The Plays of Tennessee Williams

Born in the early 1900s in Columbus, Mississippi, Tennessee Williams is an American playwright. His plays are famous for including romance and human frustration. According to many critics, Williams “pushed drama into new fields, stretched the limits of the individual play and became one of the founders of the so-called ‘New Drama’ (“Tennessee Williams”). One of Williams’ most famous plays, A Streetcar Named Desire, was the second play in history to win the Pulitzer Prize and the New York Drama Critics Circle Award. Written in 1947, this play focuses on the emotional life of Blanche DuBois, a school teacher from Mississippi who has suddenly arrived at her sister Stella’s apartment in New Orleans, jobless, moneyless, and most importantly, propertyless.Throughout

    Tennessee Williams is one the major writers of the mid-twentieth century. His work includes the plays, The Glass Menagerie and A Streetcar Named Desire. One theme of The Glass Menagerie is that hopeful aspirations are followed by inevitable disappointments. This theme is common throughout all of Williams' work and throughout his own life as well. It is shown through the use of symbols and characters.

Tennessee Williams is regarded as a pioneering playwright of American theatre. Through his plays, Williams addresses important issues that no other writers of his time were willing to discuss, including addiction, substance abuse, and mental illness. Recurring themes in William’s works include the dysfunctional family, obsessive and absent mothers and fathers, and emotionally damaged women. These characters were inspired by his experiences with his own family. These characters appear repeatedly in his works with their own recurring themes. Through The Glass Menagerie and A Streetcar Named Desire, Tennessee Williams presents the similar thematic elements of illusion, escape, and fragility between the two plays, proving that although similar, the themes within these plays are not simply recycled, as the differences in their respective texts highlight the differences of the human condition.

In the play, Brick tells his father, Big Daddy, why he constantly drinks saying, “This click that I get in my head that makes me peaceful. I got to drink till I get it. It's just a mechanical thing” (Cat, act 2). Twice throughout the play, Brick is forced to confront his relationship with Skipper once by his wife Maggie and once by Big Daddy. In Act one, Maggie starts to talk about the “mistake” she made with Skipper and Brick tries to stop her saying, “Maggie, shut up about Skipper. I mean it, Maggie; you got to shut up about Skipper” (Cat). Maggie continued on making the

Imagine watching the famous plays of William Shakespeare being performed right in front of yours eyes at the amazing Globe Theater. William Shakespeare was part owner of The Globe Theater. The famous Globe Theater was a place where outstanding plays were performed. This theater held people from all over the world to watch performances. In the article “The Elizabeth Era” states that “often the Queen would come to the Globe Theater to watch Shakespeare’s work “(Alchin). The Globe Theater has great significance to British history because of the building structure, the actors, the performances, the fire accident, and its impact on England and its people.

Established as one of the most prolific playwrights of the 20th century, Tennessee Williams used his writing as a form of therapy. The author came from a troubled background consisting of alcoholism, mental breakdowns, and general unhappiness; Williams exploited these unfortunate events and allowed them to motivate his literature. In A Streetcar Named Desire, Blanche DuBois’ struggles represent the reality of people’s lives, “an enduring concern of [Williams’] throughout his writing career (Henthorne 1). Blanche captures our focus with her seemingly sincere and fragile nature, but it is later revealed that this is just an illusion within her own mind. She resides in a world of fantasy to shield herself against the harsh threats of reality and her own fears. Blanche’s main objective in the play is to keep herself from falling apart in a world of cruelty through alcoholism and illusion. Through the characterization of Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire, Tennessee Williams depicts the coping mechanism of fantasy and its detrimental repercussions by exploring the specific experiences that eventually impede her happiness.

The great state of Mississippi gained quite a treat on March 26, 1911 and that treat was a baby named Thomas. A native of Columbus, Thomas Lanier Williams would grow up to become one of the most well-known playwrights in theatrical history. Williams did not attend school regularly due to frequent and severe illness as a child. He was homeschooled for most of his life but did graduate from high school in 1929 ( Weales,7 ). The illnesses that he suffered from included diphtheria which caused his legs to be paralyzed for almost two years. Because he rarely left the house, it would not be unusual to find a young Tennessee in a pile of books in his grandfather’s library. Williams’ father was not often home because his career caused him to travel, therefore, the playwright spent the first decade of his young adulthood with his grandparents. When he was twelve years old, Williams’ family moved to St. Louis . Throughout the course of his childhood and young adulthood, Williams’ parents struggled to hold their family together. Finally, his parents separated for good in 1947 ( Falk, Chronology ). The instability in his family was both marital and medical. The psychological disturbances that appeared in many of his family members were great influences on his writings. Thomas L. King, in his journal “Irony and Distance in The Glass Menagerie” discusses the impact of

"If there is a signature character type that marks Tennessee Williams's dramatic work, it is undeniably that of the faded Southern belle; Amanda is a clear representative of this type". Amanda fits into the category of a typical William's southern

