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    Losing Reality: Internal Conflicts and Themes in The Plays of Tennessee Williams

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    Richard Yan
    Tennessee Williams was renowned for depicting themes of fantasy versus reality in his plays. Characters often escaped into fantasy worlds to avoid difficult realities, like faded Southern belles clinging to past status. In The Glass Menagerie, Amanda lives in her memories of Southern youth, trying to mold Laura into a belle, while Blanche in A Streetcar Named Desire desperately hides her trauma through illusion. Both women reject new struggles in favor of fantasies of the past. Williams also portrayed characters torn between dreams and duty, like Tom Wingfield who yearns for adventure despite family obligations. Ultimately, Williams revolutionized drama by intensely dramatizing domestic emotional conflicts many audiences could relate to through themes of escaping reality.

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    Losing Reality: Internal Conflicts and Themes in The Plays of Tennessee Williams

    Uploaded by

    Richard Yan
    49 views5 pages
    Tennessee Williams was renowned for depicting themes of fantasy versus reality in his plays. Characters often escaped into fantasy worlds to avoid difficult realities, like faded Southern belles clinging to past status. In The Glass Menagerie, Amanda lives in her memories of Southern youth, trying to mold Laura into a belle, while Blanche in A Streetcar Named Desire desperately hides her trauma through illusion. Both women reject new struggles in favor of fantasies of the past. Williams also portrayed characters torn between dreams and duty, like Tom Wingfield who yearns for adventure despite family obligations. Ultimately, Williams revolutionized drama by intensely dramatizing domestic emotional conflicts many audiences could relate to through themes of escaping reality.

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    Tennessee Williams was renowned for depicting themes of fantasy versus reality in his plays. Characters often escaped into fantasy worlds to avoid difficult realities, like faded Southern belles clinging to past status. In The Glass Menagerie, Amanda lives in her memories of Southern youth, trying to mold Laura into a belle, while Blanche in A Streetcar Named Desire desperately hides her trauma through illusion. Both women reject new struggles in favor of fantasies of the past. Williams also portrayed characters torn between dreams and duty, like Tom Wingfield who yearns for adventure despite family obligations. Ultimately, Williams revolutionized drama by intensely dramatizing domestic emotional conflicts many audiences could relate to through themes of escaping reality.

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    Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as doc, pdf, or txt
    49 views5 pages

    Losing Reality: Internal Conflicts and Themes in The Plays of Tennessee Williams

    Uploaded by

    Richard Yan
    Tennessee Williams was renowned for depicting themes of fantasy versus reality in his plays. Characters often escaped into fantasy worlds to avoid difficult realities, like faded Southern belles clinging to past status. In The Glass Menagerie, Amanda lives in her memories of Southern youth, trying to mold Laura into a belle, while Blanche in A Streetcar Named Desire desperately hides her trauma through illusion. Both women reject new struggles in favor of fantasies of the past. Williams also portrayed characters torn between dreams and duty, like Tom Wingfield who yearns for adventure despite family obligations. Ultimately, Williams revolutionized drama by intensely dramatizing domestic emotional conflicts many audiences could relate to through themes of escaping reality.

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    Richard Yan Mrs.

    Delmonico American Literature April 29, 2011

    Losing Reality
    Internal conflicts and themes in the plays of Tennessee Williams The concepts of fantasy and reality are prominent themes in the works of playwright Tennessee Williams. Themes such as that are greatly exemplified in the characters of his two most famous plays, A Streetcar Named Desire and The Glass Menagerie. In each, one or more characters are trapped inside a fantasy world that they strive for. They have immense difficulty coping in the real world and are usually un-accepting of the fact that they cannot truly escape it. Williams is renowned for his work depicting these themes as he was one of the first playwrights in his time to showcase conflicts of the common domestic household. His plays and their themes are largely based on his own life and experiences, and are meant to appeal to the common middle class people as the settings are similar to their lives. One character type that is prominent in many of Tennessee Williamss plays is the faded Southern belle. Generally, this character was bought up by a rich and high-class Southern family and has suffered some dramatic social or economic decline in her life and now lives in a modern city where she desperately tries to cling to her old Southern ways. Often they try to project their values onto other characters in the play in an attempt to recreate the dreams they never achieved. In The Glass Menagerie, Amanda

