Tennessee Williams Influences

From all the assigned reading I have done in all my years of education on literature analysis, no author has succumbed me into the world of his or her work more than Mr. Thomas Lanier Williams III, or more widely known as the great playwright Tennessee Williams. Granted, I have only been able to read a few of his plays, but from those experiences alone, I learned about the dynamic and raw aspects of life during the early 1900s. Taking into consideration the time period of his work, I perceived him as a true rebel of his time; many parts of his plays were taboo subjects that were not often discussed during that time. Now, society of his era would have frowned upon it all as he wrote about sexuality and the non-sugarcoated stories of American

Williams had an interesting adolescent life. His drunk salesman of a father turned out to be the antithesis to his mother, who was the pastor’s daughter, and after spending his adolescence in the American South, his family moved to St. Louis (Barnett). This was where his life of contrasting ideas began to take shape. Moving from the South to the Midwest proved to be a difficult time for everyone in the family except for his father, who drank his way into physically and mentally thinking of himself as the “big man of the family.” Alas, it was for all the wrong reasons. In addition to being bullied at school, his father became a force of torment in his life all because he was more feminine than masculine (Poetry

Williams’s mother bought a typewriter for him. It was then when his flair for writing came into play. He went on to become a well-known writer in the St. Louis area, often winning awards and honorable mentions in numerous contests throughout high school and college (Barnett). After graduation from the University of Iowa, Mr. Williams began to write plays and entered them into contests. For one contest in particular, he changed his name and birth date on the application, transitioning from 28-year-old Thomas Williams to 25-year-old Tennessee Williams. Fortunately for him, he won and became known in the professional theater world as that name (Poetry Foundation). With that, he pushed out the old life that he did not desire by making room for his real self as Tennessee