The Glass Menagerie: memory and guilt

Amanda Wingfield

Amanda is the mother of Tom and Laura. She is a strong and dominant woman: life had taught her that only the strong survive.

Caught between the past and the present, she is well aware that her family’s situation is dire. She sees Tom as the primary breadwinner of the home. She and Laura need him in order to survive.

Since she was reliving her own life, she failed to understand the different personalities that her children possessed and ended up driving Tom away from home.

Tom Wingfield

Tom is a young man with a poetic soul,(He writes poetry secretly) who works in a  shoe warehouse in order to support his family. His father abandoned his family, leaving it without a breadwinner.

Amanda, his dominant mother expects him to take care of Laura, his fragile young sister and ensure proper marry to her. Only then Tom can leave home.

Tom's main conflict: Should he take care for Laura and his mother and thus give up his dreams, or should he leave but feel guilty?

Laura Wingfield

Laura is an extremely shy and sensitive persona wit a slight physical defect — a limp. Her disability made her frightened and nervous, living in her own world - a world of -little glass ornaments. She is completely dependent on her mother and brother.

She falls in love with Jim, and for a short time she seems to be like everybody else. When she finds out he's engaged to a woman he love -it breaks her heart.  

Jim O'Connor

Jim is an old friend of Tom and Laura. He was a popular athlete in high school and is now a shipping clerk at the shoe warehouse in which Tom works. He is ambitious and devoted to goals of professional achievement and ideals of personal success.

Alex D. Rector

Alex is a young and a talented theater director who graduate theater studies. After a few years of amateur theater work, this is her first play up on the professional stage. "The Glass Menagerie" is her favorite play (She once played as Laura!).

Alex thinks that the director should work in collaboration with his actors and consider them a Thinking Group.