Tennessee Williams Thomas Lanier Williams III, now known as Tennessee Williams, wrote many famous plays that are still popular today. Williams’ family troubles caused inspiration for most of his writings. He became famous for the plays, novels, poems, and essays he wrote(Pbs). William’s was a contributor to the 20th-century American playwrights (Poetry Foundation). Tennessee Williams used his experiences from childhood to write his magnificent plays by portraying his own family troubles onto paper, which brought his characters to life. Tennessee Williams used his brilliance and individual agony to become one of the most famous American playwrights but was tortured by his inner demons, homosexuality, depression, and substance abuse. Tennessee …show more content…
Probably Williams’ greatest influence was his sister Rose. Both the character Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire and Laura Wingfield in The Glass Menagerie are based on Rose, Williams sister (Poetry Foundation). She was diagnosed with schizophrenia and was in and out of mental hospitals throughout her life. Her parents, in an attempt to treat her schizophrenia, allowed doctors to perform a prefrontal lobotomy (Michigan University Theatre). The procedure went badly and left Rose incapacitated for the remainder of her life. This heartache could have contributed to Williams’ alcoholism and depression (Michigan University Theatre). In The Glass Menagerie, Amanda Wingfield can be easily acknowledged to be a resemblance of Williams’ mother, Edwina Williams. Tennessee Williams’ battled depression and addiction throughout his life. Growing up in a harsh family setting contributed to these conditions. Rose’s condition made it even harder for him to live a normal …show more content…
As he got older, his writing also matured and became more opinionated, further cutting off him from the critics (Michigan University Theatre). When Williams partner died it caused him to dive deeper into a long episode of depression(Pbs). Williams began to rely more and more consistently on alcohol and drugs, although he resumed writing it was more of a short story style of writing and another play. As he continued going in a downhill direction his brother, Dakin Williams hospitalized him in 1969(Pbs). When he was released in 1970, Williams carried on with his writing of plays, poems, and a novel. Tennessee died on February 25, 1983. His cause of death was choking on a pill-bottle cap in his hotel room at the Elysse in New York (Michigan University Theatre). Tennessee Williams body was buried in the Calvary Cemetery, St. Louis, Missouri. Williams wanted to be buried near the poet Hart Crane because he inspired him and was a great influence on him. After Williams died, in honoring his grandfather, he left his literary rights to The University of the South, Sewanee (Michigan University
In Tennessee Williams' play, A Streetcar Named Desire, Williams uses the suicide of Blanche's husband to illuminate Blanche's insecurities and immoral behavior. When something terrible happens to someone, it often reveals who he or she truly is. Blanche falls victim to this behavior, and she fails to face her demons. This displays how the play links a character’s illogical choices and their inner struggles.
The family dynamics for Tennessee Williams are evident of a lifestyle of despondency and tension within the household. Tennessee Williams mother Edwina Williams she considered herself a Southern Belle, and his sister Rose Williams was a sickly adolescent whom he shared his imaginative dramatizations with as he transcribed his plays. While Williams was in graduate school at the University of Iowa, Rose was institutionalized for schizophrenia and was underwent a pre-font lobotomy. “The symbolization of lobotomy in the “Glass Menagerie” play signifies the hurt that Tennessee Williams felt by his parents by not collaborating to him that his sister underwent surgery. In the play, Williams substitutes the mental illness of his real sister, with a physical limitation “a limp” which Williams substituted for the mental illness of his real sister, Rose. Even the father’s absence reflects periods when his bullying sales man father, Cornelius Coffin Williams, would go on the road, leaving Tom, Edwina and Rose at one another’s mercies (Charles Matthews, 1996-2016).”
The Greek tragedian Aeschylus once wrote that “a god implants in mortal guilt whenever he wants utterly to confound a house,” and as the creator of A Streetcar Named Desire, Tennessee Williams is no exception. The guilt of Blanche DuBois makes the emotional, tragic, and often extreme circumstances of the play possible. Williams creates Blanche’s vulnerabilities, including her dependence on others and her inability to face reality, so that her guilt over Allan’s death becomes the primary cause of her promiscuity, neurasthenic behavior and ultimate downfall.
Tennessee Williams tells a story of a battle with fantasy and reality through his characters in A Streetcar Named Desire. When the reader is first introduced to the character of Blanche DuBois, she portrays herself as sincere and fragile. Blanche shows up at the house of her sister Stella and her husband Stanley’s home with the intent of staying at their home for a lengthy amount of time. Blanche tells Stella that she has lost Belle Reve, an ancestral home, after the death of many of their relatives and also mentions she has been given a leave of absence from her job as a school teacher because of her bad nerves, “I was so exhausted by all I’d been through my --- nerves broke. I was on the verge of --- lunacy, almost! So Mr. Graves – Mr. Graves
Tennessee Williams was a well renowned playwright, who highlighted his personal experiences in his plays and stories. He had a colorful life and he enjoyed writing about what was considered taboo subjects in the 1940's, 1950's and the 1960's. Williams explored homosexuality, alcoholism, violence, greed and sex.
film music. On the one side there are the purists, who cry foul at the piecing together of
Tennessee Williams was born Thomas Lanier Williams in 1911. As a successful playwright, his career was greatly influenced by events in his life. He was noted for bringing the reader "a slice of his own life and the feel of southern culture", as his primary sources of inspiration were "the writers he grew up with, his family, and the South." The connection between his life and his work can be seen in several of his plays.
