Tennessee Williams’ play Orpheus Descending is a modern retelling of the well known Greek legend of Orpheus, who goes deep into the Underworld for his beloved Eurydice, to save her from the clutches of death. In the same manner, Williams portrays characters in a conventional Southern community, marred by issues such as conformity to traditionalism, stubbornly refusing to acknowledge and respect those who are different. Thus, these outcasts who are of an unacceptable sexual, religious or racial affiliation are treated as lepers, not even knowing why they are unworthy of basic human rights. All of this forces them to create social masks, to transform their lives into a charade, concealing their true self, while showing only a pretend face in public, for fear of being ridiculed, chastised or even murdered. In this play, most of the characters have a dark secret about them, which makes them outsiders, and they are trying desperately to hide it, though often, it surfaces whether they want it to or not, leading to tragic consequences.
The female part of Williams’ tragic duo, Lady Torrance, is an emotional woman, who feels that her life has been a gradual wasting away. Her marriage of twenty years to Jabe is to her, a punishment, as she later finds out that he was one of the men responsible for the horrific fire which ruined her life and transformed her into an empty shell of a person, who can no longer feel. Being rushed into marriage after the terrifying fire related death of her father, her husband basically buys her, like an animal, unworthy of being loved for what she is, marred by her previous relationship with David Cutrere, which resulted in an aborted child. Feeling completely destroyed and utterly lost in life, Lady accepts what fate has in store for her: “I sleep with a son of bitch who bought me at a fire sale, and not in fifteen years have I had a single good dream” (Williams 46). She is Eurydice, whom Val finds in a state of living death, long-sufferingly waiting to be saved from the Underworld.
Lady is an outsider in the sense that she is completely different from everyone around her. She not only is a foreigner, being of Italian origin, but also she differs in her manner of thinking and treating other people around her. She is unlike the other women of the community, she does not enjoy gossiping about her friends and she refuses their urging not to sell to Carol, simply because she is eccentric and different. She is a solitary figure, just like Val and Carol, not fitting into her surroundings, unable to communicate her emotions, passions and fears, leading her to feel lost and cut off from everybody else.
On Val’s arrival, with his strange words and gentle urging, she commences her transformation from a barren tree into a blossoming one. Their late night talking is adorned with their profound physical connection during which not only their minds understand each other, but also their souls. They comprehend the deep solitude both of them feel, their shared hunger for a human touch, all of which leads to their physical union, resulting in Lady getting pregnant, and finally understanding her path: “I guess my heart knew that somebody must be coming to take me out of this hell! You did. You came. Now look at me! I’m alive once more!” (Williams 124). However, at the end of the play, the death impulse triumphs over the life impulse. Lady and her unborn source of newfound happiness are killed by bullets from her ruler of the Underworld and Val is burned to death, just like her father, symbolizing the idea that two men Lady loved shared the same fate.
Val’s unconscious mission is to save Lady from her life in death. He arrives to this small Southern town, fleeing his foul past lost in filthy bars, loose women and bottomless drinking glasses, with a firm decision to start his life anew. Just like the mythical Orpheus, he is wandering the land, with his trusty guitar, charming women. The apparent symbolism of his guitar is music and its power to express something profound that cannot be uttered with any words, but only through the magical language of art. He is a wandering spirit, an outcast, a lone wanderer who does not fit the conventional society and is thus, branded as an unwanted visitor, a frightening, free spirit called forth by the Choctaw cry.
In essence, Val possesses a certain good-heartedness and even though he dwelt in some places he would rather forget, he still does not think himself corrupted: “I lived in corruption, but I am not corrupted.” (Williams 39). He has witnessed the cruelest of human practices, such as the results of racism and human intolerance. His guitar is covered with signatures of famous blues musicians, such as Leadbelly, Bessie Smith, Fats Waller and many others. By using this fact from reality, Williams endeavored to strengthen the image of Val as an outcast who was in possession of basic human sympathy and who did not judge people by the color of their skin, but actually by who they really are, which is something that cannot be used to describe the community he found himself in.
