Tennessee Williams and A Streetcar Named Desire :: Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire

Tennessee Williams was born Thomas Lanier Williams in 1911. As a successful bleedwright, his occupational group was greatly influenced by events in his life. He was noted for saving the reader a slice of his own life and the feel of gray culture, as his primary sources of inspiration were the writers he grew up with, his family, and the South. The company in the midst of his life and his work can be seen in several(prenominal) of his plays. One strong influence that is evident in Tennessee Williams plays is his family life, which was full of tightness and despair. His father, a businessman who owned a show warehouse, was cognise for his gambling and drinking habits. He was often engaged with violent arguments with his wife that frightened Tennessees sister, Rose. Williams cared for Rose most of her adult life, after his mother, Edwina, allowed her to undergo a frontal lobotomy. This event greatly disturbed him. Many people remember that Williams first commercial success, T he Glass Menagerie, was based on his own family relationships. This play tells the story of Tom, his disabled sister, Laura, and their controlling mother, Amanda, who tries to make a match between Laura and a Gentleman caller. The characters seem to resemble the people in Williams conterminous family. Tennessee Williams was to a fault excite to write by the writers he grew up with. During college, he saw a production of Ibsens Ghosts, which inspired him to become a playwright. later graduating from the University of Iowa in 1938, he moved to New Orleans to launch his career as a writer. Here he found himself affected by the works of such writers as Arthur Rimbaud, Hart Crane, and D.H. Lawrence. He wrote the play I Rise in Flame, Cried the Phoenix, which dramatized the events surrounding Lawrences death. He considered it a tribute to a writer he greatly respected and admired. Lastly, Southern culture inspired Tennessee Williams to write one of his most famous plays, A Streetcar Named Desire, as he based his major characters on people he knew or encountered. The character of Stanley Kowalski was based on a good friend of his whom he worked with at the International Shoe Company in the 1930s. He was also inspired by the image of a young woman who had undecomposed been stood up by the man she was planning to marry.