YMMV / The Glass Menagerie

• Alternate Character Interpretation:
  • The idea that Tom is gay and unable to deal with it in his oppressive home situation. And naturally, he's attracted to Jim, due to Tom being an Author Avatar for Tennessee Williams. The 2014 Broadway staging takes this interpretation. (Plus, the director, John Tiffany, and Tom's actor, Zachary Quinto, are both openly gay.)
  • Moreover, some people have estimated that Laura may have some sort of anxiety disorder, notably social anxiety.
    • Tom probably has social anxiety as well, just to a much lesser extent than Laura. In fact, this is a far better (and more likely) explanation of Tom's behavior than an incestuous infatuation with Laura: Tom is reluctant to help Laura because he would have to confront his own anxieties. Given Amanda's delusions about how the world works, it's no wonder she raised kids with poor social skills.
  • Jim could be a genuine, well-adjusted Nice Guy who happens to fall in with a dysfunctional family, or he could be an Amanda-in-the-making, a popularity-obsessed grinner whose best days are behind him and who will happily adopt any illusions to maintain the contrary.
  • Is Jim really engaged to be married, or is this just a white lie that he told Laura due to his lack of romantic interest in her? The fact that he never mentioned engagement or even a girlfriend to Tom is strange, though you can't really blame him for doing something like this given how awkward his dinner invitation turned out to be.
  • If you look at it this way, in Tom's perspective, it seems like Laura and Amanda's roles in his life are completely reversed. Tom and Amanda bicker and talk like a brother and sister would while Laura has more of a motherly aspect about her and usually tries to encourage the two to make up. Tom seems to be more considerate of her than of Amanda, only doing things so that Amanda will get off his back.

• Award Snub: It never won or was even nominated for a Tony Award until the 2014 staging. Even then, it only won Best Lighting out of the seven awards it was nominated for, despite universal acclaim for the acting.
• Diagnosed by the Audience: Laura's disorder is never named, but she may be suffering from anxiety disorder and/or mild schizophrenia. Her poor social skills and fixation on glass figurines could indicate some form of autism.

• Jerkass Woobie:
  • Amanda. Yes, she's an overbearing Control Freak who obsesses over every detail of her children's lives and is hopelessly lost in her own past, but she's also had to raise two kids on her own while near-broke in the 1920s and 30s, and genuinely wants to prevent Laura and Tom from repeating her mistakes. Best illustrated when she begs Tom to stay with the family after working out that he's about to follow in his father's footsteps and abandon them. Unfortunately, her actions only serve to drive Tom away.
  • This applies to Tom as well: you really can't blame him for wanting to leave his awful job and controlling mother behind to travel the world, the issue is that said awful job is the only thing keeping a roof over his family's heads... And he leaves anyway because he finally reaches his breaking point with Amanda.
• Tear Jerker: When Laura's showing Jim her glass unicorn, she's so happy that someone's finally listening to her and caring about what she says. And then it breaks, Foreshadowing Jim's rejection of her.
• Values Dissonance: Amanda uses a variety of racial epithets to refer to the Black servants who worked for her family in the South.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not Symbolic?: When Laura's favorite glass piece — a unicorn, that longtime symbol of purity and rarity — that she showed to Jim breaks. Even more so because it breaks off its horn: "Now it's just like all the other horses."
• The Woobie: Laura. She never hurts anyone else, and all life does is knock her down.