Sunday, February 26, 2012

Let's talk about Tom!

"But I'm not patient. I don't want to wait till then. I'm tired of the movies and I am about to move!" (The Glass Menagerie, 1268).


No, not that Tom.


Surprisingly, not that Tom, either. However, this may be a good opportunity to expose this secret thought of mine that I've had for the past two years -- am I the only one who thinks that Thomas Jefferson looks like Mrs. Bohn? Either I'm crazy or she should seriously look at her ancestry.

One of the questions in the book asks, "What qualities possessed by Tom, and by him alone, make him the proper narrator of the play?"

Tom seems to be the most round character in the play -- temperamental, poetic, friendly, trapped -- so I think he has the most interesting perspective. Only he could have delivered the final few lines of the play because he was the one who felt bounded by St. Louis and needed to find adventure.

An obvious answer the question is that Tom is a poet. He barely focuses on his day job and instead writes poetry; Jim calls him "Shakespeare." The ideal narrator of a play should have the poetic eloquence that Tom has.

Finally, the character list says that Tom is "not remorseless, but to escape from a trap he has to act without pity" (1234567 -- sorry, I got carried away -- 1234). Perhaps Williams wanted to have a narrator who connects with the others characters the least, and Tom fits that description well. That way, we see the characters from a relatively impartial lens instead of, say, Amanda's lens that would be very protective of Laura and critical of Tom.

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