tennessee williams a street car named desire

The family was marked with anger, tensions, and separateness.

The family struggled to survive life with a father who was stingy, crude, and often drunk. A year later a younger brother, Dakin, was born. When his father took a job managing sales for a shoe company, the family moved to St. His father was a traveling salesman who spent very little time with his family and made no permanent home for them as they moved among various Mississippi towns. Later she was confined to an institution after an emotional breakdown from which she never recovered. During his childhood, his sister, Rose, was his only friend. His mother was overprotective, and he did not like his father. Sometimes a misfit himself, Williams left home for good at an early age. At least parts of this had to reflect his own life.

Williams wrote about loneliness, frustration, and the desperate need for communication by people who are society’s misfits. He won the contest, but never corrected the erroneous date of birth. Some sources list Williams’s birth date as 1914, but Williams purposely confused the year–not out of vanity, but out of necessity: early in his life he entered a play-writing contest in which he had to knock three years off his age to qualify. He wrote his own history in the form of essays and introductions to his plays, and helped others write it through numerous interviews which he gave. Most of the biographical information available on Tennessee Williams came from Williams himself. He is best known for The Glass Menagerie, A Streetcar Named Desire, and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. He was the son of pioneer Tennesseeans, mostly military men and politicians. Born on Main Columbus, Missouri, Thomas Lanier “Tennessee” Williams is considered one of the foremost American playwrights of the twentieth century.

Tennessee williams a street car named desire