Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: Pressures of society
Most people care greatly for image. Social groups will usually change their interests, clothing, and sometimes personality to fit the cultural norm or popular standard. Tennessee Williams depicts this in his popular play, “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.” Throughout the show, the audience can notice the characters’ various overdramatic mannerisms and even what comes through their speech. Thus, a viewer can conclude that this production’s main theme is social expectation and its effects on society. A literature theme is an idea that the author attempts to imply through the behavior of the characters and the development of the plot. This is the code through which writers convey and communicate their ideas and explorations. “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” reviews and explores social expectations and their effects on society. Some of these ideas include homosexuality and feminism. Williams explores homosexuality in Brick and Skipper, while he illustrates feminism through Maggie. “She adjusts the angle of a magnifying mirror to straighten an eyelash,” (Williams 20). Clearly, the audience can see that she is vain in that she deeply cares about her appearance, like all distinctly feminine women do. “She giggles with a hand fluttering at her throat and her breast and her long throat arched.” (Williams 24). …show more content…
Through Maggie’s fight between femininity and boyish activities and Brick’s struggle with homosexuality, readers are given the option to see and understand the world through Williams’ perspective. The playwright likely chose this topic to outline in his play because it is something that everyone struggles with daily. One may try to live up to impossible social standards, yet one has no grounds in one’s character to even begin. No human being is perfect. Despite this, these standards remain expectations and social
The play focusses on three generations of Women, Nan Dear, Gladys and Dolly and where they felt as though they belonged. Nan Dear knew where she belonged and that was the humpy in the flats with her daughter and granddaughter. Nan Dear knows that she won't be accepted into white society just because she is an Aboriginal and those of a different colour or foreign country weren't accepted. Gladys and Dolly both wanted to be accepted into white society, they wanted to feel as though they belonged there.
In order to climb up the ladder of society, people oppress those characteristics that lead them to failure. During the 1950’s and 1960’s, homosexuality was seeing as a mental disease of the human race. Homosexuals did not fit in the schema of the American family. Tennessee Williams, in his play “The Cat on the Hot Tin Roof”, shows the effects of society´s views on homosexuals through the main character Brick. In addition to Williams´ play, the theatrical work, “Doubt” by John Shanley, also depicts the struggles that an African American kid undergoes in order to suppress his sexuality. Both plays show two characters in different social classes and from different races trying to survive the denial of society towards their sexual orientation. Through their oppression by male hegemony and with the help of the maternal figure in each play, both Brick and Donald struggle to overcome their fear of acceptance.
A theme is a central idea that appears throughout a play, the themes also tie events of a play together and give the work meaning and purpose. To explore a play’s central theme, think about the message that the playwright wants to express. What is the significance of the play? Does it explore a moral issue? Can most people identify with it?
Reality is hard to face, when everything going on around a person is not in the greatest conditions. The Wingfield family does not live in the greatest conditions. Tom, Amanda and Laura all live in an apartment together. Tom, the main character and narrator of the play, is the brother to Laura and the son to Amanda. Tom is forced to take on the role of the breadwinner of the family because his father left them. This has thrown the entire family off the rails. It has altered the reality in which all of the characters live. In Tennessee Williams’ play, “The Glass Menagerie”, The Wingfield family has difficulty differentiating reality versus non-reality. The world we are living in today relates
does this by using the themes of the story to show the tendencies of modern culture. In
The pointedness of the play is created through a distinct plot path. The observer is lead through the story, seeing first how greatly Amanda Wingfield influences her children. Secondly, the play-goer notes how Tom Wingfield desperately struggles and writhes emotionally in his role of provider- he wants more than just to be at home, taking care of his all-too-reminiscent mother and emotionally stunted sister. Tom wants to get out from under his mother’s wing; his distinct ambitions prevent him from being comfortable with his station in life. Lastly, Laura struggles inside herself; doing battle against her shyness, Laura begins to unfurl a bit with Jim, but collapses once again after Jim announces his engagement and leaves her, again. Each character struggles and thrashes against their places in life, but none of them achieve true freedom. This plot attests to the fact that true change and freedom can only come through the saving power of God Almighty and Jesus Christ, and by letting go of the past.
According to Dictionary.com, theme is defined as a “main idea or an underlying meaning of a literary work which may be stated directly or indirectly.” My idea of the meaning behind theme lies closely within this definition. To me, theme is the main memorandum or moral the reader will gained through reading and analyzing a story. The theme usually has a message or lesson behind it to provoke to the reader to question life. The theme could be very obvious or obscure, it just depends on how the author wants to communicate with his audience. After reading several pieces of literature in this class, the theme of “Gender Roles” really stood out to me. I especially found this theme pungent in The Yellow Wallpaper, A Doll’s House, and The Great Gatsby.
Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work. The story “Battle Royal” by Ralph Ellison displays a few specific themes through the story which are easy to depict. A few themes from this story are, first racism and finding his self identity, then the danger of fighting stereotype with stereotype, and last blindness. These themes play an important role in the story to better help the reader understand it.
In today's rough and tough world, there seems to be no room for failure. The pressure to succeed in life sometimes seems unreasonable. Others often set expectations for people too high. This forces that person to develop ways to take the stress and tension out of their lives in their own individual ways. In the plays "The Glass Menagerie" and " A Streetcar Named Desire" written by Tennessee Williams, none of the characters are capable of living in the present and facing reality. Two of the characters are Amanda Wingfield and Blache Dubios. In order for these characters to deal with the problems and hardships in their lives they retreat into their own separate worlds of illusion and lies.
The theme of a novel can change the complete meaning of the story for each individual reader. If one person reads a book and he/she thinks that the book's main them...
As women's studies programs have proliferated throughout American universities, feminist "re-readings" of certain classic authors have provided us with the most nonsensical interpretations of these authors' texts. A case in point is that of Kathleen Margaret Lant's interpretation of Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire in her essay entitled "A Streetcar Named Misogyny." Throughout the essay, she continually misreads Williams' intention, which of course causes her to misunderstand the play itself. Claiming that the play "has proved vexing to audiences, directors, actors, readers, and critics" (Lant 227), she fails to see that it is she herself who finds the play vexing, because it does not fit nicely into the warped feminist structure she would try to impose upon it.
In Williams, Tennessee’s play The Glass Menagerie, Amanda’s image of the southern lady is a very impressive. Facing the cruel reality, she depends on ever memories of the past as a powerful spiritual to look forward to the future, although her glory and beautiful time had become the past, she was the victim of the social change and the Great Depression, but she was a faithful of wife and a great mother’s image cannot be denied.
In Tennessee Williams' play, The Glass Menagerie, each character attempts to escape the real world by creating their own “reality”. Laura hides from the world by magnifying her illness. Tom convinces himself that his needs supersede the needs of his family. Amanda focuses almost exclusively on the past - when she saw herself as a desirable southern belle. Even Jim focus his hopes on recapturing his good old high school days. Each character transposes their difficult situations into shadows of the truth.
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.
n Tennessee William’s drama play, The Glass Menagerie, the character Amanda is mostly concerned with her children's well being. After her husband abandoned her and their two children, Tom and Laura, Amanda had to raise both of them single-handedly until they were grown ups. Williams’ drama “involving only four characters, is built around Amanda and her effect upon raising her children” (Tholl, 1337). Amanda cared for her children's health, appearance, and future while also being concerned with what they do in their free time. Being the mother that she is, Amanda wishes nothing but “success and happiness for her precious children” (Williams 1996). Although her mothering techniques can be extreme and or suffocating to some degree, she is not oblivious to all of the dysfunctional nature of her family.