Tennessee State University

Life in a Glass House Tennessee Williams is best known for writing short stories, poetry, and plays. He likes to use Metaphor, symbols, and Southern Gothic style when he writes. Southern Gothic style can be looked at as the lost, unbalanced, mind like addiction, madness, obsession, and controlling. Most of Williams writing is based on his life experience. He recreates his life as a child and brings them back to life in his writing. The memory of his childhood is very much the same as the…

In As I Lay Dying, by William Faulkner, Darl was always perceived as mildly insane. He was able to know and understand things that he shouldn’t know. In “A Streetcar Named Desire,” by Tennessee Williams, Stella’s sister Blanche lied throughout the play in order to change the way she was perceived. She was also unable to keep her secrets and painful memories which led to her insanity. In As I Lay Dying and “A Streetcar Named Desire,” both Darl and Blanche’s levels of sanity decreased when they…

particular social class, normally by economic bracket, into groups of varying worth and dispensability. Those who place themselves on top through classism thrive while those under them suffer for it. A Streetcar Named Desire, a play by playwright Tennessee Williams holds a great example of how dangerous and hurtful classism can be. A Streetcar Named Desire is a play about Blanche Dubois, moving in with her poorer sister after losing the family home to debt. Blanche, being of the upper class, is…

Symbolism in The Glass Menagerie Symbols are used in literature to represent abstract ideas and thoughts. The use of symbolism is how authors convey their beliefs and messages to the reader and how they explicate on elements in their stories. In Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie, he uses the symbolism of the fire escape to illustrate Tom’s character, Laura’s character, and his message about abandonment and escape in relation to human life. One way Williams uses the symbolism of the fire…

Tennessee Williams captures New Orleans perfectly through his play, “A Streetcar Named Desire.” Imagine walking through the heat of the summer with the Louisiana humidity, the steam of hot baths coming through the kitchen as you are trying to cool down in a two bedroom apartment, the loud sound of the downtown streets breaking through the windows, or even the spiral staircase that portrays the ionic “Stella!” scene. I never understood the truth of this play, until I was walking through New…

friendship, which fluctuates the heart of the play and the core behind the social class. Willy Russell portrays the play by comparing the upper class and the lower class using different characters with various personalities. Willy Russell positively states the prejudiced nature and unambiguous divide of social class by using families in “Blood Brothers”.…

Tennessee Williams was born in Columbus, Mississippi on March 26, 1911 (Biography.com). He won a Pulitzer Prize for his works, including A Streetcar Named Desire and Cat on a Hot Tin Tin Roof. A Streetcar Named Desire, written in 1947, is the play that gave Williams his first Pulitzer Prize (Biography.com). The main characters in that play are Blanche Dubois, her younger sister Stella, and Stella’s husband Stanley Kowalski. Blanche Dubois has unexpectedly come to live with her sister because she…

Death of A Salesman, written by Arthur Miller in 1949, follows an aged salesman, Willy Loman, as he struggles to accept the reality of his failing career and misguided life principles. In this essay, I will examine the structure of the play and how Miller has used time and space to reveal character, present Willy’s faulty ideals, and foreshadow. The play is broken into two acts and a requiem: each segment takes place on a different day in the present day, within the world of the play. For the…

play “The Glass Menagerie” by Tennessee Williams. In this play there are many significant objects that have a deep underlying meaning. “The Glass Menagerie” is not just the title of this play; it is also the foreground for it, and a major part of understanding Laura Wingfield’s character. Laura Wingfield is one of the main characters of Williams play in which she is the older sister, and only daughter. One of Laura’s hobbies is to collect, as the title of the play states, glass menagerie, or…

In Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie, (rpt. in Greg Johnson and Thomas R. Arp, Perrine’s Literature: Structure, Sound, and Sense, 12th ed. [Boston: Wadsworth, 2015] 1136-1185) each individual character thrives to make their fantasy reality. The story takes place around the same time frame as The Great Depression making the Wingfield’s dreams almost impossible to come true. Amanda, Laura, and Tom Wingfield are defiantly different, however the family all share the aspiration of a fantasy…