The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald and “The Glass Menagerie” by Tennessee Williams both feature a character who is unwilling to let go of the past. In The Great Gatsby, we see that Gatsby, the main character’s neighbor, longs for the love that he used to have with a girl he met before going off to war, Daisy. In “The Glass Menagerie” Amanda Wingfield, the mother of the Tom Wingfield the main character, is always rambling on about the past relationships she had. She only knew how to talk about that, and so it was the focus of each conversation she had. We see both, Gatsby and Amanda, not being able to move on from something that they cherished so much but that is long gone now. Trying to make everything perfect and to their liking, would …show more content…
After all that excitement of being noticed them, she ended up marrying one. After she married him, everything seemed fine. After a while, though, things kind of spiraled out of control. Amanda’s husband eventually leaved her and her two children to fend for himself. He took the money and didn’t leave anything behind. Since her marriage and her life, after not having her husband, was not that great, she only talks about the time she actually felt happy. The only time she felt as if she was living her life to the fullest. The time when she had the attention of many young men. In the beginning of the play, we instantly see how Amanda cannot stop talking about her younger years. Tom even complains that he doesn’t want to hear stories about her relationships because he has heard them many times. Amanda also later asks Laura, her daughter, when she will be seeing some of the people that notice her. After that, the rest of the book, in Amanda’s side, is all about getting Laura a nice man. Amanda’s fixation with wanting to keep her life going like the past leads to her son leaving. Tom was tired of her trying to make things in her life right by controlling him and Laura, so he left and decided to make things better for