Tuesday, 15 October 2019

'Adventure is something I don’t have much of at work, so I go to the movies.'

The Glass Menagerie | Tom Wingfield's Desire to Escape Drudgery through Art

This post is a continuation of our multi-part series on the liberative power of art gleaned through the works of poets and writers of all hues from across the world!

In our last, past post we'd discussed a few salients on the predicament of Gregor Samsa, from Kafka’s The Metamorphosis: on Samsa’s high-end fantasies 24x7 that haunt his little mind and heart, to escape his habituated existence that’s been thrust on him by circumstances, and on how he effectively achieves this freedom and liberation wrought on him by his miraculous transformation into a gigantic insect!

There seems to be much of a muchness in the temperament and spirit of Tom Wingfield of The Glass Menagerie fame, with Samsa’s in such striking semblance to its substance and its feel!


Tom Wingfield also, much akin to his counterpart Samsa, feels cloistered, chained and fettered by the limitations, the pulls and pressures of his job and his family! Hence he longs for that ‘great escape’ far far away from the madding crowd’s ignoble strife!

Added, a symbolic liberation he attempts on himself, by writing poetry in his spare time. Moreover, he also frequents the movies on such clockwork precision, night after night, his favvy genre being the action-adventure ones! Tom attempts yet other forms of escape from the drudgery that’s enslaved him, by going to the fire escape and smoking cigarettes, and by getting himself intoxicated as often as he could!

The ending is in many ways reminiscent of Gregor Samsa’s too, with Tom leaving his family towards the end of the story.

Some of his lines are worth such an intense ponder –

Do read the lines given below a minimum of twice or thrice or multiple times over, to get the intense feel that irradiates through their texture!

Here goes some of my most favourable lines for y’all – Do try chewing the cud on ‘em all, as oft as ye possibly could!

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?

And this one –

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.

"Man is by instinct a lover, a hunter, a fighter, and none of those instincts are given much play at the warehouse!"

"People go to the movies instead of moving! Hollywood characters are supposed to have all the adventures for everybody in America, while everybody in America sits in a dark room and watches them have them! Yes, until there's a war. That's when adventure becomes available to the masses."

[On an aside: Way back in 2003, when I first got the opportunity of handling this wonderful play for my General English class, I remember how the highly motivated class was so passionately divided in their loyalties between Tom, Laura and Amanda! They were hooked skyhigh to the play that, every character and their concomitant dialogues seemed to come alive in flesh and blood when they acted it out all by themselves, on that huge, vintage gallery class of ours!

Such was the charm of Tennessee Williams and his, this play on the class! I call it the 'T. V. Gayathri' batch, as she was one of the most outstanding students of the whole class, known for her passionate involvement with the play! More on Ms. T. V. Gayathri on our past post in February 2008, HERE]

To be continued…

image: newyorktheatredotme

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