The aim of this essay is to present you with a portrait of Tennessee Williams, a widely acknowledged theatrical writer whose works have been greeted with lots of admiration and enthusiasm. Most of his works have been generating tones of enthusiasm and admiration, attracting people’s interest constantly ever since their first appearance on stage. Some of his roles like the one of Stanley or Blanche in ‘The Streetcar named Desire’ or the one of Kim Cattrall in ‘The sweet birth of youth’ have been considered great challenges for actors and actresses respectively, hoping to be given the chance to represent a role of Tennessee’s classics.
This essay will focus on the personal aspect of his personality ambiguity and it will more specifically try to enlighten Williams’ witnessed abuse of drugs and alcohol, which is considered up today to be the main reason leading to his death at the age of 71 in his suite at the hotel Elysee in the city of New York, on February 25, 1983.
It is common knowledge that most personalities differentiated from the majority due to their talent, their spirit or their provocative, innovative theories, seem to share the common fate of famous people. What is that supposed to be? Most of the times famous people tend to be exposed in the eyes of their fans, their audience, their supporters or strict critics by exhibiting their own personal moments of weaknesses or psychological disorders or simply their moments of exaggerating or finding shelter in some kind of abuse.
The underlying reasons for this kind of common destiny of famous people to get carried away by the ‘misfortunes’ hidden in extreme and sudden fame or luxuries, have been found to be numerous with their family background and their childhood to hold the principal scepter.
Tennessee Williams was found dead on February 25, 1983 in his hotel room and the first rational explanation published was that he died of choking. Yet research showed that choking to death from a cap of a plastic bottle, was not the main reason. His room was found full of prescription on drugs indicating his having become obsessed with using them. Michael Baden who is the forensic expert who took over the responsibility of conducting the investigation on Tennessee Williams’ death wrote in his report that Williams had died of alcohol and drug abuse.
Who was Tennessee? And why did he die of drugs and alcohol? Did he long for his death long before the real time of his physical death? All these questions can arise when one reads at least one of his masterpieces like the ‘A Streetcar named Desire’ or ‘The Glass Menagerie’, or even ‘Suddenly Last Summer’.
Tennessee’s writing style and depiction of characters can leave not one soul untouched. It becomes clear to one reading more than one of his plays that Tennessee has seen into the mysteries and darkness underlying human nature and soul. Tennessee has the talent to depict the ambiguity of human nature. If each meaning in life is to be accepted as the concept taking meaning and being defined through its being compared to its completely opposite value, then Tennessee comes to draw the blue and purple and pink color of the peace inhabiting humans’ soul next to the black and grey color of the hidden passions existing in a human soul.
Tennessee is a writer who is a psychiatrist, a painter, a researcher of life’s meaning and ambiguity. Life is nice but it can be also bad. People can be good but they can also be nasty. Love can be beneficial or real but it may also be disastrous. Faith and belief and tradition are more than welcome since they shed light to people’s labyrinths but at the same time they can prove to be their chains holding them stuck to the ground and cutting off their wings so that they are automatically of their physical right to flying and trying and experimenting.
It has been said that most of Tennessee’s plays depict figures from his family life which has been of problematic and troubling nature. Notice ought to be paid that his father had actually been an absent figure with his mother trying constantly to fully service both the roles of a father and a mother. Yet this strength of character characterizing his mother was constantly shaken by his mother’s profile and ideal of the ‘Southern Belle’. In other words Tennessee’s mother had trouble coming in terms with social reality and changes in the social status quo. Therefore she could not accept the fact that people were not to be divided any more according to their origins but according to their wallet. The impression is given that his mother has always been this woman fighting her own internal fights trying to adjust to the demands of future society and her constantly changing role. , His beloved sister suffered schizophrenia and went under the surgery of lobotomy which proved to be of disastrous effects since it resulted in her being institutionalized ever since till her death.
Tennessee appears to have experienced this incident of his sister in a very sensitive and dramatic way keeping like most of the times his feelings for himself. He himself went through such strict criticism by his father who failed to accept his son for what he was. He was not considered a robust boy. He was considered a delicate boy who preferred writing. This is why he was characterized as the lonely boy who would spend most of his time at the typewriter. Writing seems to have been his way of escaping his bad, unpleasant reality of his family relationships. The only person he seems to have been formally attached was that of his grandmother’s father, his grandfather. This may be the reason why Williams had decided to leave his literary rights to The University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee as a way to honor his grandfather, Walter Dakin, an alumnus of the university. The funds nowadays are used for the funding and operation of a creative writing program.
Tennessee took lots of effort and strength in order to remember and awaken real needs of his which his strict and limited family environment had repressed. The most shocking moment in his life could be considered to be the death of his beloved companion, Frank Merlo. He appears to be going from one shelter in drug abuse to the other one of alcohol.
It seems that Tennessee Williams tried to experience the path of personal catharsis from his wounds and passions through writing since he emphasized on the tragedy underlying in human life.
It is as if that lonely boy never stopped feeling lonely. He experienced his loneliness by allowing his fiction world to enter his reality and at once he lost track of where he wished to go. Or he may simply have decided that there were no other mysteries and / or enigmas to solve within the borders of human mind and soul.
Works cited
Gross, Robert F., (2002), ‘Tennessee Williams: A Casebook’. Routledge
Leverich, Lyle. (1997), ‘Tom: The Unknown Tennessee Williams’, W. W. Norton & Company, Reprint edition (1997)
