Another Scene from the Glass Menagerie

Amanda: How's that?
What's the matter with you?

You're going outta your senses.

Tom: I have, that's true.
You've driven me out of it.

Amanda: What's the matter with
you lately, you big big idiot?

Tom: Look, Mother, I've got no thing.

No single thing in my life here that I can call my own.

Amanda: Lower your voice.
Tom: Yesterday you confiscated my books. You--

Amanda: Yes, I did.
I did.

I took that horrible novel back to the library,
that awful book by that insane Mr. Lawrence.

Tom: [laughs]

Amanda: I cannot control the output
of a diseased mind or people who cater to them

but I won't allow such filth in my house!
No, no, no, no, no!

Tom: House, house?!
Who pays rent on this house?

Who makes a slave out of himself -

Amanda: Don't you dare talk to me like that!

Tom: Oh no, I mustn't say anything.
I've just got to keep quiet, let you do all the talking.

Amanda: Now let me tell you something!
Tom: I don't wanna hear any more!

Amanda: You will hear more!
Tom: Well I'm not going to listen!

Amanda: You are going to listen to me,
Tom Winfield.

I'm tired of your insolence.

Another thing, I'm right up the end of my--

Tom: What do you think
I'm at the end of, Mother?

Aren't I supposed to have
any patience to reach the end of?

Oh, I know, I know, I know,
it seems unimportant to you.

When I'm doing what I want to do,
having a little difference between them!

Amanda: I--
Tom: You don't think--

Amanda: I think you're doing things that
you're ashamed of

and that's why you act like this.

I don't believe that you go
every night at the movie.

Nobody goes to the movies
night after night.

Nobody in his right mind goes to the
movies as often as you pretend to.

People don't go to the movies at nearly
midnight and movies don't let out at 2am.

Comin' stumbling, muttering to
yourself like a maniac,

at three hours sleep,
and then go to work.

Whoo, I can picture how you're
doing down there.

Moving, doping, because
you're no condition to--

Tom: That's true, that's very, very true.
I'm in no condition.

Amanda: How dare you jeopardize your job!
How dare you jeopardize our security!

Tom: Look Mother--
Amanda: How do you think we've managed--

Tom: You think I'm crazy about
the warehouse?!

You think I'm in love with
The Continental Shoemakers?

You think I want to spend 55
years of my life down there

in that celotex interior--
Amanda: I--

Tom: --with fluorescent tubes?!

Honest to God, I'd rather somebody picked
up a crowbar and

batted out my brains than
go back morning.

But I go.
Every time you come in yelling that goddamn

"Rise and shine, rise and shine"--
Amanda: I--

Tom: I think to myself, how lucky dead people are.
Amanda: Well then you're not--

Tom: Well I get up, I go!

Every morning I get up for $65 a month
I give up everything I dream of doing

and being ever!

And you say that self is all
I ever think of.

Why listen, Mother, if self is all I
ever thought of, I'd be where he is: gone!

As far as the system of transportation reaches!

Don't grab at me!

Amanda: I'm not grabbin' at ya!
I just wanna know where you're going.

Tom: I'm going to the movies.

Amanda: I don't believe that lie!

Tom: I'm going to opium dens.

Yes, to opium dens, dens of vice and
criminals' hangouts, Mother.

Amanda: You--
Tom: I've joined the Hogan gang. I'm a hired

assassin. I carry a tommy gun around in a violin case.

I run a string of cat-houses down in the valley. They call me Killer! Killer Wingfield.

I'm really leading a double life. By day, I'm a simple, honest, warehouse worker

but at night I become a dynamic tsar of the underworld, Mother.

I go to gambling casinos, I spin away fortunes on the roulette table. I wear a patch over one eye,

false moustache. Sometimes I put on green whiskers. On those occasions, they call

me El Diablo! Oh, I could tell you things that would make you sleepless!

My enemies are preparing to dynamite this place. They're going to blow us all sky high some night!

I'll be glad, very happy. So will you. You'll go up, up, up on a broomstick high over

Blue Mountain with seventeen gentlemen calling "you ugly babbling old witch!"

[glass breaks]

Amanda: I'll never speak to you as long as you live until you apologize to me.

[music]