    plays this role. She lives by the experiences and values of her old life, thinking that they should apply universally, despite her new location in the city. Examples of this can be seen throughout the play, such as Amandas constant efforts to make Laura attractive to men. She reminisces of her past, remembering that in her youth, she had many gentlemen callers and that Laura should have them too. Amanda consistently refuses to see Laura for who she is and in many ways tries to make her into the successful Southern belle that Amanda herself never got to be. In the case of A Streetcar Name Desire, the belle role is played by Blanche DuBois. A notable example of Blanches persistent mindset is when she says to Mitch that her reason for lying is because she refuses to accept the hand that life has dealt her. This philosophy is a central aspect of Blanches personality and behavior. She is the truest examples of a high-class person falling into a lower class. While she had a rich household and a near-perfect potential husband, Blanche was in the happiest place of her life. However, all that was taken away from her nearly in the blink of an eye. This loss sent her into a downward emotional spiral, which accounts for her lack of acceptance of her reality. Blanche constantly tries to cover up her trauma, dressing in seemingly beautiful looking clothing and putting on a confident personality mask. She clings to her efforts to attract males because she believes that marrying again is the only way she can make up for her bad reputation and her scarring past. In both cases of Amanda and Blanche, the women are un-accepting of reality. They are stuck in their old Southern life as it represents a time of prosperity and tranquility, as opposed to the struggle-filled life they currently live in. Tennessee Williams often likes to depict the

    triumph of fantasy over reality in his plays. In Blanches case, she completely retreats into her own mind after being raped by Stanley. The crucial ending scene where the doctor drags Blanche away to a mental hospital represents the complete and utter collapse of her sanity and the sad culmination of her fantasy-filled life. The triumph of fantasy in The Glass Menagerie however, can be seen in a different character. The idea of the fantasy world does not only apply to the Southern belle character. In The Glass Menagerie, all three of the major characters have a dream world of their own. Laura Wingfield is a peculiar character who is lost in the real world. She escapes into her own world, represented by her glass menagerie. In many ways, Laura is like the glass animal figurines that she treasures so deeply; she is pure, innocent and dangerously fragile. She shows true compassion and forgiveness when it comes to conflicts within the Wingfield household, a great contrast to Tom and Amanda. Laura is the embodiment of a human that is resistant to the sinful contaminants of the real world. Tom Wingfield is a great example of the conflicts of reality and fantasy. In the play, he addresses the audience directly, trying his best to provide an objective narrative of the story. However, he cannot help but allow his emotions to rise up during his narration as he also takes part in the plays actions. For the audience, they are often undecided on whether Toms view should be trusted or questioned. Also as a character, he is highly contradictory. He dreams of a world of adventure, escape and intellect, shown by his interest in poetry and literature. However, he also seems to be unable to let go of the petty world of the Wingfield household. The audience hears a

    lot more about his domestic issues than about his dream to obtain higher things. But in the end, Tom is shown to have escaped his city life to pursue a life of adventure, example of fantasy triumphing over reality. This triumph proves to be detrimental to the character as Tom eventually realizes that he could not move on from the guilty memories of Laura. And although he obtained freedom, he did not achieve greatness but rather ended up living life as a fugitive. Tennessee Williams is a true artist in depicting strong and often shocking emotional dramas in the settings of small households. The high concentration of emotions, fantasies and traumas that he shows in a seemingly limited setting is what makes his plays so hard hitting to audiences and readers everywhere. Not only were the plays dramatic, but they bring the drama closer to heart as middle-class life is something that many people are able to relate to. Tennessee Williams revolutionized theatrical plotlines in America and his themes still ring true in many peoples lives today.

    Works Cited Williams, Tennessee. A Streetcar Named Desire. New York: New Directions, 2004. Print. Williams, Tennessee. The Glass Menagerie. New York: New Directions, 1999. Print.

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