How Does Tennessee Williams's Life Affect His Work?

Sometimes it takes a change of scenery to start something new. For Tennessee Williams, that came when his family moved from Mississippi to St. Louis, Missouri. The move to Missouri was hard and upsetting for him, so Tennessee turned to writing. He would use his own life experiences as an inspiration of what he was going to writing about. As a result, in order to better understand why he belongs in the literary canon, one needs to know about his life, works, and the common themes. Moving can cause someone to discover a passion that lasts a lifetime. Thomas Lanier Williams was born on March 26, 1911, in Columbia, Missouri. Early in his childhood, he moved a few different times between Mississippi and Missouri. According to Biography.com,

The Poetry Foundation stated, Tennessee Williams was alienated most of his life for his homosexuality, so he used alienation and separation in most of his work to show how it affected himself and other people like him (“Tennessee Williams”). He used this to show that even though he suffered, he could get away from his dark past and become successful. In some of his work, he would have the main character be about someone he knew really well. According to writers of Biography.com, they stated, His parents poor marriage during his childhood fueled his writing. His mother was the main character in The Glass Menagerie and his father was the main character in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (“Tennessee Williams”). A few other themes that he used many times were violence and loneliness, he used violence, because his father abused him growing up. He used loneliness to show that his parents were divorced and he had to move around a lot; therefore, he never made any true friends. According to the Poetry Foundation, they stated about Tennessee Williams and his writings, “He saw himself as a shy, sensitive, gifted man trapped in a world where "mendacity" replaced communication, brute violence replaced love, and loneliness was, all too often, the standard human condition” (“Tennessee Williams”). He felt like he was misjudged and was never really given a