find a support for his family by inviting Jim O’Connor to call on his sister before he left, the reader sees Tom’s last moment effort as half-hearted. 

The reader is alerted to this half effort by Tom’s failure to investigate Jim’s situation. “The warehouse is where I work not where I know things about people” (Scene VII). Although Tom has aspirations and dreams, which is certainly admirable, the care of a family in situation of missing the father as a primary caregiver is seen as more admirable and thereby outweighs Tom’s needs.