Tennessee Williams and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
Tennessee Williams has been described as the most literary of the major dramatists and one of America's best playwrights (Bloom, p.2). He has been praised by critics for his compassionate understanding of the spiritually downtrodden (Gale Databases, p. 8). One of his most famous plays, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, has been described as his most powerful, and deals with the then taboo subject of homosexuality (Becker, p. 2).
Tennessee Williams, whose real name is Thomas Lanier Williams, was born on March 26, 1911 in Columbus Mississippi. His father was a traveling shoe salesman and his mother was the daughter of an Episcopalian clergyman. He had an older sister, Rose, and a younger brother, Walter Dakin. In 1918 the family moved to St. Louis. Tennessee had a very difficult childhood in St. Louis and was the butt of his classmates' jokes because of his small size and lack of athletic ability (Encyclopedia of World Drama, p. 410).
In 1929, he attended the University of Missouri, and won prizes for writing. He failed ROTC because of weakness in his legs caused by childhood diphtheria. His father removed him from the university just before his senior year because of financial reasons and disappointment in his son. His father got him a job in a warehouse of the International Shoe Company. Tennessee worked by day and wrote by night. He suffered a nervous collapse and spent a month in the hospital. He went to his grandparent's home in Memphis, Tennessee to recuperate. In 1935 he attended Washington University with his grandparent's help. There he wrote plays for the Mummers Theatre Group. In 1937 he attended the University of Iowa, studied under Professor E.C. Mabie, and received his B.A. degree. After graduation, he went to New Orleans after learning of his sister's lobotomy (Encyclopedia of World Drama, p. 410).
In 1939, Story Magazine published his play A Field of Blue Children. In that year Tennessee also compiled four one act plays under the title American Blues that included Candles in the Sun, The Fugitive King, Spring Storm, and Not About Nightingales. He submitted them to the Group Theatre's American play contest and won a $100 prize which aroused the interest of New York agent Audrey Wood. She obtained a $1000 grant for him to finish Battle of Angels which was produced in 1940.
“On the other side of our barbed wire fence were twenty or thirty Aussie men – as skinny as us – and wearing slouch hats. Unlike the Japs, they had hairy legs. And they were standing in rows – serenading us.”
Theodore Samuel Williams was born on August 30th 1918 in San Diego, California. His father, a photographer, named him after the late outspoken president Teddy Roosevelt.His mother was a salvation worker of Mexican descent ("My Turn At Bat"15). His parents, who he later came to resent, were poor and constantly working
When he was fifteen years old, his mother died from appendicitis. From fifteen years of age to his college years, he lived in an all-white neighborhood. From 1914-1917, he shifted from many colleges and academic courses of study as well as he changed his cultural identity growing up. He studied physical education, agriculture, and literature at a total of six colleges and universities from Wisconsin to New York. Although he never completed a degree, his educational pursuits laid the foundation for his writing career.
Adversity can cause an individual to overcome their challenges and strengthen their identity, however, it can also have the opposite negative effect. Adversity can trigger an individual to lose their identity in their attempt to escape from their problems. In the play, A Streetcar Named Desire, by Tennessee Williams, Blanche DuBois is unable to face adversity, which leads her to lose her individual identity during her attempt to escape reality. Blanche had experienced numerous hardships such as the deaths of many family members and the loss of her young husband, Allan. Instead of overcoming these challenges and becoming stronger, Blanche tried to run away from them.
after her husband and children, they were treated as second class citizens with few rights.
pressure to fit in to the family that is the source of most of the
When is it okay to tell a lie? Some may say you should lie to spare the feelings of a friend, or to keep yourself out of trouble. However, in a way, lies will always come back around in the end. Therefore the truth is always better than lying because there may be less consequences. This is a lesson that can be observed from Cat on a Hot Tin Roof by Tennessee Williams. The play takes place on an expensive plantation home owned by a wealthy family in Mississippi in the 1950’s. Williams based the whole basis of the play around lies, and even the absence of the truth. The truth was rarely discussed to satisfy the views of society and to keep the Pollitt family together.
Beethoven's Ninth Symphony I attended Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony on October 14, at the Bass Performance Hall in Fort Worth. The Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Miguel Harth-Bedoya and Southwestern Seminary Oratorio Chorus, directed by C. David Keith, performed. Ludwig Van Beethoven composed the work. He composed it between 1811-1824. Beethoven composed the work in D minor, Op.
In the study of Tennessee Willliams' plays: "Suddenly Last Summer" and "The Glass Menagerie", we can find a great deal of autobiographical connections. "The Glass Menagerie" is particularly considered the author's most biographical work. It is described by the playwright as "a memory play"; indeed, it is a memory of the author's own youth, an expression of his own life and experiences. Similarly, "Suddenly Last Summer" includes many of Tennesse Williams' real life details.
Tennessee Williams gives insight into three ordinary lives in his play, “A Streetcar Named Desire” which is set in the mid-1930’s in New Orleans. The main characters in the play are Blanche, Stanley, and Stella. All three of these characters suffer from personalities that differentiate each of them to great extremes. Because of these dramatic contrarieties in attitudes, there are mounting conflicts between the characters throughout the play. The principal conflict lies between Blanche and Stanley, due to their conflicting ideals of happiness and the way things “ought to be”.
Tennessee Williams was one of the greatest American dramatists of the 20th century. 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 heroes suffer from broken families and they do not find their place in the society. They tend to be lonely and afraid of much that surrounds them. Among the major themes of his plays are racism, sexism, homophobia and realistic settings filled with loneliness and pain.1 Tennessee Williams characters showed us extremes of human brutality and sexual behavior.2 One of his most popular dramas was written in 1947, and it is called A Streetcar Named Desire.
If you are part of society, I think it is safe to make the assumption you are familiar
The Beethoven Symphony #9 in D minor is being announced during the 4th movement of the symphony. Typically, in symphonies, the 4th movements take part in the term of Allegro, which means it is played quickly or fast. However, in Beethoven Symphony, the 4th movement opens with a flurry sound and then is introduced by an instrumental recitative. A recitative is a style of music alternating between speaking and singing words on the same note. In a recitative, the music lines are not repeated even though formally composed songs do.
In Tennessee Williams’ 1947 play, “A Streetcar Named Desire,” Stella and Stanley Kowalski live in the heart of poor, urban New Orleans in a one-story flat very different from the prestigious home Stella came from. This prestige is alive and well inside Stella’s lady-like sister, Blanche Du Bois. Over the course of Blanche’s life, she has experienced many tragedies that deeply affected her, such as the death of her gay husband, the downward spiral in her mental health that followed, and most recently the loss of her wealth and therefore social status. She constructs a proverbial lampshade to mask her pain and to control the last part of her world that she is able to, the image she projects into the world for herself and others to see. The brooding prince of William Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” chooses a very similar way of coping with the hand life has dealt him. When his mother remarries his uncle only a month after his father’s passing, the ghost of Hamlet’s father visits the young prince demanding avengement. These events cause Hamlet to try to replace the old lampshade that helped him cope with reality by changing his own image and fooling himself and others into thinking he’s crazy. An examination of both plays reveals that the importance of subjective truths and the way in which Blanche and Hamlet use them to cope transcends the context of both plays.
Communication is a very important aspect of any type of relationship. There are many themes in the play, Cat On A Hot Tin Roof, by Tennessee Williams, but the major theme is that of isolation and the lack of communication. This type of theme involves many character such as Brick and Margaret. Big Daddy and his oldest son Gooper. And Big Daddy and his youngest son Brick. The entire Pollitt family manifests the theme isolation and lack of communication.