The story of a young Tennessee Williams is poetically depicted through a 1945 Broadway play, The Glass Menagerie. The main character, Tom Wingfield, lives in the family apartment with his mother, Amanda Wingfield, and his sister, Laura Wingfield. Their father has left the family and he remains a silent figure appearing as a portrait on the apartment wall. Over the course of seven scenes, the immaturity of each member of the family is revealed. In search of adventure, Tom dreams of becoming a writer and wishes to leave his family and his factory job, like his father, to join the Merchant Navy. Laura lets her disability, an orthopedic leg, prevent her from finding a job or a husband, while Amanda continues to deny her children's failure by living in the past with her "gentlemen callers." Tom's main responsibilities, created by Amanda, are to take care of Laura and the family. Amanda and Tom constantly fight over their different views on what they want the future to bring them. To deal with his problems, every night Tom probably ventures out to a bar, gets drunk, and then tells his family he was at the movies ("Plot Summary: The Glass Menagerie"). Williams tries to express a personal struggle of trying to leave his family without feeling guilty (John Lahr) through fictional characters paralleling his family. These struggles are seen as failed responsibilities in the eyes of an existentialist. The responsibility of being an existentialist is conveyed through Tennessee Williams' autobiographical character Tom and his failed responsibilities, guilt toward the past, and denial of reality in The Glass Menagerie. The play is set during the Great Depression of the 1930s, but America was in World War II when Williams wrote the play. The ...... middle of paper ......ge. “Sartre's philosophy until 1945: phenomenology and ontology”. Jean-Paul Sartre. Boston: Twayne, 1983. 36-38. Print. Clinton, Craig. “The Glass Menagerie: Tennessee Williams. » The Facts on File Companion to American Drama. Ed. Jackson R. Bryer and Mary C. Hartig. New York: Facts on File, 2004. 178. Print. Crowell, Steven. “Existentialism. "The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Winter 2010. Web. April 26, 2012." Existentialism-A Philosophy. " AllAboutPhilosophy.org. AllAboutPhilosophy.org, 2012. Web. May 3, 2012. The Glass Menagerie. Drama for students. Ed. David Galens and Lynn Spampinato Vol. 1. Detroit: Gale Research, 1998. Print. Lahr, John. " Telling it like it isn't." Web, May 2, 2012. ": The Glass Menagerie." Discovering the authors. Detroit: Gale, 2003. Gale Student Resources In Context. Web. April 17. 2012.