Is Tommy from The Whos rock opera a fictional character or was he real?
Tommy is the fictitious biography of Tommy Walker. Tommy’s father had been listed as missing in action during World War I, but he returns unexpectedly in 1921 (changed to World War II and 1951 in some later versions) and kills his wife’s new lover in front of the seven-year-old Tommy. Tommy’s parents enjoin him that “you didn’t hear it, you didn’t see it … you won’t say nothing to no-one”, and Tommy retreats into deafness, dumbness, and blindness as a consequence. He has a vision of a tall stranger dressed in silvery robes with a golden floor-length beard, presumably an ersatz father figure, and the vision sets him on a spiritual journey. During the remainder of his childhood he suffers abuse at the hands of various family members, and he interprets all the physical sensations as music. One Christmas he is given a poxy pinball machine and he soon becomes the master of the game, with fans and groupie-wannabes just like a pop star (hinting that the whole story is a satire on its author
