Tennessee Williams Broken Dreams

Broken Dreams 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
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 footsteps, attempting to find in motion what was lost in space - I 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
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 seeing 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