The Glass Menagerie

AMANDA: Go, then! Then go to the moon – you selfish dreamer!

Don’t let anything interfere with your selfish pleasure I just go, go, go – to the movies!

I’m like my father. The bastard son of a bastard! See how he grins? And he’s been absent going on sixteen years!

TOM: I’m starting to boil inside. I know I seem dreamy, but inside – well, I’m boiling! – Whenever I pick up a shoe, I shudder a little thinking how short life is and what I am doing! – Whatever that means, I know it doesn’t mean shoes – except as something to wear on a traveler’s feet! [Finds paper.]Look

Why do you go to the movies so much, Tom?

TOM: I go to the movies because – I like adventure. Adventure is something I don’t have much of at work, so I go to the movies.

Promise, Son, you’ll – never be a drunkard!

Try and you will succeed! [The notion makes her breathless] Why, you – you’re just full of natural endowments! Both of my children – they’re unusual children! Don’t you think I know it? I’m so proud! Happy and – feel I’ve – so much to be thankful for but – Promise me one thing, Son!

LAURA [shrilly] : My glass! – menagerie… [She covers her face and turns away.]

[But AMANDA is still stunned and stupefied by the “ugly witch” so that she barely notices this occurrence. Now she recovers her speech.]

“Rise and Shine!” – “Rise and Shine”! I say to myself, “How lucky dead people are! But I get up. I go! For sixty-five dollars a month I give up all that I dream of doing and being ever! And you say self – selfs” all I ever think of.

[He tears the portières open. The upstage area is lit with a turgid smoky red glow.]