Which characters, if any, are better off at the end of the play than they were at the beginning?

In my opinion, Tom is the only character better off, if that's the way you want to put it. In the beginning of the play, he feels as if he's incarcerated; when he leaves for the merchant marines he eventually come to understand that he's traded one form of incarceration for another; in the end, he realizes that he should have really been there for his sister. Unfortunately, he wasn't...... but in his final speech, he finds a form of redemption and freedom in asking for forgiveness.