The Personal Strife of Tennessee Williams :: Biography Biographies Essays

The Personal Strife of Tennessee Williams Tennessee Williams was a well renowned playwright, who highlighted his personal experiences in his plays and stories. He had a colorful career and he enjoyed makeup about what was considered taboo subjects in the 1940s, 1950s and the 1960s. Williams explored homosexuality, alcoholism, violence, greed and sex. He also infused mood into his work. Williams dissected the traditional American family, and he penned many stories about impaired and volatile families. In the journalist Bruce Smiths memoir on Tennessee Williams entitled pricey Performances, Tennessee is quoted reminding his readers, I have had a life of required endurance, a life of clawing and scratching along a sheer surface and holding on tight with raw fingers to every inch of rock higher than the unitary caught hold of before.... (Smith, 6) Williams was born Thomas Lanier Williams in his maternal grandfathers rectory in Columbus, Mississippi on March 26, 1911. His fath er, Cornielus Coffin Williams, was a shoe salesman at a shoe factory. He was an alcoholic and he was often verbally abusive to his family. Williamss mothers name was Edwina Lanier Williams and she encouraged the young Thomas to write. Williams later ground the character of Amanda from his play The grouch Menagerie on his mother. He had a sister named travel, who was two years older, and when they were growing up they were very close. Rose was a very sensitive child and by her early mid-twenties she was classified as a schizophrenic. She was later institutionalized and eventually tending(p) a lobotomy. His sisters condition devastated Williams, and he was afraid throughout his life that he would succumb to madness as well. He establish the character of Laura from The Glass Menagerie on his sister Rose. Williams had a younger brother named Dakin, who was eight years younger. Their father doted on the younger brother, and there was a salient deal of sibling rivalry between t hem. He actually based Brick and Groopers relationship on his tumultuous dealings with Dakin. Also, Williams had a great vex in people who lived on the fringes of life, like Rose. He considered himself to be variant and he was not popular in his youth. Thomas was teased as a youth by a boy named Brick, and Williams added that the character was ill-defined minded and flawed.