Characters

**Amanda Wingfield (The Mother):

Amanda is an example of a character who is stuck in the past. As a young girl she received a traditional upbringing, but at some point in her life she went through a “reversal of economic and social fortune”. The unfortunate event was hard on Amanda, yet she still defends the past and talks about her glories. Her fondest memory is of “one Sunday afternoon in Blue Mountain” when she “received-seventeen-gentleman callers!” (Williams, Scene 1, 33). She also often recalls the day in which she meet her husband who later left her because he was a drunk.

In the modern society in which she lives the social distinctions that she was taught to value are not as important. Through this it is inferred that her inability to let go of the past is her biggest flaw. Her old values do not allow Amanda to truly understand her children, Tom and Laura. Amanda constantly nags Tom about everything without noticing that her nagging is pushing him away. She does not understand why Tom doesn’t find adventure in job seeing that “most young men find adventures in their careers”. (Williams, Scene 4, 63). Amanda does not understand that Tom is not “crazy about the warehouse” and the he does not want to “spend fifty five years” working there (Williams, Scene 3, 52). She is determined to find Laura a “gentleman caller”, but fails to see that Laura does not care for “somebody to take care of her” and “a home of her own” because “Laura is very different from other girls” and has a different mindset from that of her mother (Williams, Scene 4/5, 66, 80). Despite the harm that Amanda causes her children her actions are pure. To her, “her devotion to her children has made [her] a witch so [made herself] hateful to [her] children” (Williams, Scene 4, 61). ** 

 **Laura Wingfield (The Daughter):**

Laura is the only selfless character throughout the play. She never does anything to hurt anyone anyone, on the contrary she does everything she can to help others. An example would be when she confronts Tom on reckless behavior and tries to advice him to leave “his ways” (Williams,Scene 4, 62). On other occasions she is found “crying” because “she has the idea that” Tom “is not happy” and that he goes “out nights to get away from” them (Williams, Scene 4, 63). A childhood illness left Laura crippled and as a result she wears a leg brace, because of this Laura is not only physically crippled but emotionally crippled as well. Her “self-conscious” nature has made her keep to herself as to not attract attention to herself (Williams, Scene 6, 112). She lives in a world of “little glass ornaments” and “old phonograph records” because they are as delicate as her. Laura’s family describes her as “ terribly shy and lives in a world of her own” those aspects of her “make her seem a little peculiar to people outside the house” (Williams, Scene 5, 80). Amanda, Tom, and Jim believe that Laura can adapt to their wants so her will is disregarded throughout the whole novel.



 **Tom Wingfield (The Son):**  The play is set as a recollection of Tom’s memories and thus, Tom serves as the narrator of the play. Tom is the only character that addresses the audience to further provide explanations of certain events so it is difficult to infer whether the events on stage represent the truth or whether they have simply been distorted by Tom’s memory. The reader doubts Tom’s credibility as narrator because Tom is an emotional character full of contradiction. On one hand Tom cares deeply for his mom and his sister, yet he never shows kindness towards them because he feels that he “makes a slave of himself” to provide for them (Williams, Scene 3, 50). Tom feels this way because since his father left the family, Tom became the head of the Winfield household. In order to keep them financially stable he had to take up a job as a “warehouse worker”, when he’d rather be reading literature and writing poetry (Williams, Scene 3, 52). To escape his personal misery Tom goes out every night to the movies to find adventure. At the end of the novel Tom “to escape from a trap must act without pity” (22). 

 **Jim O' Connor (The Gentleman Caller):**

Jim is an old acquaintance of Tom and Laura. In high school Jim was a popular “high school hero” that Laura was in love with (Williams, Scene 2, 43). Years later Jim himself a shipping clerk at the warehouse where Tom works. Jim is devoted to professional achievement and longs for personal success which is why he “goes to night school” to study radio engineering and public relations” (Williams, Scene 5, 79). His “visions of being advanced in the world” make him a great gentleman caller in Amanda’s mind. Jim realizes that Laura is different from everyone else and he does not understand why she lets her leg brace interfere with her life because to him “being different is nothing to be ashamed of” (Williams, Scene 7, 126). The brotherly love Jim feels towards Laura wishes that he could “teach [her] to have some confidence” (Williams, Scene 7, 126). Jim gives Laura some of the best moments of her life, but in the end he must return to his girlfriend.