Tennessee Williams And A Streetcar Named Desire

Tennessee Williams influenced playwrights in the 1950s and continues to do so today. His most popular works are Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, The Glass Menagerie, and A Streetcar Named Desire. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is a story about a Southern family full of dysfunction and crisis. One of the main characters Brick, is having doubts about himself and it soon affects his marriage with his wife, Maggie. The play revolves around Brick and his extended family over the course of one evening. The Glass Menagerie is a four character play about the narrator, Tom, and his relationship with his controlling mother and mentally fragile sister, Laura. Lastly, A Streetcar Named Desire is about two sisters. After the loss of her family home, Blanche travels to New
Williams represents himself in one of his characters often, who then reflects Tennessee Williams life and trials as a child and young adult. In all three of his works Williams, has a main character who expresses Williams own experiences and or feelings. In The Glass Menagerie, the main character Tom represents Tennessee, and his sister Rose is exceptionally represented by Laura, Tom's troubled sister. There are many examples that display Tom being Tennessee. For example, there is a conversation between Amanda, Tom's mother, and Tom. Amanda tells him that she wants to talk to him about Laura. His response to Amanda is "I guess she's the type that people call home girls" (Williams 34). After they discuss Laura's well being Tom responds with asking, "What can I do about it?" (Williams 35). Both quotes present the idea that Tennessee grew up worrying about his sister which seeps into his writing. In Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Tennessee dives into his own sexuality through one of the main characters, Brick. “Williams himself is likewise represented in many of his plays, and the playwright seemed to have used his works as a way of examining and coming to terms of some of the most painful aspects of his life” (Crelin). All of his characters are near and dear to his heart because they were forms of himself, which is very raw and personal, and an essential key to his
The themes he writes about are ones that many individuals during this time period felt like they could not talk about. Some of his most common themes are sexuality, mental fragility, and dysfunctional families. “Williams most prominent and all- inclusive theme is the effect of an aggressively competitive society on sensitive characters such as Laura and Tom Wingfield (The Glass Menagerie), Blanche DuBois (A Streetcar Named Desire), and Brick and Maggie Pollitt (Cat on a Hot Tin Roof)- all social outcasts in society” (Rusinko). The themes of his stories can be sensitive or hard to comprehend, but they are the themes that need to be discussed the most. One of his common themes that shows who he is as a writer is his openness about sexuality. In Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Tennessee Williams notes in the stage direction when talking about the characters Brick and Skippers relationship that, “... it is gently and poetically haunted by a relationship that must have involved a tenderness which was uncommon” (Williams). Williams does not openly say that their relationship was homosexual but explains it carefully, aware of the social disgust for homosexuality. He subtly adds in these unrecognized and untalked about themes just at the right time in the plot and does it in the most brilliant and skillful