t he can blow 'her' candles out. Basically, though the rainbows seemed to be positive signs, it all ends in disappointment. As shown mostly through the narrator Tom, "maintains distance between himself and the pain of the situation through irony," and also explains, "For the artist, irony is a device that protects him from the pain of his experience so that he may use it objectively in his art" (734). The play itself focuses on the apartment life that Amanda, Laura, and Tom Wingfield share in the city and it is among many dark alleys with fire escapes. Tom and Laura do not like the dark atmosphere of their living conditions, even though their mother tries to make it as pleasant as possible. An apartment that had only two small windows in the front and rear rooms, and a fire escape blocked the smoky light from a back alley. A home that is a lower middle class neighborhood, which seemed disgusted. Amanda is a typical Southern belle who fantasizes about her seventeen gentlemen callers back in Blue Mountain. In reality, the mother depends on her son's income to support the family. She regularly attends the D.A.R. meetings, which is an important outlet for her activities. Amanda believes that Laura needs to have some gentlemen callers visiting their apartment, because she does not want Laura to be an old unmarried spinster, which is just like her. This comes from her selfish concern of Laura but also from her being unattached. Tom is trying to support his mother, sister and himself with his work at a shoe factory. This was a typical situation for this time frame. Many families struggled to survive on a single income during the country’s recovery from the crash of 1929. Tom does not want this job because it is a career, and he will have to do it all his life. Instead, he wants to be a writer and spends most of his time working on poetry. Amanda constantly criticizes Tom's wishes, and she pressures him to bring home a...
