Tennessee Williams Research Paper

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Alcohol has destroyed many lives. Unfortunately, often victims of alcohol are famous and very talented people like actors and writers, who happened to not be able to cope with fame or temporary setbacks. Being famous and outstanding writer can’t protect against depression, and somehow successful people don’t always live happy lives. Tennessee Williams suffered from depression and was afraid to go to the psychiatric hospital, he was afraid to repeat the fate of his sister Rose. He overcame bouts of depression with alcohol and pills. Williams died in the age of 71, but the cause of his death does not look natural. He choked on the lid of the bottle of eye drops. The question whether he was drunk or whether he committed suicide because could …show more content…

His father came from a kind of ancient southern aristocrats, among his ancestors were even two governors of the colonies. But he was born already when Williams family began to decline, and worked all his life traveling salesman of shoes. The mother of the writer Edwin Deykins, had family roots even deeper, because exasperated descended from the captain of the ship that crossed the English Channel with the forces of William the Conqueror. When Williams was seven, the family moved to St. Louis, Missouri where elapsed childhood and youth writer. In his memories Williams associate St. Louis with tyranny of his father. Unlike his father, his mother Mrs. Edwin was living memories of the past years of youth, of beauty and happiness. She created a romantic atmosphere around herself, and it affected the formation of her son, who grew poet and dreamer, too defenseless and, according to his father, far from everyday life. In 1929 Williams got to the University of Missouri, where he received his first award for poetry and prose. But two years later, his father took him out and made to work in a shoe company, For Williams it was unbearable two years. During the day he worked as a clerk, and then all night he was writing his poems. Later in 1944 Williams describes that period of his life in the play The Glass Menagerie, that was written based on his autobiographical elements. In the play Williams tells his story …show more content…

In 1969 Williams had a nervous breakdown and was taken to the mental hospital in St. Louis, where he stayed for three months. In 1972 Williams had his last professional success after his play Small Craft Warnings. (13) “Small Craft Warnings belongs in that sad canon of problematic late Williams plays in which flashes of poetry and bruising emotional truth wrestle with maudlin self-indulgence-and lose.” (The New York Times, February 22, 2011). On 24 February 1983, at the age of 71 Williams chocked to death on a medicine bottle cap while taking his daily medications. This happened in his room at the Hotel Elysee in New York