It is painfully clear that Amanda is yearning for her past when she come out wearing a frock from her youth, reacting a past that will never come back. Her actions make her seem pathetic and evoke pity from the audience. However, her attempts at escapism from reality are always short lived as reality always comes hurling back at her, because each time she recounts her past she is forced to remember that she chose a man who left her for long distances. But whenever she remembers the husband who abandoned her, she quickly switches subjects. These actions reveal to us that Amanda conceals her true feelings and puts up a strong front. She lives in her past because it is all she has and it is all she can understand, as she isn’t able to connect wither her either of her children. She cannot understand why Tom does not aim for, what in her opinion is a better future and why Laura isn’t interested in gentlemen callers and why she is so shy. We are yet again shown another layer of Amanda’s character proving how truly complex she is.
Jim, to Tom is the high-school winner that could not cope in the real world, “he was holding a job that wasn’t much better than mine”. This remark shows that Tom does not, In fact, think very highly of Jim even though he could remember how he was in high-school. We learn through Tom’s description that Jim is fond of praise, and because Tom was with him in school Tom was “valuable” Jim as he knew of Jim’s “former glory”. They also have a different outlook on life. Whilst Jim sees the warehouse as starting point to a promising career, Tom views it as a coffin, to which he doesn’t know the trick to getting out of, and this is driving him insane, exemplified by the point when he states “I’m starting to boil inside.” It is then that Tom’s cruel intentions are of leaving his family is revealed. But because he explains his feelings about ‘boiling inside’ we realize that if Tom doesn’t escape he will go insane- his current state of life is eating him up inside. Although it does not justify his actions we do feel sorry for him as everyone once in their life want to escape from life.
Because Jim noticeably contradicts with the Wingfields family, one would think that he would be repulsed by them, instead he is charmed. He is “the long delayed but always expected something we live for”.
Analysis
Laura's glasslike qualities become more explicit in Scene Six, where, according to the stage directions, she resembles "glass touched by light, given a momentary radiance." She embodies the "momentary radiance" of glass more completely in Scene Seven. Here, however, it is the fragility of glass that is most evident in her character. Before now, we have merely heard about the panic that results from her shyness. In this scene, we witness it directly, as her reason breaks down in the face of the terror that Jim's presence instills in her.
The straightforward, iron-willed Jim contrasts sharply with the elusive, delicate Laura. Jim is, as Tom says in Scene One, a representative from the "world of reality." His entrance marks the first time in the play that the audience comes into contact with the outside world from which the Wingfield's, in their various ways, are all hiding. As embodied by Jim, that world seems brash, bland, and almost vulgar. His confidence and good cheer never waver. He offers Tom, and later Laura, a steady stream of clichés about success, self-confidence, and progress. Whereas Laura's life is built around glass, Jim plans to build his around the "social poise" that consists of knowing how to use words to influence people. Jim operates within the structure of the world of business and industry putting faith in words, and thus puts his faith in words too.
Jim is as different from the rest of the Wingfields as he is from Laura. Whereas Tom sees the warehouse as a coffin, Jim sees it as the starting point of his career. For Jim, it is the entrance to a field in which he will attain commercial success, the only kind of success that he can perceive. Amanda lives in a past riddled with traditions and gentility, while Jim looks only toward the future of science, technology, and business. Given these contrasts, one might expect Jim to be bewildered and disgusted by the Wingfields and to be repulsed by the claustrophobia and dysfunction of their household. Instead, he is generous with them. He is good-natured about Tom's ambivalent performance at his job, and, most important, he is charmed by Laura's imagination and vulnerability. Given Jim's philosophy of life and belief in the value of social grace, it is possible that his remarkable tolerance and understanding is not a result of genuine compassion but, rather, an expression of the belief that it is always in one's best interest to try to get along with everyone.
While Jim's presence emphasizes the alienation of the Wingfields from the rest of the world, it simultaneously lends a new dignity and comprehensibility to that alienation. Jim's professed dreams present a nightmare vision of the impersonality of humanity—shallow, materialistic, and blindly, relentlessly upbeat. We are forced to consider the question of whether it is preferable to live in a world of Wingfields or a world of Jims. There is no easy answer to this question, but it seems possible that, for all their unhappiness, Amanda and Tom would choose the former, since the Wingfields' world is emotionally richer than Jim's. Along these lines, it seems possible that the outside world has not so much rejected the Wingfields as they have rejected the outside world.
Analysis:
Amanda's expectations for this evening are very high. The apartment has been made over‹with great expense‹and she has worried Laura by making such a fuss over the evening. Amanda is vicariously reliving her youth, and her longing for that youth is made clear when she dresses in the old frock she wore as a young girl. The escapism of living in the past, however, can never last long for Amanda, since all stories of her glory days end with her married to the faithless Mr. Wingfield. Although Jim is charmed by Amanda, Tom is slightly embarrassed by her behavior. She is not acting her age.
Tom's plans to abandon Amanda and Laura are revealed. His intentions are a perverse alteration of the deal offered by Amanda: she wanted him to wait until Laura could find a husband. Tom has only provided a gentleman caller, and he is already planning to leave.
We know from Tom's description of Jim that he enjoys praise. He likes the company of people who admire him, and his interaction with Laura in Scene Seven will show how this love of admiration compromises his consideration of others.
