Tennessee Williams: The Original American Outcast

By: Maria Massad

March 26, 1911 – February 25, 1983

Playwright, Dramatist

The Main Feature:The condition of the outcast in American society

Guiding Questions

• How does Blanche struggle to maintain her world of illusions?

• How do the costumes add to Williams’ expression of his characters?

• Ultimately, how do these scenes reveal Blanche’s status as an outcast in American society?

Tennessee and Rose Williams

Grabber

• “[Tennessee] Williams felt himself rendered different, or ‘Other,’ by his homosexuality, and thus felt a specialized sensitivity to all those who were physically, emotionally, or spiritually misbegotten and vulnerable – and therefore somehow special” (Shuman 1657).

Thesis

• Williams was able to craft dramatic, insightful plays that reflected his distinctive literary voice – a voice that transformed the genre of the American play by exploring the illusion-filled lives of outcasts.

Critical Quote• “Williams’s most prominent and all-inclusive

theme is an effect of an aggressively competitive society on sensitive characters…. All are social outcasts in society” (Ruzinko 2736)

Literary Example

• “I take it for granted that you still have sufficient memory of Belle Reve to find this place and these poker players impossible to live with” (A Streetcar Named Desire 80).

Literary Example• “I don’t want realism. I want magic! Yes, yes,

magic! I try to give that to people. I misrepresent things to them. I don’t tell truth, I tell what ought to be truth” (A Streetcar Named Desire 145).

Literary Example

• “You come in here and sprinkle the place with powder and spray perfume and cover the light-bulb with a paper lantern, and lo and behold the place has turned into Egypt and you are Queen of the Nile!” (A Streetcar Named Desire 158).

Critical Quote

• Blanche Dubois is “unable to operate on the realistic level” (Novick 548).

Conclusion

• Reading Tennessee Williams enhanced my love of literature!

• Insights:– Everyone is an outcast