AMANDA: You’re going to listen, and no more insolence from you! I’m at the end of my patience![He comes back toward her.]

TOM: What do you think I’m at? Aren’t I supposed to have any patience to reach the end of, Mother? I know, I know. It seems unimportant to you, what I’m doing – what I want to do – having a little difference between them! You don’t think that –

AMANDA: I think you’ve been doing things that you’re ashamed of. That’s why you act like this. I don’t believe that you go every night to the movies. Nobody goes to the movies night after night. Nobody in their 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 two a.m. Come in stumbling. Muttering to yourself like a maniac! You get three hours’ sleep and then go to work. Oh, I can picture the way you’re doing down there. Moping, doping, because you’re in no condition.

TOM [wildly]: No, I’m in no condition!

AMANDA: What right have you got to jeopardize your job – jeopardize the security of us all? How do you think we’d manage if you were –

TOM: Listen! You think I’m crazy about the warehouse? [He bonds fiercely toward her slight figure.] You think I’m in love with the Continental Shoemakers? You think I want to spend fifty-five years down there in that – celotex interior! with – fluorescent – tubes! Look! I’d rather somebody picked up a crowbar and battered out my brains – than go back mornings! Igo!Every time you come in yelling……… that God damn “Rise and Shine!” – “Rise and Shine”! I say to myself, “How lucky dead people are! But I get up. I go! For sixty-five dollars a month I give up all that I dream of doing and being ever! And you say self – selfs” all I ever think of. Why, listen, if self is what I thought of, Mother, I’d be where he is – GONE! [Pointing to fathers picture.] As far as the system of transportation reaches! [He starts past her. She grabs his arm.] Don’t grab at me, Mother!