Williams Verses Wingfields
             Tennessee Williams's first major drama, The Glass Menagerie, is a memory play in which Tom Wingfield, the drama's main character and narrator, is recollecting the events that caused him to leave his family. The play is thought to be solely fiction, concocted by a fanciful mind. A deeper look into the life of Williams reveals that there is little made up about the play. In The Glass Menagerie, Tennessee Williams blends the fictional characters of Tom, Laura, and Amanda with the reality of Williams, his sister Rose, and his mother Edwina to create a truthful drama.
             One of the first examples that suggests Williams is describing himself is the depiction of the Wingfield family apartment. The Wingfield family lives in the rear of a large apartment building that over looks an alley in St. Louis. In the play's opening description of setting, Williams calls the apartment ". . . one of those vast hive-like conglomerations of cellular living-units that flower as warty growths in overcrowded urban centers of lower middle-class population . . ." (Williams 693). This description reveals that the Wingfield's live in an overcrowded urban slum. The description of the Wingfield's apartment resembles the apartment in which Williams lived with his family in St. Louis. "This was the apartment Tom Supposedly used as a model for The Glass Menagerie" (Williams and Freeman 28). This correlation between the setting in The Glass Menagerie and Williams's environment shows that he is writing about himself.
             Another example of Williams's self-depiction in The Glass Menagerie is Tom Wingfield's lust for going to the movies. Almost every night after dinner Tom goes out to the movies and other performances, and does not return until very late. Toward the end of scene four, Williams creates an argument between Tom and Amanda in which Amanda asks Tom, "But, Tom you g...