The Glass Menagerie

The play is introduced to the audience by Tom, the narrator and protagonist, as a memory play based on memory, Tom cautions the auditon that what they see may not be precisely what happened. Amanda Wingfield, a faded Southern Belle of middle age, shares a dingy St. Louis apartment with her son, Tom, in his early twenties, and his slightly older sister, Laura.

Tom works in a shoe warehouse doing his best to support the family. He chafes under the boredom of everyday life and struggles to write while spending much of his spare time going to movies-or so he says. Amanda is obsessed with finding a suitor for Laura, whose shyness has led her to drop out of both high school and secretarial school, spends much of her time polishing and arranging her collection of the little glass animals. Pressured by his mother to help find a caller for Laura, Tom invited an acquaintance from work named Jim home to dinner.