Tennessee Williams was one of the most important and talented playwright of all history. His interesting writing style had the power of transmitting his ideas trough his characters. "He puts his words into the mouths of an essentially imaginative people who speak in the rhythms and colorful imagery of a region favorable to poetry" (Starns 357). Most of the characters in Williams" plays are autobiographical because they represent himself or a member of his family. We can see this in the following plays: "A Streetcar Named Desire," "The Glass Menagerie," and "A Rose Tattoo".
In the play "The glass Menagerie", in this play the most autobiographical character is Mr. Wingfield which is Amanda's husband. He is a handsome man who worked as a salesman for a telephone company and abandoned his family years before the action of the play. Mr. Wingfield represents Tennessee Williams" real father. "He was a gruff and aggressive traveling shoe salesman, who, on rare home stays, taunted his son as a sissy and called him Miss Nancy" (The Laureate of the Outcast). It is in fact because of his father that Tennessee Williams will .
become homosexual, and will talk about this subject in many of his plays. "Williams expands American stage dialogue in vocabulary, image rhythm, and range". (Cohn 129). In a way Mr. Wingfield is a reflection of Williams" father because both of them treated bad and abandoned their family, they were both Alcohol addicts, and had the same occupation. Another really autobiographical character in this play is Tom Wingfield, who represents Tennessee Williams himself. In fact the writer's real name is Tom Lanier Williams. Also the most important theme in the play is the impossibility of true escape. The symbol of escape is represented by Tom's missing father and also by the fire escape that leads out the Wingfield's apartment which temps Tom from the beginning of the play and he will use it at the end to free himself from his family.