The character of Tom in The Glass Menagerie Tom Wingfield has a dual role in The Glass Menagerie. The first Tom is the narrator, who presents his second self, the character. In his fifth soliloquy, the narrator Tom indicates that time has detached him from the drama, “for time is the longest distance between two places” (Williams 1568). In the final soliloquy Tom tells how he lives and relives the story in his memory, although he is detached from the participants in the original story. Like his father, “a telephone man who fell in love with long distances” (Williams 1523), Tom has fallen in love with the long distance that is time. Tom is a sensitive and artistic man, forced by circumstances into a phenomenological dimension. situation. He is forced to live and relive the situation in the play, in which he sought and found what he believed to be freedom. Although he escapes the situation, he does not find freedom; his conscience forces him to dwell on the situation until he finds meaning in it. Because Mr. Wingfield, Laura, Amanda and Jim are part of it ...