Tennessee williams essay paper

His works and the characters that inhabit them are some of the most robust and vital creations ever to appear on the stage. His people burn with passion and life, and are deeply complex, rarely superficial. How did his homosexuality impact his work?

While Williams is best known as one of the greatest American dramatists of the post-World War II era, he also wrote short stories that explore isolation and miscommunication within families and small groups of misfits and loners. These stories have often been Tennessee williams essay paper as simply apprentice works for his dramas, developing themes and characters that he later incorporated into his plays, but a number of critics have argued that they deserve to be considered on their own merits and have drawn comparisons between them and the fiction of Edgar Allan Poe and Thomas Mann.

Biographical Information Born in Columbus, Mississippi, Williams was raised by his mother and maternal grandparents at an Episcopal rectory in Clarksdale, Mississippi; his father, a traveling salesman, was frequently absent.

After a near-fatal bout of diphtheria, Williams remained a sickly child in the constant care of his overprotective mother. He also developed a close attachment to his older sister, Rose, who suffered from schizophrenia and, later, mental deterioration after an unsuccessful lobotomy.

In his family moved to St. Louis, where his father was transferred to assume a managerial position.

To relieve his sense of isolation in his new environment, Williams began to write poetry and short fiction. In he entered the University of Missouri, though he was forced by his father to return home after failing ROTC in his third year.

He took a menial job in a shoe warehouse and wrote short fiction and essays until suffering a nervous breakdown in During his convalescence, he collaborated on the comedy Cairo, Shanghai, Bombay! After that experience, he decided to devote himself to writing. He began taking classes at Washington University in St.

Louis, but subsequently transferred to the University of Iowa. That same year, he received a Rockefeller Foundation fellowship, which allowed him to write his play Battle of Angels In the early s Williams was offered a salaried position with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in Hollywood; he produced several unaccepted screenplays, and was released at the end of his contract.

In the late s Williams underwent intensive psychoanalysis to treat his depression, providing material for Suddenly Last SummerSweet Bird of Youthand Period of Adjustment After Night of the Iguanahis last notable success, Williams continued to produce numerous dramatic works of diminishing critical importance until the end of his life.

Navigate Guide

His mental instability and increasing dependence upon drugs and alcohol worsened during the next two decades. In he was briefly hospitalized following another mental breakdown. On February 24,in New York City, he accidentally choked to death on the cap of a medicine bottle.

Critics identify the key thematic concerns in his fiction as decay, disease, dysfunction, abnormality, and the destructiveness of desire. After losing his arm in a car accident, Oliver must give up his career as a champion boxer and degenerates into a male hustler and alcoholic.

He eventually murders a man who had paid him to participate in a pornographic movie. Attracted to him, Burns returns again and again, forming a sadomasochistic relationship with the man. With his consent, Burns is tortured and eventually killed and eaten by the masseur, who gathers his bones in a sack and throws them into a lake.

Critics perceive this story as an allegory for spiritual alienation and isolation. When his one comfort, his relationship with a young widow and her daughter, fails, he is bereft of hope and falls back into his dysfunctional relationship with his wife.

Certainly his contribution as a short story writer has been overshadowed by his fame as a playwright, and scholars have often focused on how Williams developed his plays from ideas he introduced in his short stories.

Some have regarded the stories as simplified and sharpened versions of his plays. Many reviewers have found his fiction morbid and grotesque and have compared it to that of Edgar Allan Poe.Tennessee Williams Uploaded by sinbaaad on Oct 30, This essay examines Williams’s life, and discusses whether or not his works are autobiographical; it also discusses his homosexuality briefly.

Tennessee Williams Research Paper Each of these things shows a little of either Williams or someone that was important n his life.

I will go in to detail on how these four aspects of “A Streetcar Named Desire” and how they relate to the emotions of Tennessee Williams life. Free Essay: Tennessee Williams Tennessee Williams was born Thomas Lanier Williams on March 26, in Columbus, Mississippi.

As a child, he lived with his. The Tennessee Williams collection was built from four major acquisitions in the s with smaller amounts of material added over the years. The nucleus of the collection began with Williams' own papers, acquired by the Ransom Center from to The Glass Menagerie Paper.

The Glass Menagerie Analytical Essay In Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie there are great deals of symbols that are seen throughout the story line.

The Glass Menagerie By Tennessee Williams Essay - The play The Glass Menagerie, written by Tennessee Williams in , is a story of a family thrown by fate in a big industrial city.