London’s life was plagued with illness and alcoholism, at the time of his death in 1916 London had dysentery and kidney failure caused by his extreme alcoholism (“Jack London: Novels and Stories” 1). London was in extreme pain and was taking morphine, he died from an overdose and it is rumored that his death was suicide (1). London was cremated and his ashes were buried on his ranch next to his wife who died later in 1955 (1).
Throughout Tennessee Williams’s play “A Streetcar Named Desire,” Blanche Dubois exemplified several tragic flaws. She suffered from her haunting past; her inability to overcome; her desire to be someone else; and from the cruel, animalistic treatment she received from Stanley. Sadly, her sister Stella also played a role in her downfall. All of these factors ultimately led to Blanche’s tragic breakdown in the end. Blanche could not accept her past and overcome it.
The arts stir emotion in audiences. Whether it is hate or humor, compassion or confusion, passion or pity, an artist's goal is to construct a particular feeling in an individual. Tennessee Williams is no different. In A Streetcar Named Desire, the audience is confronted with a blend of many unique emotions, perhaps the strongest being sympathy. Blanch Dubois is presented as the sympathetic character in Tennessee William's A Streetcar Named Desire as she battles mental anguish, depression, failure and disaster.
In the play A Streetcar Named Desire author Tennessee Williams writes about Blanche DuBois, a woman who is seeking help from her older sister Stella Kowalski. Blanche comes to stay with Stella and her husband Stanley after finding out that Blanche and Stella’s childhood home had been taken from under them. The play goes on to show the dramatic downfall of what is Blanche DuBois. Throughout the play we see her slowly break down till finally she is pushed over the edge. William's uses a great deal of allusion to convey a real meaning to why characters do what they do. It’s not just an example, each allusion has a deeper meaning to the character it’s associated with. Blanche DuBois is the character used associated with allusion. Williams uses allusion with Blanche to present how she masks her true identity to the real world, saying she’s a pure southern belle when really she is truly a lost lonely soul.
Tennessee Williams is known to be a Southern playwright of American drama. Williams knew how to show haunting elements like psychological drama, loneliness, and inexcusable violence in his plays. Critics say Williams often depicted women who were suffering from critical downfalls due to his sister Rose Williams. Rose was always fighting with a mental health condition known as schizophrenia all her life. The character Laura in The Glass Menagerie is always compared to Rose, because they were both socially awkward and very quiet girls. This may be true, but one can look at Blanche DuBois from A Street Car Named Desire shadows his sister’s life and characteristics more than Laura did. In the obituary of Rose Williams that was written by Philip Hoare, he says, “She grew up outgoing, using make-up earlier than other girls, and was remembered as “very pretty and a bit standoffish” (Hoare). This parallel sounds remarkably like Blanche and does not sound like Laura’s characteristics. Laura never wore make up and her personality did not keep others distant. She was distant to others, because of her disability. Also Roses down fall is very similar to Blanche DuBois down fall in the play and end result. Laura never has a down fall in The Glass Menagerie. Laura seems to have hope in the end of the play. Laura was a tribute to show Rose’s innocence, but Blanche was to show Rose’s true colors. Tennessee Williams uses elements of appearance, age, gentleman callers, sexuality, and the fear of homosexuality to show his sisters down fall in the character Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire.
...standing an author’s work, for some, can be decided by whether or not they understand anything that the author has live through. Tennessee Williams is one author that uses his life directly in his writings and understanding his life can make the difference in how the reader understands the work. “A Streetcar Named Desire,” deals with many of the issues Williams faced throughout his life. His unhappily married parents, the addictions faced by himself and his family, and the unstable mental status he and his sister faced were all show in this play. Each reader must decide for themselves on what makes a writer special. For most writers their own life experiences are what inspire them and gives them the ability to make a work extraordinary. Sometimes a hard life is what can make an author become a part of history instead of just an image trapped within their own mind.
Tennessee Williams wrote about Blanche DuBois: 'She was a demonic character; the The size of her feelings was too great for her to contain without the escape of the madness. Williams uses Blanche DuBois as a vehicle to explore several themes. that interested him, one of these being madness. His own sister, Rose,.
Amanda Wingfield in the play, The Glass Menagerie, written by Tennessee Williams, was portrayed as a distraught southern belle trying to control the lives of her children. In The Glass Menagerie Amanda is the matriarch of her small family who appears at first to be a woman who cared about her children’s futures- that is before she becomes so overbearing that she started to hinder her children’s future. Amanda was a single mother who could never grasp reality. The Glass Menagerie was a memory play that told of a family trapped in destructive patterns. After being abandoned by her husband sixteen years prior, Amanda became trapped between two completely different worlds; worlds of illusion and reality. It seemed like when the world became too harsh or hard for Amanda, she would just simply close her eyes and pretend like nothing was wrong. When the real world became to overbearing for Amanda, she would recall the days of her youth and how great they were. This was simply just a way for Amanda to stay optimistic and stay out of reality. Amanda made the relationship between her and her children very difficult because she never tried to understand her children’s different personalities. Amanda was stuck on trying to mold her children’s lives the way she wanted them, rather than letting her children choose and lead their own lives. Amanda’s way of helping the children did not let her connect with them the way that each of them needed. Due to her one minded opinion, she didn’t see that Laura was a shy girl with low self esteem and needed a mother to show her how to act around the public and that Tom just simply needed to switch jobs and have someone to talk to. Tom eventually left the house because he realized his weak relati...