The first Character that needs to be mentioned, Brick, is the quietest and most reserved character in the play. Brick is a former football player and a famous announcer. (Williams 149). Brick is in a constant battle with himself throughout the whole story. This being because he has started drinking at all times so that he can hear a click in his head and become peaceful. The reason that he drinks is because he feels he is responsible for his friends Skipper’s death. Brick’s drinking is important to the play because it shows his disinterest in almost everything that occurs during the book. For example, while the will of Big Daddy’s is being discussed, Brick is outside on the balcony having a drink. Gooper says to Maggie during this scene “Why don’t you go out there and drink with Brick?” (Williams 149). This also is important because it shows that they characters in the play realize that Brick has no interest in anything besides his drink. Brick is an interesting character because he is the only one who does not thrive for Big Daddy’s love, yet he is the only one who receives it. Brick can also be described as a character who is disgusted. He is disgusted with many events in this play.”Cat on a Hot Tin Roof was heralded by some as the play in which homosexuality was at last to be presented without evasion” (Bentley). This quote by critic Eric Bentley stands true because the idea of homesexuality in the play is another reason Brick is disgusted. He is disgusted with the world for the most part because nobody understand that his and Skipper’s relationship was not a homosexual one.He states “Why can’t exceptional friendship, real, real, deep, deep friendship! between two men be respected as something clean and decent” (Williams 117). This could be a reason that he is also sort of disgusted with women. Critic Jere Huzzard says “Clearly both father and son had enjoyed a physical competency

He even goes on to argue that “it is a sound generalization to say that three-fourths of the total output [of “Negro Renaissance poetry”] is avowedly racial in inspiration and social objective” (Locke 242). The blues serves as a viable mode through which protest poetry can be written because it portrays the brutal treatment of African-Americans unflinchingly in order to appeal to the emotions of poetry readers (Harris). After all, according to Trudier Harris, Professor of English at the University of North Carolina and National Humanities Center Fellow, African-American poetry can only be effective if it “attempts to achieve the acceptance of black people into the larger American politic” (Harris). If it fails to do that, then it fails in its purpose of being a work of protest literature by lacking a target. Analyzing “Southern Road” and “Children’s Children” through the lens of the blues critic requires that the critic understands how the factors that determine whether a poem is a work of blues poetry come together to establish a target for criticism in a protest poem. Upon

Cat on a hot tin roof is a play by a Pulitzer prize for drama winner named Tennessee Williams. Set in the plantation home of a wealthy cotton producer named Big daddy Pollit and his wife Big mama Pollit. The play generally analyzes the relationships between big daddy’s family members including brick, an ex football player, his wife Maggie, Brick’s brother Gooper and his sister in law Mae. They all shared the same scene which was Brick and his wife’s bedroom.

"Blanche DuBois, in 'A Streetcar Named Desire', is what a critic Ruby Cohn calls Williams' 'masterpiece contradiction'". (Bloom 70) Tennessee Williams is considered to be one of the most renowned playwrights of the twentieth century in American Literary History. As a playwright, he is best known for writing 'A Streetcar Named Desire', 'Cat on a Hot Tin Roof', and 'The Glass Menagerie'. Williams' 'A Streetcar Named Desire', focuses on the declining sanity of his central character, Blanche DuBois. While Tennessee Williams considered Blanche DuBois to be a liberated, modern woman, many feminist critics contend that she is just the opposite.

Tennessee Williams was an American writer known for short stories and poems in the mid 1950’s. His more famous writing was A Streetcar Named Desire. His writings influenced many other writers such as August Strindberg and Hart Crane. His writings A Streetcar Named Desire and The Glass Menagerie was adopted to films and A Streetcar Named Desire earned him his first Pulitzer prize. In A Streetcar Named Desire there is many elements that build the plot and story line. The story is about a girl who is drove crazy by his sister’s husband and eventually sent to the mental hospital. The main plot is towards the end of the story when Blanche Dubois is blackmailed by her sister’s husband and raped by him. Everything takes its toll on her until she begins drinking heavily and is thought to have gone crazy and placed in a mental hospital. In this story, many things play affect in the contrast of the writing such as Blanche arriving at her sister’s house, seeing her sister’s husbands attitude, the poker game, Blanche getting raped. These events make Blanche an easy victim. In Tennessee Williams, a street car named desire, the start of kindness turns to tragedy and pain.

Tennessee Williams (1911-1983) was born in Columbus, Mississippi on March 26, 1911 to Cornelius and Edwina Williams. He was the second of three children and was raised mainly by his mother because of his complicated relationship with his father. Aside from not seeing his father much, he had an overall happy childhood while living in Mississippi. He struggled with the family’s move to St. Louis but used that and his parents’ bad marriage to his advantage and began writing. He attended the University of Missouri for a little while but was taken out of school because his father discovered that he had a girlfriend at the University. He moved back with his father and worked for him at a shoe company. During that time Williams fell into a depression

    Aside from the internal and external conflicts which impact Amanda, Williams's strongly expresses his indictment through his very own character, Tom. Tom is merely a victim of both societal conflicts and his own guilt caused by his decision to seek fulfillment within his own life, rather than surrender to the unsatisfying life which his mother had created for him. One of the greatest factors in Tom’s lifestyle that creates his desire to escape this sense of imprisonment, is society's overall attitude toward homosexuality, specifically within his mother. Amanda stated, “I took that horrible novel back to the library- yes! That hideous book by that insane Mr. Lawrence. I cannot control the output of diseased minds or people who cater to them- but I won’t let such filth brought into my house” (Williams 759). Because 1930’s society does not allow homosexuality to be expressed openly, literature is the closest way which allows him to express himself. The simple fact that his novels are the one way which allows him to gain any sense of satisfaction is taken away by his