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Amanda’s son and Laura’s brother, Tom plays a dual role in the play as both the narrator and protagonist. The play is from the perspective of Tom’s memories. He addresses the audience directly to frame and present analysis of the events, but he also participates in the play’s actions as a character within his own recollections. Tom feels fettered by the constraints of his job and his family and yearns for escape in all aspects of his life. Dissatisfied with his monotonous warehouse job, he writes poetry on the side and plots a future in the merchant marines. Tom frequently goes to the fire escape and smokes cigarettes, symbolically escaping the house yet remaining trapped onstage and in the tenement. He goes to the movies night after night, attempting to escape into action-adventure narrative; he also attempts to escape through alcohol, as indicated by the bottles poking out of his pockets. The oscillation between Tom’s desire for freedom and inability to escape forms the emotional tension underlying the entire play. Although Tom leaves his family in the end, abandoning Amanda and Laura to pursue an independent future, the fact that he has created this play shows that he can never truly leave his memories, and therefore his family, behind.
Tom Wingfield Quotes in The Glass Menagerie
The The Glass Menagerie quotes below are all either spoken by Tom Wingfield or refer to Tom Wingfield. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Scene 1
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Yes, I have tricks in my pocket, I have things up my sleeve. But I am the opposite of a stage magician. He gives you illusion that has the appearance of truth. I give you truth in the pleasant disguise of illusion.
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There is a fifth character in the play who doesn’t appear except in this larger-than-life-size photograph over the mantel. This is our father who left us a long time ago. He was a telephone man who fell in love with long distances...The last we heard of him was a picture postcard...containing a message of two words: “Hello—Goodbye!”
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Scene 3
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You’ll go up, up on a broomstick, over Blue Mountain with seventeen gentleman callers! You ugly—babbling old—witch...
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Scene 4
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But the wonderfullest trick of all was the coffin trick. We nailed him into a coffin and he got out of the coffin without removing one nail. [He has come inside.] There is a trick that would come in handy for me—get me out of this two-by-four situation!...You know it don’t take much intelligence to get yourself into a nailed-up coffin, Laura. But who in hell ever got himself out of one without removing one nail?
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I go to the movies because—I like adventure. Adventure is something I don’t have much of at work, so I go to the movies.
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Scene 6
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[Jim] seemed to move in a continual spotlight. ... He was shooting with such velocity through his adolescence that you would logically expect him to arrive at nothing short of the White House by the time he was thirty.
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Scene 7
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Go, then! Go to the moon—you selfish dreamer!
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I didn’t go to the moon, I went much further—for time is the longest distance between two places.
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Not long after that I was fired for writing a poem on the lid of a shoe-box. I left St. Louis.
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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. The cities swept about me like dead leaves, leaves that were brightly colored but torn away from the branches.
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The window is filled with pieces of colored glass, tiny transparent bottles in delicate colors, like bits of a shattered rainbow. Then all at once my sister touches my shoulder. I turn around and look into her eyes. Oh, Laura, Laura, I tried to leave you behind me, but I am more faithful than I intended to be!
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For nowadays the world is lit by lightning! Blow out your candles, Laura—and so goodbye...
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Get the entire The Glass Menagerie LitChart as a printable PDF.
Tom Wingfield Character Timeline in The Glass Menagerie
The timeline below shows where the character Tom Wingfield appears in The Glass Menagerie. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Scene 1
The Wingfield apartment is in a lower-middle-class St. Louis tenement building that faces an alleyway. Through the...
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Tom enters, dressed as a merchant sailor and smoking a cigarette, and speaks directly to the...
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Tom tells the audience about the four characters in the play—himself, his mother Amanda, his sister...
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Tom enters the apartment and joins Amanda and Laura at the dining-room table. The words “Ou...
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...many times before. The lights dim and music begins to play. At Laura’s gentle urging, Tom mechanically plays along, asks his mother questions about the story, as though reading from a...
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Scene 3
The words “After the fiasco” appear on the screen. Tom stands on the fire escape and tells the audience that after the “fiasco” at the...
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Tom and Amanda are heard arguing behind curtains hanging over a door. Laura is standing in...
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Tom rips the curtains over the dining room door open, and he and Amanda continue to...
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Tom explodes at Amanda, claiming that he’d rather be bludgeoned to death with a crowbar than...
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When Amanda declares again that she doesn’t believe Tom is going to the movies, Tom sarcastically tells her she’s right and claims that he...
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Scene 4
As a church bell tolls five times, Tom stumbles up the fire escape and into the apartment, visibly drunk. Movie ticket stubs and...
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...calls out her customary “Rise and Shine!” She asks Laura to relay the message to Tom, as they are still not speaking. Laura begs Tom to apologize, but he remains unwilling....
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“Ave Maria” plays softly in the background as Tom finally apologizes to Amanda for his behavior. Amanda nearly breaks down as she speaks of...
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...theme begins to play. Amanda says that she has caught Laura crying because Laura believes Tom is unhappy and that he goes out every night to escape the apartment. Amanda tells...
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When Amanda presses Tom to explain where he goes, Tom says that he goes to the movies for the...
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Amanda tells Tom that they have to make “plans and provisions” for Laura. She knows that he has...
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Amanda asks Tom to bring home a gentleman from the warehouse to introduce to Laura, and as he...
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Scene 5
It is spring, 1937. Amanda nags Tom about his appearance and his smoking. Tom steps onto the fire escape with his cigarette...
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Amanda joins Tom on the fire escape, and they look at the moon together. They each make a...
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Tom reveals that a gentleman caller will be coming to dinner: he has invited a colleague...
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Amanda begins to whisk around the apartment, simultaneously re-organizing the apartment and brushing Tom’s hair while interrogating him about the gentlemen caller. Her first concern is that the gentleman...
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Amanda continues to pump Tom for information. She learns that the caller’s name is O’Connor, and he works as a...
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Tom tells Amanda that he hasn’t told Jim about Laura: he just invited Jim over for...
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Tom leaves for the movies, and Amanda calls Laura to the front room. She points out...
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Scene 6
Leaning on the fire escape, Tom tells the audience about Jim. He describes Jim as the high-school hero, captain of sports...
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...carries a bouquet of jonquil flowers and reminisces about when she first met Laura and Tom’s father.
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Tom and Jim arrive and ring the doorbell. Laura is terrified and begs Amanda to open...
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After awkwardly greeting Jim, Laura dashes to the Victrola and then through the portieres. Tom explains that Laura is terribly shy. Jim and Tom go onto the fire escape as...
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Tom tells Jim that he’s sick of the movies and wants, instead, to move. He reveals...
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Jim and Tom re-enter the house to find Amanda transformed into a grotesque version of herself as a...
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Amanda sends Tom to fetch Laura for supper, but Tom returns and announces that Laura is not well...
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Scene 7
...box, which he does, although he knows why the lights have gone out. Amanda asks Tom if he has paid the light bill, and Tom admits he has not. Amanda assumes...
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“Things have a way of turning out so badly,” says Amanda. She accuses Tom of playing a joke on them, but Tom insists that he didn’t know about Jim’s...
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Tom smashes his drink glass on the floor and bursts onto the fire escape. Inside the...
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