The+Glass+Menagerie

Key Plot Events:

- Play opens with Tom Wingfield, an aspiring poet, working to support his mother, Amanda, and his sister, Laura. Mr. Wingfield, Tom and Laura's father, abandoned the family years ago and has not been heard from since, except one postcard. - Amanda is disappointed that her daughter Laura wears a leg brace, is painfully shy, and does not attract any gentlemen callers. Amanda enrolls Laura in a business college hoping that Laura will make her own and the family's fortune through a business career. Amanda discovers that Laura's shyness has led her to drop out of school and wander the city streets at night alone. - Amanda decides that Laura's last hope is in marriage and that Laura must immediately find a suitable husband. - Tom finds his escape from the family's misfortune through liquor, movies, and literature. - During an argument between Tom and Amanda, Tom accidentally breaks several of Laura's most prized posessions, glass animal figurines. - Tom brings home a casual friend, Jim O'Connor, to dinner with the Wingfield family as a prospective love interest for Laura. Laura answers the door and it is then revealed that Laura had a crush on Jim in high school. - Jim and Laura finally meet in the living room, after Laura has skipped dinner and feigned illness to evade the situation. At first, Laura is paralyzed by Jim's presence, but she soon warms and opens up to him. Jim kisses Laura, but quickly draws back and explains that he is engaged. - Amanda is enraged; she berates Tom for being inattentive and selfish and she throws herself into comforting Laura. Tom watches the two women and explains that he gets fired from his job and leaves Amanda and Laura behind. Years later, he travels far and he finds that he is unable to leave behind guilty memories of Laura.