nasmuch as he can be interpreted as functioning more or less as a synecdoche, which is a figure of speech in which a part is made to stand for the whole. The Gentleman Caller, of course, stands for the whole world outside the environment of the apartment, as will be seen hereafter.
Tom functions as personification of the illusion, principally, that he can successfully straddle the illusory world inside the apartment and the outside world of unpleasant truth in a way that will keep Laura from being doomed. In the straddling function, Arnott sees Tom as a "chorus figure" mediating between present and past, and eventually fully "estranged from his family and finally leaving it to make some sort of life for himself" (Arnott 479). Indeed, the illusory world inside is made unbearable to him by Amanda's insistence on living as if her memory of decorous plan tation manners had relevance to the realities of life in the St. Louis apartment. Though his everyday experience of the world of truth tells him how vulnerable the household illusion is, he cooperates in Laura's illusion, trying to make it emotionally whole--also trying to relieve himself of responsibility for her well-being--by means of the gentleman caller. The difficulty is that he is not careful enough in his attempt, so that the gentleman caller turns out to be engaged, no more serious suitor material for Laura than Laura is serious material for any suitor. Amanda says accurately that Tom manufactures illusions and lives in a dream. She is, however, inaccurate about the content of the dream, which has less to do with Laura than with his own wish to be free of an emotionally oppressive family environment.
Laura's reality is of paralysis not only of body but also of spirit. Her illusion is that she can live a satisfactory life by living a life of limitation, and by retreating to the shelter of with her glass menagerie. According to Cardullo (161), Laura is a Romantic symbol familia...