"Amanda: (to her son). 'Honey, don't push with your fingers. If you have to push with something, the thing to push with is a crust of bread. And chew-chew! Animals have sections in their stomachs which enable them to digest food without mastication, but human beings are supposed to chew their food before they swallow it down. Eat food leisurely, son, and really enjoy it. A well-cooked meal has lots of delicate flavors that have to be held in the mouth for appreciation. So chew your food and give your salivary glands a chance to function!' "
This is the first thing Amanda says to Tom in the whole play. It's quite the opening speech. She makes several speeches like this, but this is the first. Amanda is the drama queen of the play, a characterization that is most likely dramatized by the fact that this play is reconstructed from a memory. When she and Tom fight, she flies into a fit of rage and refuses to speak to him until she apologizes. When he apologizes, she immediately starts back in the with the obnoxious speeches and bossiness. Amanda has the most obviously dramatized persona (of the nagging mother that drives away her son), but the other characters have them, too. Laura is the all too fragile and delicate sister that can barely stand to go to school or even open the door for a gentleman caller. Tom is the dreamy and poetic warehouse worker who is stuck living paycheck to paycheck with no way of getting out to find his big adventure. As Tom admits in the beginning narration, the play is a memory, and therefore subject to the reconstruction that memory is. This perhaps why the characters assume somewhat predictable and repeating actions and personas.
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