Tennessee Williams Research Paper

Tennessee Williams, a playwright of divine culture wrote heavily symbolic plays, a post World War II American dramatist, and one of the most successful authors of the era. His full name was Thomas Lanier Williams. He was born in Columbus, Mississippi. He died on February 25, 1983. Being a World War II American dramatist, Williams had many of his successful plays, which were adapted into major films over his lifespan and even some after. (GAW)

Being a dramatic playwright of the era, he ended up being one of the most successful. He had many important and well known works from the mid 1940’s to early 1960’s. He won the Pulitzer prize for drama, not once, but twice. “Williams wrote of lonely misfits, sensitive artists, and the physically wounded.”

His works became more personal with more focus on the artist and the expressions of his works. He had failing and declining creative powers. With this, Williams became increasingly experimental with his characters and his use of those characters. His reading lines of dialogues started to be left incomplete. The critics and audiences largely rejected Williams new works. These critics and audience members came mainly from the New York theatre. The New York theatre would not openly accept or let him openly handle the subject of his homosexuality until Small Craft Theatre Warnings in 1972. He had treated homosexual experiences as in masterful stories such as One Arm, and Desire in the Black Masseur in 1946. He would do the same in his longer work of fiction Moise and the World of Reason published in 1975. In 1975, Williams candid autobiography Memoirs, which told the story of his life and his afflictions. Multiple of his Memoirs failed and didn’t live up to expectations. (Gale Virtual Reference

These are still regularly performed decades after the famous playwright's life. Unlike many, Williams saw the fruits of his labor flourish in his lifetime. In the 1940’s, it began his successful career and he continued to write all the way down to his death. Many would say he had his “golden years,” in the 1960’s. While he wrote of many dark tales in his career in the 1940’s, 1950’s, and 1960’s are loaded with several of his new works, premieres, and successes. These are the one’s we typically attribute to Williams in the American theatre. Williams had an impressive career that any playwright and dramatist would be envious to have. Today, you can find William's work being performed all over the world. There are many festivals in Williams honor where they celebrate the fruit of his labor with all his works he left behind. He left behind a legacy of honor and changed the American theatre.