In addition to being blessed with the gift of music, he also possesses animal attraction for the opposite sex, which is why all the women view his actions as highly sexually suggestive, leading him to have problems with women, even when he does not make any conscious sexual advances. Having met Lady, he honestly tries to fight off the hoards of women who throw themselves at him mercilessly, especially Carol, in an effort to try and regain at least a minute part of his innocence and chastity.
During his life, he is unable to focus his artistic energy and find sense in life, and is a firm believer of the basic condition of human solitude: “Nobody ever gets to know no body! We’re all of us sentenced to solitary confinement inside our own skins, for life!” (Williams 52). His age of 29 symbolizes imperfection and a lack of focus in life, meaning that he is stuck in a phase where he cannot free himself and move on, he cannot save himself, without the help of somebody. When he meets Lady, he meets his Eurydice, a compass to his life that could give him the long-sought meaning.
Even though both Lady and Val are aware of the fact that what they feel cannot last, that they will never be a part of the community that thinks them different, they still catalyzed each other’s spiritual liberation. They helped each other not forget their past, but accept their mistakes and move on. All of these outsiders are running away from their past, which is making their present unsatisfactory and their future bleak. Only with the help of an outsider like themselves, can they accept their past, as well as their present and do something about their future. Even though Val dies a violent death, he still refuses to flee, and remains by Lady’s side, knowing he will certainly die if he does so. This proves that he finally found peace and meaning on his life path, which ends tragically.
Just like Val and Lady, Carol is also a lonely outsider, unable to communicate how she really feels, instead opting for outrageous make-up and potato-sack dress code, which deemed her utterly insane in the eyes of the townspeople and made them refuse to allow her to stay in their town. In essence, all she wants is to live and love: “I’m an exhibitionist! I want to be noticed, seen, heard, felt! I want them to know I’m alive!” (Williams 28). This is why she is so persistent in following Val around, despite the fact that he openly tells her he is not interested in her advances. She is hungry for human touch, being isolated from everyone, deemed crazy, unwanted even by her own family. In the end, it is she who finds Val’s remains, his snakeskin jacket, which symbolizes a part of him and his animal spirit he could not rid himself of, no matter how hard he tried. Consequently, the story of his life and his music will continue to live on, through the eccentric, insane and discarded Carol.
The ruler of Lady’s Underworld, the darkly yellowish man, who has death written all over him, Jabe, is the one who chains her to a life of slowly wasting away. Throughout the play, he shows no mercy to his wife, not even when he divulges his secret: “We burned him out, house and orchard and wines, and ‘The Wop’ was burned up trying to fight the fire.” (Williams 100). He is just as cruel at the beginning as in the end, when he shoots his wife, murdering her. He is a respected man in his community, on who demands reverence and fear, even on his deathbed, and his buying of Lady after her father’s death seems not to be an act of love, but rather, the final act of humiliating a dead man and his family. A darkly sinister and cruel man, he is also an outsider, unable to receive and give love, but only hover above Lady and Val, like death, waiting to exert his revenge upon them.
Finally, a character of profound visions and ability to see through the superficial layers of existence, Vee endeavors to help those in need, like Val, by telling them to look for a job at Lady’s store. She does not have the same opinion of him as everybody else. She knows that “Appearances are misleading, nothing is what it looks like to the eyes. You got to have – vision – to see!” (Williams 71). At the end of the play, the strength of her final vision makes her go blind. The truth is revealed, but it is not for the faint-hearted, only those who are strong enough can endure the heavy burden of the truth. Her vision-induced blindness serves as a premonition of the tragic events to come. She realizes the true state of affairs, the cruelty of humans and their inability to accept those different. Still, her message is one that can be understood only by outsiders like herself, like Val, Lady and Carol. The rest are deaf to her words and blind to her visions.
In most Williams’ plays, his characters, just like the playwright himself, have a difficult time finding out who they are and then, accepting their own identity. The mistakes from their past haunt their present and doom any efforts of a positive and happy future. For Lady and Val any such future is impossible, and they both know it. Still, in the small amount of time spent together, they made each other’s lives happy and awoke dormant desires in each other. Death took them both, but it can never take their moments of profound spiritual connection, which had more value than their entire miserable life.
Works Cited:
Williams, Tennessee. Four Plays. New York: Signet Classics, 2003. Print.
