Playwright Tennessee Williams was been on March 26, 1911, in Columbus, Mississippi. After college, he moved to New Orleans, a city that would inspire much of his writings. Williams was predominantly raised by his mother and had a complicated relationship with his father a demanding salesman who preferred work instead of parenting. Williams’s childhood home was very tense which in turn gave him inspiration for his works. “I was not aware of how much vital energy had gone into struggle until the struggle was removed” (Williams). A Streetcar Named Desire brought him great success. Tennessee Williams struggled with communication as a child. To deal with life Williams started to write; he wrote plays, poems, and books. Childhood, sexuality, and
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His primary sources of inspiration were the writers he grew up with, his family, and the South. The 1960s were perhaps the most difficult years for Williams, as he experienced some of his hardest treatment from the press. His plays, which received criticism for openly addressing taboo topics, were finding more and more detractors. Around this time, Williams’s longtime companion, Frank Merlo, died of cancer. Williams began to depend more and more on alcohol and drugs. In 1975 he published memoirs, which detailed his life and discussed his addiction to drugs and alcohol, as well as homosexuality. Tennessee Williams died three years later in a New York City hotel filled with half-finished bottles of wine and pills. It was in this desperation, which Williams had so closely known and so honestly written about, that we can find a great man an important body of work. His genius was in his honesty and in the perseverance to tell his …show more content…
Most of his plays take us to the southern states and show a confused society. In his works he exposes the degeneration of human feelings and relationships. His characters suffer from broken families and they do not find their place in society. They tend to be lonely and afraid of much that surrounds them. Among the major themes in his play A Streetcar Named Desire are loneliness and pain, sex and death, and illusion and reality. The main recurring theme Williams explores to the reader is the conflict between fantasy and reality. However, sexuality, violence, and loneliness also shape the action of the plot, in which they contribute to the effect of the characters of the
His primary sources of inspiration were the writers he grew up with, his family, and the South. The 1960s were perhaps the most difficult years for Williams, as he experienced some of his hardest treatment from the press. His plays, which received criticism for openly addressing taboo topics, were finding more and more detractors. Around this time, Williams’s longtime companion, Frank Merlo, died of cancer. Williams began to depend more and more on alcohol and drugs. In 1975 he published memoirs, which detailed his life and discussed his addiction to drugs and alcohol, as well as homosexuality. Tennessee Williams died three years later in a New York City hotel filled with half-finished bottles of wine and pills. It was in this desperation, which Williams had so closely known and so honestly written about, that we can find a great man an important body of work. His genius was in his honesty and in the perseverance to tell his …show more content…
Most of his plays take us to the southern states and show a confused society. In his works he exposes the degeneration of human feelings and relationships. His characters suffer from broken families and they do not find their place in society. They tend to be lonely and afraid of much that surrounds them. Among the major themes in his play A Streetcar Named Desire are loneliness and pain, sex and death, and illusion and reality. The main recurring theme Williams explores to the reader is the conflict between fantasy and reality. However, sexuality, violence, and loneliness also shape the action of the plot, in which they contribute to the effect of the characters of the