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Tennessee Williams

Tennessee Williams. “The Glass Menagerie”. Background – 1911-1983 (71). Thomas Lanier Williams b. Columbus , Mississippi, on March 26, 1911. His mother, the former Edwina Dakin, was the puritanical daughter of an Episcopal rector.

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Tennessee Williams

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  1. Tennessee Williams “The Glass Menagerie”

  2. Background – 1911-1983 (71) • Thomas Lanier Williams b. Columbus, Mississippi, on March 26, 1911. • His mother, the former Edwina Dakin, was the puritanical daughter of an Episcopal rector. • His father, Cornelius Coffin Williams, was a violent and aggressive traveling salesman. • He had an older sister, Rose (memorialized as Laura in The Glass Menagerie), and a younger brother named Walter.

  3. Background • While his father traveled, Tom was mostly brought up by his overprotective mother — particularly after he contracted diphtheria (an upper respiratory tract infection caused by a bacteria) at the age of 5. • By the time the family moved to St. Louis, young Tom retreated into himself. He made up and told stories;many of them scary.

  4. Background • In 1929, he went to the University of Missouri to study journalism. • When his childhood girlfriend, Hazel Kramer, also decided to enroll at Missouri, his father said he would withdraw him, and succeeded in breaking up the incipient (developing) romance. It was his only known romantic relationship with a woman. • In a state of depression, Tom dropped out of school and, at his father's instigation, took a job as a clerk in a shoe company. It was, he recalled, “living death.''

  5. Background • He retreated to his room and wrote • — stories, poems, plays — through the night. • Had a nervous breakdown. Sent to Memphis • to recuperate, the young Mr. Williams joined a local • theater group. • 1937 – went to the University of Iowa in 1937, where he wrote a number of plays. • Graduation - 1938, his sister lost her mind. The family allowed a prefrontal lobotomyto be performed, and she spent much of her life in a sanitarium, and left her to live a life with the mental capacity of a child.

  6. Background • At 28, left home for New Orleans, where he changed his style of living, as well as his name. It was a college nickname, given because his father was from Tennessee. • In New Orleans he discovered new netherworlds, soaking up the milieu (scene) that would appear in A Streetcar Named Desire. • He wrote stories, some of which later became plays, and entered a Group Theater playwriting contest. He won $100 and was solicited by the agent Audrey Wood, who became his friend and adviser.

  7. Background • He wrote a play titled The Gentleman Caller, which slowly evolved into The Glass Menagerie. • On March 31, 1945, five days after its author turned 34 years old, it opened on Broadway. • His second masterpiece, A Streetcar Named Desire, opened in December, 1947, and was an even bigger hit than The Glass Menagerie. He won his second Drama Critics' award and his first Pulitzer Prize. • He won his second Pulitzer for Cat on a Hot Tin Roof in 1955.

  8. Background • For more than 35 years, he produced an enormous body of work, including more than two dozen full-length plays; all of them produced a record unequaled by any of his contemporaries. • He died in his New York apartment in 1983, one year after his final play, A House Not Meant to Stand, premiered in Chicago. He was 71 years old.

  9. Memories • Turn to the person next to you and tell them all the details you remember about something that happened as you walked into class today. Be VERY specific about the details. • Once you have finished, have them repeat to you the details of the event, and make notes of what information they “missed” or “changed”. • As a class, be ready to discuss why you think this occurs. What aspects of memories make them reliable and accurate, or unreliable and inaccurate?

  10. “The glass menagerie” • It is a memory play. • - Dimly lighted and sentimental. • - It is nonrealistic. • - Memory takes a lot of poetic license. • - It omits some details; • - others are exaggerated, according to the emotional value of the articles it touches, for memory is seated predominantly in the heart.

  11. “The glass menagerie” • Intensely personal – • - torn from his own private anguishes and anxieties. • - He remembered his sister's room in the family home in St. Louis, with her • collection of glass figures, representing • “all the softest emotions that belong to recollection of things past.”

  12. “The Glass Menagerie” • It is not truly autobiographical, but it does draw on much of the author’s experience. • The character of Tom, who is understood to be Williams (whose real first name was Tom), deals with the pain of his inability to help his sister.

  13. “The Glass Menagerie”Chicago – December 26, 1944 • The play begins with the entrance of the character, Tom. • Williams sets the play during a particular historical period and Tom’s character explains not only the time but the significance of the time and the mood of the period. • Based on a short story that Williams had written as a sort of homage to his sister, Rose. He was quite devoted to her and her troubled existence weighed heavily on him..

  14. Setting • Publication: 1944 • World War II coming to a close • After the Great Depression • Reflecting on 1937 during the Great Depression

  15. CHARACTERS • Amanda Wingfield • (the overbearing mother) • Laura Wingfield • (her handicapped daughter) • Tom Wingfield (her poet son) • Jim O’connor (the gentleman caller)

  16. TOM • The Narrator • “A poet with a job in a warehouse.” • His nature is not remorseless, but to escape he has to act without pity.

  17. THEMES • Never truly escaping • Tom eventually leaves, but can never forget about Amanda and Laura. • Abandonment • Their father left first, • then Tom also did.

  18. Personal Narrative This must be completed in class: • You will need: • Notebook paper (no spiral paper). • Write your full name at the top of each piece of paper you use. • Write the date at the top of each piece of paper you use, next to your name. • Write the page numbers on each page at the top • DO NOT WRITE ON THE BACK OF THE PAPER. • Must be long enough to have a BEGINNING, MIDDLE and END.

  19. Personal Narrative #1 • Remember an incident or something that happened years ago in your family. Think about that moment and freeze it in your mind. Compose a personal narrative about the incident. • * If you need more than one page, please do not write on the back. Get a new sheet of paper.

  20. Personal Narrative #3 • Compose a personal narrative about a time in your life when you felt like you didn’t belong.

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